This week has been fantastic! Elder Cartmill left on Tuesday and then Elder Razakamandimby came on Wednesday. That's Elder Rah-zock-ah-mahn-deem-bee for all of you vazahas. You just say it fast and it's not hard at all! Because of the transfers, our stats suffered this week, but that's ok, because next week will be great! Elder Razakamandimby is a baller! Literally, he played on the Madagascar national basketball team before his mission. He is also way good at English, especially because he only started learning eight months ago when he started his mission. We mostly speak Malagasy though, and that is a crazy party! Malagasy is so cool! I am having a blast learning it!
Which leads us to the language part. Fatana means stove, not to be confused with Fasana, which means grave, and that's not to be conused with fasika, which means sand. The emphasis for all of them is on the "fa" then you just say the rest really fast and you've got it! That's one of the biggest differences between English pronunciation and Malagasy: you say everything really slow in English.
So I moved houses this last week and I am in the sisters' old house. It's pretty nice! It's like a cute little cabin that you would find up Provo canyon.
The stairs are hardcore messed up...
Pictures will be coming after my camera works again... My new housemates are Elder Rice and Elder Morse, straight from Tana. Elder Rice is from Boise and he played rugby before his mission. He is a lot of fun to be around and then I already knew Elder Morse from the MTC so we are already a nice cute little family.
Elder Rice (l), Elder Morse (reaching into cupboard), and Elder Raza (r)
Speaking of cute little families, I have made friends with a cute little family of fleas again. My first night in the new house I got 24 flea bites on my left hand alone. 24!!!! At least they seem to really enjoy the fact that I moved in, so that's nice.
We got a couple packages for other elders this week, which reminds me about the method for successfully sending packages across the world. Especially in Madagascar, the people are quite religious and slightly superstitious, so if you put stickers of Jesus on the seams of the package, then they will be less likely to steal stuff. Cool, right?!
So we actually did missionary work this week too... When we visited Maxime and Noelisoa, Noelisoa had just gone into labor. So she went to the hospital and we will see her sometime this week with a new baby! Then we did some contacting, taught a few firsts and we have some new, ballin families thaqt we are teaching! This week has been great! We had a baptism on Saturday, and pictures will come next week. When they came out of the (very cold) water, it was terrifying! They were thrashing and gasping, and I thought something was wrong until they bolted out and sat wrapped up in the towel with chattering teeth. Even with that fantastic part of it, it was a great baptismal service!
We just hit the pavement this week. I mean, we hit the dirt and occasional cobblestone this week and got a lot of work in. When you work hard and do your best, the good results follow. That being said, work hard and don't get too content with where you are at right now, but improve a little bit and help someone else too!
Tiako ianareo! Misaotra betsaka!
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