My dear friends!
I have seen this last week just whiz by like a fast ball. I am very happy to say that I have no apparent health issues (and definitely no pain), and I can only give credit to all of your diligent prayers on my behalf, which I thank all of you deeply for. Your prayers have been a large part of my inspiration to help others, on top of the other teachings and lessons that I have received during this time in my life.
I had a humbling experience happen this past Thursday. Mother nature has been cranking up the temperature here in Madagascar and everyday this week, I have come back to the apartment with white shirts screaming to be put in the washer after a full day of sweating bullets. As we came to our last appointment on Thursday evening, I was parched. I gave some money to our member help to run to a nearby episserie and grab my favorite malagasy beverage: Bonbon anglais. He came back with my ice-cold drink and I was running my hands through my hair and wiping off sweat and getting ready to relax a little and sit down (and at this time we were at the house of our last appointment). I twisted off the cap and downed some bonbon anglais. It tasted great! It tastes like bubble gum, hence the french word bonbon which means candy. As I was about to take another drink, a little boy who had kinda been harassing some of the people there, came up to me and started saying ''giligiliky kely azafady?'' which means ''little drink please?'' At first I was skeptical, but I remembered a scripture that I had read that morning from the new testament which said something the lines of ''If you shall give one of these little ones a drink, ye shall in nowise lose your reward'' With that in mind, I wanted to give the kid some of my drink, so I gave him my little bottle and he took off with it. He drank just a little bit of it and continued to harass some of the people there by offering it to someone and then running away from them. That is a pretty frowned-upon thing to do in Africa, so I wanted to teach him a simple lesson about being polite and considerate. As he was going around (he is around 5 or 6 years old) I walked up to him and took the bottle from him, and I walked back to the spot I was at.
He didn't like that at all, and so he started to wail crying.
It made me feel really, really sad to see him like that, because let's face it: he's a kid that probably doesn't have a lot and having a really nice drink like that is probably a very scarce chance for him, and me taking it away probably didn't make it better to take the drink back. Who takes a drink from a small African kid? Hello Elder Johnson 5 minutes ago? I sat there with the drink half disgusted at myself and half-heart torn for the now drink less kid that was now crying, living in poverty. I felt pretty yucky after sitting there for a while, so I walked up to him and coaxed him into calming down a little bit. I told him, ''If you won't be naughty again, I will give you this drink so that you won't be thirsty anymore, but you have to be a good boy, ok?'' He nodded his sweet little head and I gave him the drink again. I didn't see him taunt anyone again after that, which helped me to feel better after that.
Over the past few days, I have had time to reflect on that experience and what that means to me. To this day, I still feel bad to a degree about taking the drink. Then it hit me that I got a real-life tangible parable of the pride cycle. The people ask for something, God gives it, the people don't use it right, God takes it back, the people suffer and humble themselves and repent, and God gives it back again. I now know to a degree the pain that God feels when He has to take something away to help us repent. He doesn't want to take good thing away from us, nor can he take promised blessings away. But when people are continually wicked, He only has one clear option to help them get back to Him: Chastisement. This helped me personally to understand how important it is to be humble and how important it is to thank God for the blessings that He gives so freely for us. That is the invitation I extend to all of you, to always pray for every blessing that you receive and follow God's words! My promise I can give is that God will shower blessings both physical and spiritual when we keep his Commandment and thank Him for His blessings.
I thank you all so much for your love and your prayers and for all that you all have done on my behalf. I thank God every night for all of the prayers given on my behalf. I thank Him for all things that have been given to me and to all people. Thank you for all of the emails; This mission can get awful lonely without emails.
I love you all! If there are any questions about the area I serve in or about my mission or Madagascar in general, please send me an email.
Love,
Elder Johnson
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