Elder Ryan Stringfellow Madagascar Antananarivo Mission: Week 16 in Tamatave...Easter Monday

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Week 16 in Tamatave...Easter Monday

Hey Everyone!

I am so sorry to be sending this so late but this week was insane! Little did I know that Easter is pretty much the biggest holiday in Madagascar and everything just shuts down for 2 or 3 days! I have pictures of all of Tamatave just having an insane party on the beach and that's the main reason why no cybers were open on Monday! I honestly haven't seen so many people in my life and I'll make sure I send the pictures home!

Work this week was pretty slow due to it being the Easter Holiday but we still got a lot done! The main focus of our work right now is finding less actives and teaching recent converts! We are working a lot with our branch right now which is awesome and they are helping us find these people! Because of that we don't really have any Bap dates coming up....I could see Oliva getting baptized in a month or two but she still has a long way to go....Oh well! The work still goes on!

This week was a big learning week for me! With everything going on with Easter and all I became a little discouraged....There were a lot of things this week that just fell through and it took it's toll on me! Whether it was appointments falling through, investigators not showing up to church, or not being able to cyber on Monday it stressed me out! However, I took some time the other night to just think! For some reason I thought back to last baseball season and team quotes started flowing back into my head! The one that stood out to me the most was "Control What You Can Control!" I really thought about that quote this week and came to the realization that everything I was stressing over were things that I had no control over!

There are a lot of things in this life that we can't control and a lot of the time they are really hard to deal with! However, all we need to do is focus on the things in our lives that we can control! I know it's not always easy to realize that which we can control but I know that if we focus on those things everything will come around in the end! All in all, find what you can control, work hard, and make it count! That's my little piece of advice for ya'll going into this week!

Again I am so sorry for being so late to send this email! Next week we'll be able to cyber on Monday and I'll be looking forward to that! Thank you so much for all your encouraging emails that you all send me! They really do mean a lot! I love you all so much and I hope everyone has a great week!

Love,

Elder Stringfellow

PHOTOS OF THE WEEK