Week 31 - Ankorondrano - Meeting Joseph Smith

So, I totally forgot last week. My bad. Anyway I am in a place called Ankorondrano. It's in the middle of the capitol city of Antananarivo. The ward I am serving in is called the Tana first ward. The ward is crazy awesome and I love working with the members!

Anyway, I left Antsirabe at 8 in the morning and got on a taxi-brousse. Essentially a very tightly packed van. Elder Rice and I squished into the front seat together and then, after a long wait, we left. The drive was about four hours long. Then we got to Tana and got dropped off in the very muddy, very large bus stop. Oh, it had been raining the whole day. Then, about half an hour to an hour later, the office elders finally came to pick us up. It was about 2 or 3 at this point and I was supposed to meet up with my new companions at the office at 1. Then as the new office elder was backing out, driving stick for the first time, he hit a taxi-brousse. So then we had to wait for about 3 more hours to get that all figured out. Then we drove to the mission office, but since it was now 6:30, my companion had left to go get some food. So then they came, I got some food, then we went to bed. It was a great day!!!

So then the next couple of days we went and taught and contacted people, contacting is one of my favorite things right now... Mostly Elder Tavo and I have just been following Elder Hardy around because we are still lost all of the time...

Analakely Baby!!!

Then on Sunday I bore my testimony in sacrament meeting and the bishopric told me I sounded just like a Malagasy, so that put me up on cloud 9 because Malagasy is one of my favorite parts of being a missionary here! Then we met a man as we were walking away from the church who told us he was searching for the truth and he was really confused because all of the churches said theirs was the true church. "How can I know where the true church is??!" So we talked to him a little bit, showed him the church, and asked his name. "Joseph Smith." Ok, ok, I see what's going on. You have a good day sir. Haha not very missionaries get to meet him! Then I went on a split with a member of our bishopric who is 26, an ex missionary from the Capetown mission, and he's just such a rocking member! I was blown away! He was just so Christlike and devoted.

Bunch of kids playing on a giant branch... Totally safe.

Then it was just work as usual. One of our favorite investigators wasn't home, his wife said he was visiting his girlfriend... Ok... So then we taught a law of chastity lesson on our next time. Then I drank some carrot-lemon juice. It was pretty weird. Then we were teaching a lesson and someone asked what day the sabbath is on (seventh day worship is big here), so we answered Sunday and we started to explain and it was a disaster, it went way bad. He was just trying to bible bash. Luckily, we got it under control, and he still wants to learn. Then, our very next lesson, the guy asks the same question. I was all like, hah! I'm not dumb, hang on a sec, we'll get there. So we finished about Joseph Smith and modern prophets and then I said, "You want a really clear scripture about why it's on Sunday? Alright, in the year 1820 God appeared to Joseph Smith..." It worked out wayy better than the first time. It was sweet!

Then, there's this girl who lives by us that's like 2 or 3. She's terrified of white people. Whenever she sees us she starts screaming and runs into her house to hide. So on Saturday, she saw us, she started screaming, and she ran to hide in her house, which is also a hotely. So Elder Hardy followed her and cornered her in the hotely trying to reason with her and get her over her fear of white people. So the result was she was screaming for like 5 minutes straight. Ahh, I thought it was sooo funny but felt pretty bad for her too! But yeah, lesson relearned, you can't reason with small children in hysterics.

Then there is this investigator we tracked into named Norbert. He is a baller!!! He is 70. And his whole family shares the building, it's like a small apartment set up, but he's the only one learning right now. Anyway, he's learned three times now, and he's already reading the BiM and all of the pamphlets, EACH DAY! He came to church on Sunday too! He has been Catholic his whole life and he told us he'd never let any preachers into his house before, but then he let us in and he doesn't know why. Then when we first taught him he kept throwing out that he's catholic. Like, "yes, that's very nice, but I'm catholic." "That's very interesting, but I'm a catholic." But then this last time he was talking about how he's working so hard to convince the rest of his family, but "they're catholic." It's so cool to see him change! The gospel does good things for people. He was so excited to get the BiM and when he came to church everybody was super nice and we set up some good friends for him. I have really high hopes for him and his family.

So yeah, that's my week! I mean my two weeks! Tana is alright, I like it a lot, but I do miss that little Antsirabe town every now and then.

Malagasy Morsel for the week is alika maty. ah-LEE-kah MAH-tee and it means dead dog. But don't ever say that to anyone because it's super offensive, near swear word level. So don't actually use that one, just read it and appreciate it!

Eny ary, mozotoa daholo! Aza hanadino ahy!