I have a way cool story this week!!!!!
We were on our way to an appointment, but we were running a bit early so we stopped by an épicerie for a soda. (An epicerie is a little shop like thing. Hopefully next week I'll send a picture of one.)The lady looked at my name tag and said, "Elder Smithson", very clearly, which is very unusual because most Malagasies have a hard time saying my name (90 percent say "Simpson"). We started talking and it turns out she is actually pretty good at English. She then really surprised me when she said "I have a friend with the same name as you. He is a missionary like you. He taught me how to pray." I pretty much immediately knew it was my older brother and I was right! I confirmed so by showing her a picture of Wesley. It was sooo crazy!!! I knew that I would meet members that knew my brother, but I never thought that I would run into a random person on the street who knew him! It was a very neat experience. She is a very nice lady. Apparently she never took formal lessons, but Wesley used to stop there and get drinks and talk to her. We definitely plan on going back! We will see what happens!!
So every week I choose a Christlike attribute from Preach My Gospel and try to improve on it. This week was patience, and I realized I'm not very patient. However, I had a neat thought. We were teaching an older guy named Pascual. He is from the countryside in the northern part of Madagascar where we don't have the church yet. However he is spending a few months here in Tana (Antananarivo) and has been learning about the church from us. He was first introduced to the church years ago, and he is probably the best investigator I have ever taught. Anyways, on Tuesday, he asked a really good question that struck a chord in my mind. He asked, "Did Lehi and his family know that they were going to America when the Lord told them to leave Jerusalem?" I knew the answer was no, but as I started thinking about it I had this thought: They had no clue where they were going, but they trusted in the lord. It wasn't 'til after they left Jerusalem that they learned they were going to a promised land, and even then it took another 8 years of traveling in the wilderness before they reached the sea. They still had to build ships and sail across the sea. They had tremendous faith and patience. Our lives are very similar. We don't always know why things happen or why sometimes things don't happen when we want them to, but Heavenly Father does. In Preach My Gospel one of the definitions of patience is trusting in the lord and in his timing. Heavenly Father knows each of us personally. He knows exactly where we are going and when to help us (as he did for Lehi and his family when He gave them the Liahona to guide them). So far on my mission I've had some cool experiences of being in the right place at the right time, and often times leading up to those experiences there was a lot of failures and disappointments. I know the Lord knew what was happening and helped out with the timing. I hope as I continue to serve that I get better at trusting in the Lord.
So word of the week is faharitana which is how Malagasies say patience. It more literally translates as enduring (for example, we say faharitana hatramin'ny farany for enduring to the end) which also happens to be another definition of patience in Preach My Gospel.
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