I Want to be Bishop Right Now!

Mom!

     This week was been sooooo stressful!  I am ready to never hold a leadership calling in the mission or in the church ever again!  Do you know what I had to deal with this week?   A sister missionary punched an elder in the face and gave him a black eye—in front of the members!!! Both the sister and elder are notorious for being hard to get along with and they both are very, very stubborn.  So the President decided to put them in the same branch....and this was the result. We had to talk to each one of them separately and get their stories.  Apparently, they got in a fight over who was going to teach an investigator.   The elder ended up calling the sister a cow.  She in turn called him a few names and then decided to spit in his face and punch him in the eye. The elder showed up to church the next day with a black eye!   That incident caused me to have a very interesting conversation with the President; so, we’ll have to see how it goes.  Then our branch got two new elders this week, so we had to split the boundary and that is always a real headache.  

     I do have a new companion, since Elder Crosland is now an AP in Singapore.  My companion is a local Indian from Penang.  He was in the zone before he became the zone leader, so I already knew him.  He helps me with my bahasa (language), so that’s good.  Plus, GUESS WHAT???? The sisters brought Cheez-Its from America!  We ate half the bag in under three minutes--I forgot how good those where!!

     I do have a funny story that happened this week.   This super old lady, who is an investigator, said that she needed help at her house at 8 am.   We got up super early and biked with the sisters to her house.   It took forever to get there because she lives an hour away. When we got there, the lady took us to her backyard, handed me a hoe and a butcher’s knife, and told me to cut down these two small trees!!  It took a while, but we finally did it.  They were tapioca trees, so we had to dig deep in the ground to get out the roots.  Then she told us that we could have the trees! So basically, we biked an hour to cut down her tapioca trees so she could give them to us.  We don't even know what to do with them!

   This week we also taught the one family whose dad just passed away in the fire. It was wayy sad, but it was a cool experience when we read Alma 7:11-13 with them and talked about the Atonement! The Spirit was so strong.

     I now have all the family’s pictures on my wall and as I was writing you guys a letter today, I looked at the pictures and it hit me really hard how much I miss you guys!  I realized it has been almost 15 months since I have seen the family—that is so crazy! But, this year has really flown by.  It seems like it was only three months ago that I was talking to you at Christmas, but it was actually almost a year ago!!

     I love you mom so so so much!!!  Don’t worry--just about nine more months and we are there!!!

Love you, 

Elder Madsen   

Mom

     Things have been a lot better this week; everyone is starting to focus back on their work. I heard there were sooo many people at Elder Wiberg’s funeral!! That is awesome--he was truly a funny guy.

     The sisters are stealing our baptisms!! They baptized a guy that we found and taught a lot before we got transferred.   They ended up baptizing him and two more people that we have taught!! Haha, I guess it doesn’t matter who baptizes them....but, I am still counting them as mine!

     I have been continuing to read the New Testament and I’m in the Book of Acts....it is straight up crazy. The whole book is about the twelve Apostles who were just preaching the Gospel and destroying people. I forgot which one...Simon?? who was stoned and carried out of the land because they thought he was dead and BOOM, he woke up. The people tried to kill the Apostles like a million times!!  Acts is like the coolest book ever.

      Also, I learned a fun fact from Elder Boyter (he is like the coolest senior couple ever--they have a blog too!) Anyway, Elder Boyter is amazing. He was one of those guys that was called as a bishop when he was super, super young and after that has served in some big time callings--so he has been around the "Brethren" quite a bit.  Anyway, Elder Boyter got on the topic of who presides in the home.  For instance, If President Monson walked into our house, Dad would preside. IF President Monson walked into our house and Dad was gone....not me or Chris, but YOU would preside! That last part I didn’t know!! I still remember when the missionaries would come over when Dad wasn’t home and they would always ask me who I wanted to say the prayer, BUT they should of asked you! Interesting right??

       The other day for our District Meeting, we went to the senior couple’s house to bake cookies for the people at the hospital that took care of Elder Wiberg. I felt like I was at home!! While the other missionaries were in a circle talking, I was drinking Diet Coke and talking with Sister Moulder while she made the cookies. So, even though I didn’t help bake the cookies, I drank three cans of Diet Coke and ate a lot of cookie dough while I kept her company. She's a pretty cool lady.  This is her second mission.  Her first mission, she served in SLC in the church office as the Family History person. She worked with all the Missionaries who have autism. She said it was amazing to see how focused they were. She worked with this one guy who traveled into all these villages and gathered all the family history. He even went to Sarawak!! So, she is one out of ten people in the world who knew what this missionary had done and that’s why she got called to Sarawak as a family history specialist. She has some really funny stories about the missionaries that she worked with. She said one missionary was the fastest person she had ever seen on a computer and that he helped big time with this project they were working on. Then they had to switch to another project, and she couldn’t get him to switch projects.  He just flat out refused to switch because he was too focused on the other one.  She told me about another elder who was brand new.  He was getting trained and apparently he was training on a pretty complicated job. So she said that on the elder’s second day on the job, he ran up to her and put a note in her hand that said, "I Quit!!!" I told her how much you loved working with kids who have autism.  It was really interesting to hear Sister Moulders' stories about her first mission.

    This week has been good, we were meeting with this one guy when all of the sudden we heard a huge BOOM and then what sounded like a water fall! He got up and ran to his bathroom, climbed onto the ceiling, and yelled for a rope.  You could see water just shooting out everywhere, so I climbed up and gave him his rope. He tied the pipe down with his rope and that stopped the water from gushing out.  Then, soaking wet, he just sat back down and was like, "Okay, we can continue"--like nothing had even happened!!! It was hilarious.  Also, for the first time in 14 1/2 months, I stepped on.....CARPET!! It was the nicest feeling in the world. The second counselor in the Mission Presidency, who owns a lot of palm oil plantations, had us over for dinner.  It was amazing!  We had pork, chicken, coke, and cheesecake!! It was the nicest meal that I have had in 14 months.

     Transfers happened today and Elder Crosland is going to be an AP!! That is way cool! I am so pumped for him; he is a way good elder. I think he is one of the few AP's I have ever met who doesn’t seek out leadership positions or doesn’t look at being an AP as a "promotion."  He just serves wherever he is asked to go and does his best. One of the songs that I have really grown to appreciate on my mission is, "I'll Go Where You Want Me to Go." Story of my life!!! 

     I love you mom!! Thanks for always supporting me!!

Elder Madsen

"Things will get better, they always do."

Mom,

     Tell everyone thanks for the prayers; I could definitely feel the blessings. Elder Wiberg was sent back to his parents this past week in his full suit and name tag  The memorial service went really well. My companion (who trained Elder Wiberg), Elder Berger (MTC companion) and I gave talks at the service and then President Mains closed. It was a really amazing experience to see the chapel 100% full and to see the love all the members had for Elder Wiberg.

     I have really felt the power of the Atonement work in my life this week. I remember the night of the accident just having a feeling that everything would be okay, and even though things weren't okay in my book, that peaceful feeling never left me. I have always had a huge fear of losing one of my family members and that I would never be able to get over it...but, this experience has confirmed to me that all trials are overcome through the Atonement. Something that I felt impressed to talk about at the memorial service was a talk I heard from Elder Holland. He told a story that took place a while ago of a young man and his wife and his two little kids wanting to move across America.  They started their trip and 37 miles into the trip their car broke down. The young father left his family and walked the three miles back to the nearest town.  He found a nice old man to take him to his car and then take the car back to town to get it fixed.  At the shop, the workers couldn’t find anything wrong with the car, so he took off with his family again--and 37 miles into the trip, the car broke down again. So the young father had to make the walk back into town--again. Elder Holland then said if he could speak to that young father, he would tell him to keep walking, to keep pushing through…that "things would get better; they always do". That talk brings peace to my mind..."things will get better; they always do".  I know that is true. This week has been a rough one to say the least, but I know things will get better. Whatever trials we have in life, we can always fall back on Elder Holland’s advice, "Things will get better; they always do." I did see things get better this week. It's hard to forget what happened and get back to work, but that's what we all have to do--especially the Elders that are serving here. We have a work to do--we have priesthood responsibilities to fulfill. A great example that I thought a lot about this week is Dad. He's never taken a break or a rest from his Priesthood duties even through his lay-off or whatever has come up. One thing that I've learned on my mission is that there is no use dwelling on things; what’s done is done and it’s we that need to keep going.

     This week the zone was very motivated and Elder Crosland and I found two new families to teach! A brother in the branch that we met a couple times was working in his garden and, while he was burning stuff, he passed out and fell into the fire.  His wife pulled him out, but it was too late. So we helped with the service and met some of his relatives who we have now started to teach. We also met this Iban couple that got married at 15!!  We were teaching them about the restoration and it was going really, really well; until, a drunken guy came out of the middle of nowhere and ruined everything!! He was terrible; he kept yelling things in Iban about praising Jesus and for some reason he really liked sniffing my hair??  I think it is my Pantene shampoo.  He then tried to lick me and that was when we decided to call it night.  We told the couple that we would come back later!

    

     This week. I have been reading from this huge book called “The Restored Church”; it’s a great book. It has so many details that I never knew! You should find it!!

     I love you mom and thanks for the prayers! 

Elder Madsen