Week 101 - This Is It

Well, here I am. Still in Madagascar. For now. Everyone's been asking me what I think about going home (this) week, but I don't really get what they're trying to get at. I am home. Madagascar is my home.
Antsirabe is my home.
Antananarivo is my home.
Fort Dauphin is my home.
Tamatave is my home.
I've been going home every day for the last two years. I won't be going home next week, I'll be leaving home.

I feel so blessed to have been able to travel around so much this last little bit and see all the parts of my home that I love so much. I haven't been able to make it back to Fort Dauphin yet, and I won't make it back before I leave, but I will make it back.
You always have to come back home.

I'll put a little morsel of Malagasy here. Probably my last one. Fo. It rhymes with who. It means heart. My heart is here in Madagascar. My heart is here with the Malagasy people. My heart is here with the stellar missionaries serving here. And my heart is here, stuck very tightly to the little black piece of plastic with my name and my Savior's name carved in it that sits on my chest. I think removing that will take part of my heart with it.

In zone conference, my little portion has been about charity and love. About the reason we serve the Lord for two years. I feel like the reason I left on my mission hasn't really changed much these last two years. I am a missionary because I love the Lord and I want to do as He would have me.

I've definitely learned a lot these last two years, though, but I wouldn't say it's ever been a big change all at once. Doctrine and Covenants 98:12 says it pretty well: "For He will give unto the faithful line upon line, precept upon precept; and I will try you and prove you herewith." I feel like I'm the same person I was before I first came home here two years ago, I've just been magnified and grown.

I feel so blessed to have been allowed to come here and be touched by so many wonderful people here. I feel so blessed to have been allowed to come here and maybe touch some of them.

Jesus Christ lives. The Book of Mormon is true. Thomas S. Monson is a true prophet. I can be with my family for eternity. Jesus Christ lives.
He lives.
The words of my testimony haven't changed at all, but the conviction and strength most certainly have.

I love you all.
Mandra-pihaona indray.

Goodbye Madagascar.
Mbola hifankahita indray izaho sy ianao.

Week 37 - Ankorondrano - 8 Weeks Here

So, conference will be coming to all of you soon... I'm super excited for that! Unfortunately, that's still going to be a while for us over here in the Indian ocean... But it's coming, so it's all good!

We'll start with a nice Malagasy Morsel to start us off this week. It's another word that I just love: misolelaka. It means to suck up. So then, if you add a "p" after the "m" it turns into the doer of that verb. So a mpisolelaka is a suck up. Sweet, right?!

This week has been going great. And by great, I mean it was slightly subpar, but I'm in Madagascar, speaking Malagasy all of the time, so that elevates it to great. We just had lots of people who weren't home for our appointments so we walked a lot. Yes, there is a bus system, but the traffic is so bad that usually we don't use those too much. But on Thursday, when Elder Richard and one of our zone leaders, Elder Rigby, switched spots for the day a bap interview, we walked 10.18 miles!!! So that was neat.

We did have a great turnout at church though, 166!!! We be killin' it here! Haha it was actually because lots of family members came to see one of our investigator's confirmation. We still had a lot of investigators and less actives who came, so it was nice to see everyone showing up!

I saw Elder Glazier today!!! It's still really weird to call him that. Anyway, he's so fat!!! Haha he has gained a little weight, but he looks like he's having a blast! No I did not get pictures. We were too "caught up in the moment." And by that I mean we were playing soccer, so... It was way sweet to see him though!

That bap interview I talked about back up there was for an investigator who has been "learning" with the missionaries for about 18 years(his family got baptized at the beginning of those 18 years). He finally decided he needed to get baptized right before I came here. Our first lessons with him were not too great because he didn't really pay attention, so we had to keep reviewing because he kept forgetting. Once we got to the commandments, however, he had already progressed into a baller! It helps that he's been living all of those commandments for most of the 18 years. We did have some scary moments though, like when his daughter asked him how he felt back when he was always drunk. He just answered, "fantastic!" I was dying of laughter, but I was trying sooo hard not to show it! But he got baptized on Friday! His birthday! He's grown so much and I'm so pumped for him!

Then another quick story from this week. Wednesday we were teaching some investigators who are from Antsirabe. (They came to church this last week!!!) And their son came up. Turns out, he's from Ambohimena!!! My old branch!!! He's still not a member, but he learned from the missionaries a long time ago. When his dad found out he already had a Book of Mormon, he just turned away with a thoughtful look, and then said, "Read it." So there y'all have it. Read it. Don't pretend like there is stuff more important than that. Elder Scott threw down on that at conference and said that reading the scriptures is more important than work, school, food, etc... So don't shortchange your spiritual progression!

I love you all, and I hope you have a wonderfully uplifting General Conference and Easter!
Veloma daholo!

Week 29 - Antsirabe - Goodbye Antsirabe

Ela ela tsy hita!
Hey er'rybody! We'll start off quick with a small, easy word for our Malagasy Morsel this week. Learned this bad baby clear back in the MTC. Masoandro. MAH-soo-AHN-jroo. It literally means the eye of the day. So of course it's the sun. Neat, huh?

Now the quick rundown of the week:

Monday I kind of just bummed around, played some basketball, bought some food, emailed, all that fun stuff, then in the evening we had two times and ate some great rice and loaka. Ooh! I left my camera at the cyber too.

Tuesday when a drunk man in a pousse-pousse drove by and started yelling English at me, I did the natural thing and pretended I was French and didn't understand. He apparently believed he was one of the head honchos in our church and needed to give us an assignment. When we just kept walking he forgot about us pretty quick.

Wednesday I got my camera back from the cyber, I was super happy it was still there! Then we taught English and taught some new investigators and it was fantastic!

Thursday we ate rice with boiled squash leaves at an investigator's house. Delicious. Then we discovered a huge set of apostate beliefs in one of our part member families.

Friday we corrected said apostate beliefs and taught a lot of basic stuff about the temple, spirit world, and family. It was great stuff. Now we just have to go find the gospel doctrine teacher who was teaching all of that and have a nice lesson with him too. And then all of the other members too!
Saturday we taught my balling investigator that I found while I was on member splits contacting! We taught about the Book of Mormon and they promised to read it, pray about it, keep doing that, and then come to church too! Then they gave us mangahazo, which is boiled tree root, kind of like a hard potato but less flavor! Delicious. I'm gonna miss them a bunch!

Sunday we had church. When we showed up, 40 people were there. However, by the time the sacrament was over, we were up to 113, so that was pretty scary!!! That's called fotoana gasy, or Malagasy time! Then, the second counselor in the branch presidency tried to give me a talk. Bad news... I can't, sorry... (*Spoiler alert*) I'm leaving this week... That was the easiest I've ever gotten out of a talk!

Like I just hinted at, transfers are this week, and unfortunately, my four transfer stay here is over. I'm going to Antananarivo!!! My new area is called Ankorondrano and I will be in a threesome with Elder Tavo, who was in my group and from Vanauatu, and Elder Hardy, who has about six months left and I've heard he's a ballin' missionary, so I'm really excited! Elder Coleman, also from my group, is coming to replace me here in Ambohimena, so my area will be in good hands. He's a great missionary! I said a lot of goodbyes on Sunday, and then I have today and tomorrow and then I'm off on Wednesday morning to take a very long, crowded bus ride up to Tana, and then new area! I'm way excited!

Eny ary, izay ihany izao. Tiako ianareo tsirairay! Mifankatiava! Mozotoa e!
Alright, that's all for now. Love ya! Don't forget to keep your spirit nice and nourished!

Week 28 - Antsirabe - The Blessing of Being Rooted in the Gospel

So I'll start this week with a quick Malagasy Morsel. Basivava, BAHS-ee-VAH-vah, but it usually just sounds like boss-vahv. It comes from two words, basy which means gun, and vava which means mouth. So it means gunmouth. You use it when someone just talks a ton and talks way fast.

So now we get a rundown of the week again. On Monday we had two soirees, which was tough because that means two meals. We told the first soiree that we would bring pizza, but we decided that would take too long, so we took tacos to them instead. We called them "Mexican Pizza" it was way good. Then, on Tuesday we taught all day and while we were in one lesson, the little, old Malagasy man starts complaining about the government. He said, "Malagasies break stuff. Life was so much better when the vazahas were still in charge." He went on for about 10 minutes like that, listing every part of life that was better when the French were in charge. I thought it was sooo hilarious! Elder Razakamandimby did not. Then Wednesday, we taught English class and worked. Thursday I bought a pineapple for less than a dollar and took it home. Elder Razakamandimby turned his nose up a little bit and told me that any pineapple from Antsirabe, up in the mountains, is going to be way worse that a pineapple in Tana or on the coast. That being said, it was delicious! It was so juicy! I made grilled pineapple and covered that bad boy with honey and sugar and then I ate it all. I will probably have to do that a lot more. Then on Friday we went on member splits! I went with Setra, and he was sooo quite! So I just talked about the entire time, and it was fantastic! Saturday was poopy. There was a super long activity that we went to where the youth were making food for the members of the district under the direction of a professional chef to build experience to get jobs. It was pretty cool, but I was just itching to go because we had times to hit and places to be. I was pretty thrilled when we finally got out of there. Next time, I'm probably not going to go... Just call me the party pooper... Sunday was great! We got 20 less actives to come and we had some crazy spiritual lessons! Then, our soiree ended up in a discussion about ghosts, and we had to set a couple things straight. That was really, really funny.

Other than that, not much has happened this week. We didn't eat anything crazy, we didn't do anything too crazy, we mostly just walked, biked, and sat in lessons. We've been working out a lot in the morning, and the dunk is definitely a lot easier now, but I will have to wait until I get to a house with a scale before I can see if I've been gaining or not.

 This week I have definitely been seeing the blessings of families and individuals firmly rooted in the church. Since lots of the members here are way new, we have to be the doctrine checkers a lot. It is very apparent, however, who is really trying to root themselves in the scriptures and the teachings of latter day prophets. Those who study consistently and make that study a valuable use of time have a much greater knowledge of the gospel and they are more confident in the way that they live that. I guess what I'm trying to say is count your blessings. Having a long history in the church is a very great blessing and I feel very blessed to have that!

Love most of you!
Mandra-pihaona!

Week 27 - Antsirabe - Cyclone Chedza

So, we'll once again start of this week with our Malagasy Morsel. Maninjitra, mah-NEEN-zee-chah, means to stretch out your hands or to reach. So when it says that his hands are still outstretched all of those times in Isaiah, that's the word. I just really like the sound of it, that's the real reason I'm using it this week...

So this week has been a party over here in the Indian Ocean! I will start with the food news, because that's all that half of you care about anyway, so you can just skip everything after this. This week I have been making a lot of tortillas. They are extremely easy so I've made them like six times. I don't always have stuff to put in them, so sometimes it's a little weird, but it all works out. My sunday dinner was a giant quesadilla with the two giant tortillas I made with the last of the flour. Then I put like half a block of this cheese stuff that I found that is very close to chedder. Way good. Then I ate it with my salsa I made a week ago and some hotsauce. It was super delicious. Then we've had pancakes very frequently. We don't have a spatula, so I've gotten very good at just getting the pancake unstuck from the pan and then actually flipping it. That also comes in handy with tortillas too. I ran out of oats this week, so I had to improvise a lot more. I just realized that the reason there is so much stuff about food in my emails is because I'm always way hungry. We always come first thing in the morning to the cyber and then eat after, so I'm always starving when I write. It's probably helped by the fact that I'm probably eating for myself, my amoeba colony, and my worms.

This week we worked our butts off again! It was fantastic! Apparently a cyclone came through, which is like a tropical storm, I've heard varying reports about how serious it was. Short story is we had crazy weather for like two days and lost all of our pretty flowers in our yard, our neighbors lost their wood fence, some people in our area lost their brick wall, and all the plants now look like they are trying to lay down and go to sleep. You can see all the corn leaning in one of my pictures.

I got some letters from home this week, and in one of them were some letters from the family back at the Thanksgiving party. Joe sent me one that shared his favorite scripture in Ether, he said he didn't know why he sent it, but I totally used it in a lesson that day. That was pretty great, so thanks a bunch! It was nice to hear from people back home too.

Then, a quick rundown of the week: on Tuesday we were going to teach these new investigators, but a cow was tied in front of their door, we tried to go around but she would charge us anytime we got close. Eventually they opened their door and helped us past the cow. Take that Satan!
On Friday we went on member splits and I went contacting for a couple hours and got six new families! I'm super pumped for them! Then, when we met back together we were teaching a lesson and I was feeling like it was going a little too long and I wanted to get going. Right then, Dimilahy, one of our member helps for the day turned to me, and said in some of the only English he knows, "Let's GO." I laughed really hard and we headed out right after that. Then on Saturday we walked past a little kid who saw me and tried to use all of the English he knew on me. So he only knew some Jason Derulo so he just ripped out his "wiggle wiggle wiggle." It was hilarious. On Sunday these kids came up to talk to me and asked me for money, I told them that I didn't have any money, which was true, so then he asked again in French. I told him I'm not good at French and he was astounded. "You mean you're not a vazaha?" I told him that I wasn't. I'm just an albino malagasy (there are a couple that live in our area that I've seen). He was just like, "oh, you're pretty tall though." "Yep." Then he walked away. HAH got him!

So yeah, it's all coming along well, I'm pumped for this next week, we've been doing really well the last few weeks, so this week we're going to try to keep that going and beat last week.
Love you all!
Mozotoa e!

Week 26 - Antsirabe - Beginning to Learn French

So I'm a little late getting this sent out today because this morning we had a breakfast meal with the Tolmans, the couple missionaries here. We have an Elder going home this week because he extended, so he's not going home on the transfer schedule, and we were having a good bye breakfast for him. His name is Elder Andriamanganoro and he is from Tana. It's weird that he's already going home! Anyway, the fruit salad, potato casserole, yogurt, and like ten cinnamon rolls consumed by yours truly were amazing. I love eating at the Tolmans.

That being said, I'll start off now with our Malagasy Morsel of izany hoe. If you want to be technical you would pronounce it as ee-ZAHN-ee way. But if you say it like that you don't have a malagasy accent because the words are ellided a lot of the time, so you barely pronounce the first syllable, then the third syllable runs into the last so it sounds like zahn-way. It means, "that is" or "like" and you use it when you add some clarification. It's pretty handy and I say it all the time.

Then, Friday was a pretty big day. As of Friday, I have been on my mission for 6 months. That's crazy!!! I still can't believe that I am more than a fourth of the way done now. I'm not sure that I'm quite as good at Malagasy as I was expecting to be when I was a fourth of the way done, but I'm pretty pumped I still have some improving I can do! Speaking of language learning, I officially started learning French this week. I already have picked up a bunch because Malagasies will use it all the time, especially because they think all white people are from France usually. But I officially started this week, so that's cool.

Before I get too much farther I will just apologize for any spelling errors, the computer is set to French so spellcheck tells me all my words are spelled wrong so I don't bother trying to check them.

I've been getting a lot of requests for just little things about how life is out here and for pictures, so this week I'll send some, if I can get a card reader from one of the other missionaries that works. Then just a little bit about Madagascar right now: it's hot. It usually rains each night, and it rains a lot. A lot a lot a lot. Yes, there is different food here. Some of my favorite things are passion fruit fanta (yes, that exists), coke (you can pretty much only get coke products here- coke, fanta, sprite, and they use cane sugar so it's way better than in America!), mofo akondro-- which is a deep fried banana covered in pancake batter pretty much, and ravimbofotsy, which is a type of herbal tea that's pretty common. Ooh, and there's this mango lasary, which is sliced mangoes in vinegar with peppers and other good stuff. You guys are probably all sick of me always talking about food though, so we'll move on to other things.

This week we have been working super hard! Last week Elder Razakamandimby was sick, so we didn't get a ton of work in, but this work we came back hard and we have destroyed our previous records on like everything! It's been great! We did a bunch of tracting and our schedule is just about to burst because we are teaching so many people! I love it! We've been having a lot of really cool experiences with our investigators too! We taught a family last week, and then when we came back yesterday, the wife told us that her husband was touched by our message and he stopped drinking, staying out late, he doesn't smoke anymore and he's been trying to be a better person! We didn't teach him about the Word of Wisdom either! We just barely taught about the restoration and that's it! It was so neat! Then we got to a guy who is a Bible Scholar and he pretty much already believes everything we teach, we just have to get him through the lessons to get baptized! He already promised to come to church, which is usually one of the hardest things to get people to do, he's a straight up stud!

Then we've also had a lot of fun experiences with crazy people. We were stopped by a drunk, old, probably crazy, lady who asked us to pray for her. We sat down and talked to her family a little bit to get a feel for what we should teach, and then she just starts praying and shouting up at the sky! She was like commanding God to help her, and then when she was done, she trailed off super quiet, then yelled a few more things. Then we told her that if she wanted to be able to think straight and not have a sick head all the time (what whe was praying for help with) she needed to stop drinking because she was most definitely on the bottle... It was super funny!

Another cool experience I had was looking at the stars last night. I haven't seen them for a month or two because there have been so many cloudy nights, but it was super nice to see them again! Then I've been having some problems with pousse-pousses, they're like these rickshaw things that are everywhere here. I am apparently too heavy now, and the last couple of times I've gone in one, I've had to get out and walk up the hills with them because they couldn't pull me. That's a real self confidence builder...

The work is going great though! Our church attendence was 154 last week and 149 yesterday! That's double what it was when we first got here! It makes me super happy to see all the growth and the less active members coming back and heating up their testimonies a little bit!

Anyway, I love you all, and I wish you all a fantastic week!
Mba hifalia foana!

Week 25 - Antsirabe - Prayers Do Get Answered

I will start with a quick message about fasting. Yesterday was fast Sunday, and because we have been dropping a lot of people because they aren't actually doing anything, Elder Razakamandimby fasted that the people who wanted to learn would find us and ask to learn. So now you're thinking, oh, so then someone came up and asked to learn, and it was all great and happy. No. Four people did. And then at a couple of our lessons THAT DAY they brought family members to come learn with them who hadn't learned before. It was fantastic! Especially because all of this happened after we broke our fast then headed out to work at 2, to when we headed home at 9:15ish. It was pretty cool to see how quickly our prayers were answered!

Anyway, we'll get on with this week. Last Monday, when the last email was sent home, we had planned to go to Lac Tritriva again because a lot of the new missionaries haven't seen it yet (fun fact, every single missionary who was here in Antsirabe when I first came has already left...). Then we didn't. So then we played football instead. Yours truly caught 2 of our 7 touchdowns. I'd be lying if I said I did a lot though, it was kind of a just throw it high up and he'll catch it kind of thing. I did actually run though... Then after that we went and got haircuts--my hair is way too short now... And then we picked up some food and went home.

Fun fact about this week: other than Monday and Sunday, we played basketball every singly morning. We've been getting up a little bit earlier and playing for an hour, then heading back to get ready. It has been fantastic! We played a local Malagasy club team and lost by 5  points. I think that's not bad for a bunch of missionaries who haven't played from anywhere for 2 months to a year and 9 months! I have noticed that I have been sleeping much better now! I also go to bed at like 10 and occaisionally 9:30 so I can keep up on sleep. It has been great!

Along those lines, I have also been demolishing food this last week. It started a little before we started playing basketball, so I'm not sure if it's from that or not. We have made a lot of great food this week, Elder Razakamandimby made 3 deep dish pizzas, I made biscuits and gravy to break our fast, we've had pancakes a couple time, oatmeal is a constant snack, Elder Kelsch made some no bake chocolate cookies ( also known by their real name of gorilla poop), and we've had spaghetti a few times too. An average day for me goes like this: We go play basketball, I get back and make oatmeal with peanut butter in it, then I make eight pancakes, then I study for a little bit, then I make another batch of oatmeal with peanut butter. Then I finish up studies and make a lunch of spaghetti with ground beef mixed in, just like back at home, then I eat 5 bananas with peanut butter. Then we go out and work. I buy two bowls of soup and some warm sugar milk with a bread ball at a little hotely for a snack. Then we work more. Then we come home and eat pizza. Then I eat some oatmeal as I write in my journal and then brush my teeth, put in my retainer and go to bed. Then you just repeat! It's crazy. Hopefully I am not growing any taller, that's all I can say, I already have to walk around hunched over in every Malagasy house... Maybe it's just that I have been healthy for a little, so I'm eating like normal again. I don't know.

This week we had next to no member help. That's an especially big bummer because two weeks ago we had member help every single day, all day. It's also a big bummer because we had member splits planned and nobody showed up. However, since we have been focusing on finding father lead families, we didn't have too much of a problem with needing a guy to teach with us because there were only women. So tha't good. We've found some more families and we had all of next Friday and half of Thursday planned to go do contacting in a new area we haven't been in too much. I say we had that planned because yesterday when all those people came to us, they all wanted to learn in the evening in Friday, so now it's just like half of Friday.

Malagasy Morsel for this week is manisa. mah-NEE-sah. It means to count. So for example, when I bought a Christmas advent calendar last Monday and decided to start counting up to the 25th of January (why not?) then manisa ny andro tsirairay aho. Or I count each day.

Anyway, that's the letter for this week. All of you enjoy the new year!
Tratra ny toana, samy hoa tratra ny ho avy indray, sns.
Mozotoa!

Week 24 - Antsirabe - Christmas Happened!

So we'll start this week off with a quick review of the end of last week. On Sunday, Elder Razakamandimby was sick. Ok, that's enough to get going here. So on Monday he was feeling a lot better, so what does he do to continue the rest and recovery stuff? He plays a very competitive game of basketball with all of the other missionaries. Then, when P-day was over, we headed off to have a soirèe at a less active family's house. After eating a lot of corn, with lot's of sacay (like mashed peppers with oil--way spicy) on them, he decided he once again wasn't feeling good. The timing was pretty good, because it was already just about time to go home. So he went home, threw up, and then slept. Then on Tuesday and Wednesday, that's mostly all he did. Threw up and slept. And used the bathroom. He was even sick on Christmas too, but he was feeling better and we managed to get the skyping done without a problem. The poor guy was finally feeling better on Friday, so we managed to get back out to work. Moral of the story is don't push yourself too much when you're sick. And something else we can learn from that is that we didn't do very much work this last week. It was kind of nice staying home and studying a lot, and it was nice to stay home so my companion didn't die, but I'm not going to lie, I missed working pretty bad. I've got a nice habit of working every day, so not working just drove me crazy, but it's all good, because he's doing a lot better now.

Then, Christmas happened!! It did not at all feel like Christmas, but we did have a Christmas pageant thing that we were able to get to, in which the missionaries were all angels and sang "Far Far Away on Judea's Plains" in Malagasy, of course. Then I was the lucky duck who got to be the Angel Gabriel and wave my arms around and look angelic while the narrator read my lines. It was pretty fun. Then we skyped home! That was amazing!!!! You all looked so good and it was so nice to talk to you all!!!

It was pretty fun getting to be a part of the present opening on Christmas morning too! Things I learned from that:
1. Matthew's voice dropped and is comparable to mine now.
2. Sammy and Danny are HUGE!!!
3. Every one of you is HUGE!!! (That might have been because the camera was right next to the floor, but also, when I see a 5'8" person now, I think he's way tall. And my 13 year old brother is the same height as my companion...)
4. Andrew looks a lot older.
5. South Africa does actually look like a very pretty place. I will admit that now.

The whole skyping thing was fantastic though, I had a blast and it was so great to see everybody and talk to y'all. Between seeing everybody at home and James in South Africa and even talking to Elder Glazier on the phone and wishing him a merry Christmas too, it was like I never left!!! Except I was in Madagascar. Small sidenote.

One other cool story for this week, after writing in my journal on Saturday night, I was reading through it some, the entries before I left on my mission, and I read one from March 2nd 2014. It talked about how I got a plate of snickerdoodles at my door with a typed note that said, "Nate Rasmussen (that was my name back then), you are probably the nicest guy I know. You are a great example of a disciple of Christ in everything that you do. You are smart and funny and a great friend. Thanks for that. :)" Feel free to start the "nice guy" jokes now, but my entire journal entry was just super happy and I just felt so loved! It was probably around a half an hour or so of effort to make some cookies, but the part that made me the most happy was just this little note with 4 little sentences and it totally made my day and made me feel so great about myself! Then, when I read it again, almost a year later, it made my day again!!! That's a lot of influence that one person with a little bit of free time has! I still have no idea who sent that, and that's part of why I'm writing this, so that maybe they will read it and know that I'm super grateful for them. So what you should all be getting out of this, is send me cookies. Not really, they would go bad, but really, if we each take a little bit more time to build up the people around us, then we can do so much good and so much service and we will get so many blessings! Complimenting someone is not going to have bad effects on you, even though we might think so, and it could totally make someone's day! Even if they're having a WAY rough time! A little bit of kindness goes a long way. So, my little challenge for you is to work on spreading a little more goodness, and I'll work on that too.

Going somewhat along those lines, the Malagasy Morsel this week is manatsara, mah-nah-TSAH-rah. It literally means to make good. You can use it as improve but you can also use it as compliment or talk good about someone. I think that's pretty cool because when we spread kindness like that, we are really improving the world a little bit. Rehefa manatsara ny olona hafa isika, dia tsy manao afa-tsy ny fanatsarana izao tontolo izao.

Love you all!
Aza adino ny manoratra ahy matetika! Satria tiako ianareo!
Elder Rasmussen

PS sorry there are no pictures, some should be coming next week. And a new camera might be coming soon too, we'll see.

Week 23 - Antsirabe - Christmas is Coming!

So... This week has been pretty exciting. We got to enjoy the hectic transfers but we managed to make it through all right. Everybody is starting to settle down, and it's been nice to meet some new missionaries.

I'll start of at the end of the week and work backwards. On Saturday we had the Talent show. It was pretty great, there were lots of surprising talents and there were lots of not so surprising talents. Elder Razakamandimy and I were one of the last talents to go. Razaka was playing the guitar and singing a song he wrote while I played the drums on the keyboard. We looked like straight up G's in our snapbacks and RayBans. And proselyting clothes... We were looking pretty hood, and everybody loved us, especially when the bass dropped and I came in. But then there was Tahiry interrupting our stream of thugness. He decided to switch out his outfit right before we went on and wore a... jesters hat...? Then he was much to flamboyant as he sang the harmonies. Razaka had his nice manly guitar playing thing going on, and I had a nice Daft Punk head nod going on with the keyboard, so it just seemed a little out of place. But that's ok, we got called back for an encore! We were the only ones who got that, so in my mind, we won this unjudged talent show pretty squarely. What can I say, we're keeping it real out here.

Then, a neat thing that happened this week. I have been studying faith this last little while, and there is a nice entry in the Bible Dictionary about that. One of the things it says is that miracles always follow faith, and the elements can be controlled by faith. Anyway, skip to Thursday and it was raining very hard. That's not really new because it is the rainy season, after all. Anyway, we could barely hear anything because most of the roofs are made out of corrugated tin, so I decided to offer a small prayer while all of the cannons were going off above my head. I asked for the rain to stop, but once I was finished I felt a little ashamed of my prayer. It just felt like I had been to wishy washy and the prayer had kind of been a "do it if it by Thy will and in Thy time" kind of thing, and I felt like that was more just throwing a wish out there than actually exercising faith. So I prayed again and asked that the rain stop in the next five minutes and it stopped in two. He's real. Usually the rain doesn't stop that easy during a big rainy season storm like that, often the rain can last for several days. So that was pretty cool and it helped me change my perspective of what it actually means to exercise faith. You got to be an agent and actively seek something, like the Brother of Jared. Don't just throw a wish out there and hope for the best. That's not actually doing anything. But I know that faith works. Then, after that, the next day we had three appointments in a row that weren't there. So we turned to go grab a quick snack two of the times and then they walked right up just as we were turning away! Then for the last one we felt like heading over to someone else's house and we found them. We had really great lessons with each one and it was great to see the Lord's hand guiding the work.

Malagasy Morsel for the week: bandy. BAHN-dee. It means like a young adult man who is just a thug. Imagine a bunch of kids trying to look like rappers sitting on the side of the road calling out crap to the missionaries as they walk by. That's a bandy. Example: Elder Razakamandimby and I looked totally bandy in the talent show. Do something with that word.

Anyway, HAVE THE MERRIEST CHRISTMAS EVERR!!! And a happy new year too.

Week 22 - Antsirabe - Staying Put

Alright, so this week starts off on last Monday. When we played basketball and I went and picked up my two pairs of tailored pants. Then we got some food too. That's a pretty important part...

Then on Thursday we were teaching some less actives who have recently been reactivated and she has been trying to introduce her friend to the gospel and brought him to our lesson. We were all excited, it's nice when members do missionary work. Then, it turns out he just wanted to Bible bash. Which was all great, because we managed to teach her some, answer some of his questions and then at the very end, gave him some scriptures to look up later and come back ready to talk about the spirit world and the resurrection next time. He even wanted to bring a friend to help him understand! Or in other words, he found our answers too satisfying and sensible, so he needs to bring his preacher to help out. But that's all good! That's just another person who gets to learn a little and feel the spirit and choose what to do from there! Surprisingly enough, that experience really helped our less active family come to church! I think the real reason is that the weight of our message was just so impressive. Literally. We came in and sat down on the two beds and 1 chair--that's all there is--and then about ten minutes in, the bed just collapsed! It had nothing to do with the big white guy who was sitting on it... I think there was a small, extremely focused earthquake or something. I felt so bad, but granted, it was me sitting with like three other people there, so I can't take all the blame. But there you have it. I'm fat. I am way fat. I am furniture-breaking fat!

Then, we moved again. We bought a new house that is pretty nice, the only problem I have with it is that there are some low hanging lights and some pretty painful doorways! We didn't really move in much and settle in because we weren't sure what was going to happen in transfers, but here's the news.... I'm staying!!! I'm super pumped about it! Elder Razakamandimby is staying with me, and the other Ambohimena elders are staying too! Which is great because our branch could use a little extra help and attention. It's started turning around some, but it still has a long ways to go before it will be able to totally stand on its own. It reminds me of the early church a bunch! People are still just trying to figure out how the church runs and how they fit in to that. Lucky us though, the Doctrine and Covenants was written when the early church was going through some growing pains, so it applies really well! Imagine that! The rest of the zone is changing though, Elder Covey is heading down to Fianarantsoa to mom Elder Glazier, who just finished being trained. That will be fun for both of them! Then we are getting both Elder Christiansen and Elder Fox, who were the APs when I got here, and they are super awesome, balling missionaries!

So these transfers were pretty good! I'm pretty satisfied, and I'm way excited to stay here for Christmas and spend that here! Skype you later!

Tiako ianareo tsirairay avy!
Elder Rasmussen

PS whoops! Forgot my Malagasy Morsel! Fahafantarana means knowledge or knowing. Faha-fahn-TAR-ah-nah. You use this a lot when you ask quesstions, for example: araka ny fahafantaranao, iza moa Andriamanitra? or according to your knowledge, who is God?
So, yeah, that's it for today. Have a great week before CHRISTMAS!!!!

Week 21 - Antsirabe - Last Week Here?

So I'll start out with a little game of two truths and a lie. This week I flipped over my handlebars on my bike. This week I crapped my pants. This week I broke one of my super long pinky fingernails. You all get to decide what's actually happening over here.

In other news, this is probably my last week in Antsirabe. I'm pretty broke up about that, but I'm excited to get transfer news this Sunday! This transfer is only five weeks because they didn't want to be doing transfers over Christmas. So I will probably be skyping home for Christmas in a new area, with a new companion. It's a bummer I don't get to spend my Christmas here with all of these members I love so much. I am, however, pretty excited to go to a new area and meet some new people. It's not 100 percent certain that I'm gonna be bouncing, but Elder Razakamandimby will have only been here for five weeks and I'll have been here for 17.

We have already moved though. Our house was having some problems with the power... we apparently used over 1,000,000 ariary worth of power and hadn't payed for three months. The guy who turned off our power stuck to that story even when we showed him our receipt from last month. So we lost power. We're guessing the landlord has been stealing power, because we haven't been using our washer, dryer, or our hot water heater for two weeks, so it's not like we've been using anything but an occaional light. So then we moved. Elder Rice and Elder Morse headed over to the Antsirabe house, my last house, and then Elder Razakamandimy and I went to the Mahazoarivo house, my first house. So right now I'm living with Elder Covey again, and then Elder Stokes, Morley, and Kelsch. It's pretty packed. We are sleeping in the main room and we have our stuff in there too, so there's enough room for the table and that's about it.

We went on splits with our wise and all powerful AP's this week. That was pretty fun. Other than that it's just been work as usual this week. We've been having great member help this week! We organized them a little bit, and now we are scheduled to have at least 1 man helping us each day. I want to work it up to where we have one day of member splits each week, but we'll see what we can do this week.

This week's Malagasy Morsel is mitsiriritra, I'll let you all guess on the pronounciation of that one. It means to covet, so we frequently use that when teaching about the commandments. Plus it's just fun to use right after I blow past Elder Razakamandimby and dunk on him. "Aza mitsiriritra ialahy." Don't covet man.

Favorite hymns? My favorite Christmas hymns would probably be the same as yours (Silent Night and Angels We Have Heard on High). My favorite just Christmas song would probably be "Let it Snow" We've started singing some Christmas hymns in church, but there's barely any that have been translated into Malagasy. Other than that, I hear an occaisional Christmas song being played every once in a while, but it really doesn't feel like Christmas at all still.

I know how you feel with the whole "it doesn't feel like Christmas" thing. I'm sleeping with just a thin sheet so I can keep the mosquitos off and not get too hot.

About the baptism, they're fine with it (the less-than clean water) because to them it is clean water. That's the water that comes out of the pumps and the taps, but most people wash from well water, which is even worse because it just fills up with runoff when it rains and the runoff is nasty. We do have filters on our water, but it comes out of the filter much slower than the regular water.

I'm glad it sounds like you all are getting around and doing stuff together, it sounds like lots of fun!
I got two packages on Thursday, one had some snacks and 4 wrapped presents and the mission journal, and the other had the ensign and an advent calender that had melted and all the chocolate leaked out, and then a little letter from Sam.

Yeah, life's pretty much going good here. Just doing work and helping people to change.
Love you all!
Aza kamo!

Week 20 - Antsirabe - Thanksgiving

So I had my first baptism where I actually baptized some one. To quote Nacho, "Baptized!!" It was great! The water was cold and green and full of bugs and smelled like Utah Lake in August and that is the water that comes out of our taps... It was fantastic! Our program has finally started getting to the baptism stage, when we whitewashed it took a while to get people going, but the harvest is finally starting to whiten and it is wonderful!

So Thanksgiving happened, it's this really big holiday here in Madagascar where no one does anything different except for a bunch of white Americans and a random Canadian and some Malagasies that got dragged into it. It started at 7 in the morning where we went and had a zone activity and played football, the american kind, for a while. I believe that was our district meeting too.

After that we went home and studied some, got ready, and went to have a delicious Thanksgiving meal at the Tolmans' house, the scrawney Malagasy turkeys weren't good enough for them, so they made chicken cordon bleu instead. But we had all of our stuffing and potatoes and fruit salad and pie. Then we went and worked. Then, at around 8 we went to a restaraunt called Sam's and ate another thanksgiving meal, this time with real turkey. It was fantastic and almost as good as Sister Tolman's cooking! Then we went home and went to sleep.

But did we stop partying there? No. We just waited until Saturday after the baptism when we went to our now former investigator's house and had a Malagasy party. We had some Macaroni stuff for an appetizer and and then we had rice and loaka. The Malagasy way on this is you have to eat until all the rice is gone and there was soooo much. Then, throughout the meal we had some natural pinapple juice they made and put into water bottles, I think you can see them in the picture. Anyway, those destroyed my entire system yesterday, but they were pretty good on Saturday. Then we finished off the meal with some ranon'ampango or burnt rice water. Then they pulled all of the chairs and tables out and filled the room with subwoofers and an army of other speakers and then we had a dance. It was awesome. I still think most Malagasy music sounds like the Mexican radio station mixed with bluegrass and occaisionally dubstep, but Malagasy dancing is one of the most entertaining things I've seen. You know Napolean Dynamite's dance where he starts out just stepping on one foot then the other? It's like that but usually they don't get too far past the first part. It just reminded me a lot of a junior high dance filled with white people with white people, so in other words, I've found my place! I can do that!!

So other than making plans to return to Madagascar after my mission and become rich as a professional dancer, life has pretty much gone on as usual for us out here in the Indian Ocean.
This week's work is midoladola, mee-doo-lah-DOO-lah, which means to waddle. Why, you may ask, would a missionary need to know this word? I'm honestly not sure, but I'm super happy I asked what it was during English class! And since this week has been a week of bounty and the Christmas season has begun, I will give a second Morsel of Malagasy for you all (I think that's what I'll call this from now on), and that Morsel is, "kay ilay ity!" It is pronounced kie-lay-tee if you say it fast, and its English equivalent is, "the heck is this?!" So there you have it. Do something good with your increased knowledge and fahaizana.

Our branch supposedly has around 300 members. Ususally church attendance is around 90-120, but this last week it was 139! But that was the primary program, and I think people from the other wards skipped sunday school to come to that...

This week's spiritual though comes at you from John, he said, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son..." Sure you've all heard this before, but it's the fundamentals that are the most important, and as we get into the Christmas season don't forget that you mean something special to your Father and your older brother in Heaven, and they will do all they can to help you if you will accept their help.

I love you all!
Stay gold ponyboy.
Mifalia daholo!

Week 19 - Antisrabe - First Basketball Injury

So this week has been exciting. We had district conference, which was pretty good, and then we did missionary work stuff. It's been fun! Fun side note: Elder Branch, James's companion, traveled with us from Provo to London and then split and went to Capetown instead of JBurg with us. Small world right?

The word of this week is inspired by my basketball game last Monday. Marary- mah-RAH-ree and it means sick or injured. Now to the basketball... We played with all of the missionaries here and it was a party. Before half of them got here we were playing a small game and I went up and when I came down, I landed on the side of my foot and dropped like a pile of bricks. It is still swollen by the way. So then I walked it off over to my water, the other missionaries showed up, I walked it off back to the court, and then kicked all of their butts. Not to be cocky or anything... Each team had one sub, and when someone scored they got subbed out, and I got a lot of rest... Haha it was a ton of fun, and we have some good basketball players here!

Then last night we had a barbecue at my house with our whole zone. It was so much fun and the food was way good! We have a Malagasy style fireplace thing so we just barbecued over kitay- kee-tie- which is just like dry firewood. It was way fun!

Living at our house has been lots of fun, we have a really good time! Elder Rice painted me a precious picture with some watercolors he found in one of the rooms. I'm keeping it forever.

 

 Oh, I also finally got pictures of my suit. Enjoy. I am probably going back to the tailor this week to get some new pants.

This work has been going well this week. We struggled occasionally  getting male member help, because the are all working or at school. We don't have any problem getting female help though... They are always super excited to... help people become converted...? We did have some great lessons this week, I really love working with Elder Razakamandimby. We've been working on getting the members to actually help more with the teaching because they usually just sit there and then at the end they maybe share a little thought or testimony. It's been coming along really well though!

Mbola marina ity filazantsara ity! Aza kivy ary tohizo amin'ny asan'ny Tompo!
This gospel is still true! Don't get down and keep up the work of the Lord!
Elder Rasmussen

Week 18 - Antsirabe - Baptism by Ice

Manahoana daholo! (not to be confused with manahoana dahalo... very different)

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!

Week 17 - Antsirabe - Joe Handsome

So we got transfer news last night. I will write that at the end and you HAVE TO READ EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN FIRST!

First big event is we had our first baptisms on Saturday! We had to start everyone from scratch when we arrived because we whitewashed. When I say we had our first baptisms on Saturday, I really mean we had our first baptisms scheduled for Saturday. Until Jirema (the power and water company) cut off all of the water and the lake was too far away... and since you can't really have a baptism by water if there is no water, we did NOT have baptisms this week. Which is a bummer because that means Elder Cartmill and I had no baptisms together. (Spoiler. Now you know one of us is leaving, but since we both whitewashed together it could go either way because he wasn't here before me...) That's alright though, because we have about 15 set up right now, and they're all coming along well. So that was a bummer for sure.

I still do not have my suit back because I was being pretty picky with the tailor and it wasn't quite perfect, so I'm getting it today, it's going to look legit.

(in the next email...)

Sorry. The computer decided it was time to send the email before I was ready.

Let's see, other than the water being cut, the power keeps getting cut too. Not that that's a big deal, because if we try to make toast while the dryer is going the power dies... However, it's been especially bad the past few weeks and we have our candles set up all the time because it's only a matter of time before the power goes out, so James... one upped!

This week Elder Cartmill and I got Malagasy names from an investigator, this will be the Malagasy for the week. He was kely sauce. Kely means little and sauce means sauce... So when small sauce Cartmill complained about his name and asked why that was his name, this Malagasy with significantly smaller muscles told him it was because he wasn't bokana, or muscular... I then showed him how Elder Cartmill's arms are significantly larger, but he wouldn't accept it. I didn't complain much about my nickname because it is Rakoto Bogosy, Rakoto is just a way common name, and bogosy means handsome... I think it definitely fits.

Last week when we were going around we were stopped by a tipsy woman who let us know that she had been having a really hard time at home and had left to go drink and then kill herself. Then she felt that that would be dumb and she decided she needed Jesus in her life. So she prayed and then right then she saw us. That was a really cool experience, we should start teaching her for real this week.

Then when Elder Cartmill and I were walking by a garbage pile (they're everywhere), we saw a kid pull down his pants and do his business in the ditch (really pretty common) and then when he was done he just wiped himself with some garbage he grabbed off of the ground. That's the life! You don't even need to do any work to find toilet paper!

It has rained a bunch since last Monday. It's pretty geat! My jacket works really well! I still get soaked underneath it, but that's because of sweat. It's still pretty dang warm when it rains, so bundling up to keep dry doesn't really work...

Ok, transfer news now.
No changes to Antsirabe other than the sisters who work in the Ambohimena branch with us leaving and Elder Morse and Elder Rice coming down. Elder Rice is way cool and Elder Morse was in my group. We are moving in to the sisters' old house so it will be the Ambohimena house. It should be a party! The Elder Cartmill is going to Mahajanga! That's a 2 man area an airplane ride away from everyone else, so he's heading up to Tana on Tuesday and then he's going to fly out! Not every elder gets to go to a big 3 (Mahajanga, Toliary, and Fort Dauphin) and he's way psyched for that! My new companion is Elder Razakamandimby! He's a native Malagasy and I'm super pumped! Everyone I've talked to loves him, so it's going to be a party!

This is a great part member family. The man is the one who gave us our new names, the little girl's name is Diary and at first she hated us. Now she loves us.

 This is our best progressing family right now. They're all ballers. Baptism is in December. I love 'em.

This is the champion family of all champions. In their family they have the elders quorum president, young mens president, relief society second counselor, 3 branch missionaries, young single adults leader, district young single adults coordinator, family history expert for our branch, and branch clerk...

The church is still true, and when you trust in God first, everything else works out.

Mozotoa daholo!

Week 16 - Antsirabe - Here Comes the Rain

So I'll just start this one out with the word of the week. Let's be real, that's the most exciting part anyway. Anyway, mikitika, mee-KEE-tee-kah, means to tickle. Then, if you double the root it turns into mikitikitika, mee-kee-tee-KEE-tee-kah, which means to mess around with, or tinker while having absolutely no idea what the heck you're doing, as in, "I don't actually know how to fix the car, but if I just open the hood and tighten some stuff and put some more oil in, then it should work..." It's also just fun to say, so have at it!

Last Monday we all went to Lake Tritriva, sorry, LAC Tritriva... (that French stuff gets everywhere!). Anyway, it was a nice long bumpy ride, but then it was super pretty! It's up in the mountains and you get a beautiful view of most of Antsirabe from up there. It's mostly a tourist attraction, so when we got there all of us white folk had to pay the vazaha price while Elder Andriamanganoro, the only Malagasy missionary in Antsirabe right now, got to pay the Malagasy price which was several times cheaper. And then we got hounded by people selling souvenirs. That was pretty funny because they all have jacked up prices because they're used to selling to French tourists. So they would run up and show us their carved rocks or bracelets and say, "Mora be!" Which means, "very cheap!" Then when asked how much their little polished rock was, they would reveal that it was more than the cost of my food for a day if I ate out for every meal. But the lake was super pretty, I took some pictures on other people's cameras, because I still haven't figured out what's wrong with mine. Most of that is probably due to the fact that usually I don't have time to mess around with it (mikitikitika, see how useful it is?).

Then, some exciting news about this week is that the rain has started for real! The even more exciting news is that I left my raincoat back at the other house when I moved, and I didn't get a chance to get that until three days after it started raining! It's a good thing my bag is waterproof... The rain is a blast though! It just comes and comes. Whenever it starts looking like it's about to rain everybody rushes home. Then when it does come, people are crowded underneath any canopy or overhang they can get under! You'd think that people would be used to rain in a place with a nice monsoon season every year, but they're not. It's super funny. The rainy season hasn't started for real yet though, so far it's kind of clear to mostly clear in the mornings, then by about 2 the sky gets dark and cloudy, and then it rains from around 2:30ish to around 7, and then it's just drizzles the rest of the evening. Then repeat the next day! The coolest parts are that the clouds are always a lot lower than back home, so they're super huge and you can see them in detail really well! I'll have to send some pictures. And then the rain also fills up all of the sewage ditches, so you have to be careful which puddles you walk through, but that's just part of the fun! Final note, water proof shoes aren't really that waterproof... If it's not raining and you're just walking through water, they work great. But when it is raining, the water is just running down your legs into your shoes anyway, so that's that. Actually, they do a really good job of keeping the water in once it's there, so I guess they are pretty waterproof...

Let's see... notable things this week would include a split with my district leader, Elder Bowler. He is the second counselor in the Branch Presidency in the Manandona Branch, just South of Antsirabe. He's super funny and way good at Malagasy so it was way fun! However, we only taught two times and half of Preach My Gospel class before we had to go home because he was having some stomache problems... He was just laying on the floor while I taught PMG class... That was a bummer... Pun intended...

Then yesterday I learned how to make mofo sira which means salt bread. It should probably be called mofo siramamy, or sugar bread, because the recipie uses 1/4 kg of sugar, but only a spoonful of salt... Oh, it's also makes enough to feed a small neighborhood... They make it in a muffin tin over a fire, and it's essentially just muffin tops, it's pretty good though.

This week we had lunch with all of the missionaries at the couple missionaries' house. Elder and Sister Tolman, who are actually from American Fork too!, made us some delicious chili and cornbread. Of course, the chili was over rice because you have to have rice with every meal, every Malagasy knows that! Then we had ice cream and cake, which was some of the most delicious stuff I have eaten in since Sister Adams's food the first day in country. Then I also got to check their scale, which actually works. I'm still five pounds under my post MTC weight, but I lost 10 lbs when I got sick last month, so I've gained five back!

The final notable accomplishment is that I made bread again this week and it was heavenly. Thanks for the advice, Trent, because it turned out much better this time. I thought it was so good looking that I sent home a picture for all of you to enjoy to. Except you don't get to taste it... I made some rolls too, and it was nice to just eat bread and rolls for essentially half of the meals this week.

Something I've been working on a lot with those I teach is the principle of obedience. In John 7:17 it says if any man will DO Christ's will, THEN he will know if it is of God. That's true with just about anything, if you want to know if the Word of Wisdom is true, then follow it. If you want to know if the Book of Mormon is true, then read it. If you want to know if God exists, or even if you just aren't sure, then follow every single one of his commandments as best as you can and pray to him, then you'll know.  I know that seems backwards logic, but science has figured this concept out too. It's been proven that if you want to be happy, then live and act as if you already are, then the happiness will come. If you don't know if God exists, then live and act as if he does and the knowledge will come. That's an eternal concept, and I know it works. God exists and he is our literal father. The gospel has brought me so much joy not just because it's something I can believe in to improve myself, but because I know that it is true and that my Heavenly Father, who has all power and wisdom, is on my side and wants me to be happy. I know this stuff is true, and like I tell those I talk to here, if I didn't know it was true than I wouldn't have left home and my schooling to come work on the other side of the world.

Love you all!
Elder Rasmussen

Week 15 - Antsirabe - No Bible Bashing

First things first, conference was fantastic! We finally got it here in Madagascar, and Conference is a little bit confusing in Malagasy... It was super great though, and I got a lot of good stuff.

Second, I was wrong about my forecast of rain, which leads into this week's vocab for all of you: tsy mbola, tsim-boo-lah, or if you are a member of the vakanakaritra tribe like many here in Antsirabe, you say tsahm-boo-lah. There, you got a little bit of a dialect too. (Not really, merina or official Malagasy, and vakanakaratra are essentially the same, it's just like the difference between american english and texan english). Any way tsy mbola means not yet or still not. For example you can ask, "Is it raining there?" and then I can say, "tsy mbola." Or you can ask if it's cold here, and then I can say, "Tsy mbola mangastiaka" or "tsa mbola mangitsy." In Merina and Vakanakaratra respectively. My favorite is when we are prepping people for their baptismal interviews and we ask them if they've killed anyone and they just say, "tsy mbola." Not yet. Good, keep it that way!

 Then we had a pretty sweet time yesterday night, we were teaching this family that runs a little restaurant that the missionaries always go to and have always gone to, so they've learned from a lot of sets of missionaries and never really progressed. Anyway, we were just sitting down and seeing how they were doing when a gendarme (police/soldier) comes in and sits down to listen. We prayed and started teaching the family and he starts imterrupting all the time. He is a hardcore Protestant who prays to the Bible and he was just talking himself in circles. We kept teaching as best we could and talked about Christ's appearance in the Americas and showed the picture in the front of the Book of Mormon of Christ among the Nephites, and the guy stops us and says, "That's not Jesus." What? Of course it's Jesus, look at him! He says, "No. That's not a picture of Jesus. Did they have cameras back then?" No. It's a painting of what someone thought he looks like. It's just a representation. "Ah, but the Bible says no man has seen Jesus." It says no man has seen God. And the JST says no man has seen God in his sins, but people who lived with Jesus did see him... Anyway, once we explained that it was just a representation and got back to teaching the family he kept interrupting. Then we just layed down our testimonies and said nothing could separate us from our knowledge. Elder Cartmill was on fire. With the Holy Ghost of course. Then we closed it off and he left. I was a little bummed by how it went, but we made sure not to argue with him and we didn't get into any Bible bashing with him. Then once he left the family freaked out and were all just so thrilled because the missionaries before had apparently gotten really confrontational and angry or just embarrassed and didn't know what to say when someone tried to argue with them. They were also happy because on the first lesson we laid out our purpose and told them that we would be working them towards baptism, that is one of our goals. Yay Preach My Gospel! It looks like it actually is right. Anyway, it was really cool after that and the Spirit was way strong, which was great because the guy was pretty confrontational and was doing a pretty good job of keeping away the Spirit at the beginning. The family was still freaking out right before we closed, so we asked them if they wanted to be able to feel this all the time, they said yes of course! So then we snagged them and got them to promise to read the BiM every day and come to Church each week and work towards baptism. It was great!

Pictures this week! Courtesy of Elder Cartmill's camera
Me and M., one of the biggest studs around. He's a boss.

This is one of the first families we taught. They are now active again. Mostly. The little kid with his eyes closed is super cool.

This is L.and V. and their family. They are the two girls on the right.

This is a guy named Solofo. He was one of my "investigators" in the MTC because my teacher taught him and roleplayed as him.

This is Elder Christiansen, when he was still AP, and I surrounded by kids who want our popcorn.

This is me in our room studying something.

Week 14 - Antsirabe - The Ebola and Potatoes

It's still been pretty dry here in Antsirabe. We haven't had any notable downpoor for a few weeks, but that should change soon. In fact, I think it's going to come down pretty hard later today, but we'll see. And by that I mean I will see and then I might tell you about it later. Interviews with President Adams happened! They were pretty quick, but Elder Bowler, Elder Andriamanganoro, and I got pretty spiffed up for them. We had a shoe shining party and Sister Adams told us we had the best looking shoes she's seen the whole time she's been here! The sad part is that that was actually a big deal for us... Anyway, the pre-coup president returned and was promptly arrested by the current president, so there have been riots and bombs going off in Tana. So we all got our 72 hour kits going, but nothing happened in Antsirabe, so don't worry.

This week has gone pretty well. We had a few good investigators at church and some less active families that we've really been working with. We are starting to get some good referrals from members who bring their friends to church, which is great!

L. and V., two investigators in a part member family, are our start investigators right now. We gave them the Word of Wisdom pamphlet and told them to read it, came back and they knew all of it. So we reviewed it a little bit, then taught about obedience and scripture study, then we gave them a law of chastity pamphlet and told them to read it, and we came back and they essentially taught the lesson. So we taught about other stuff too again. Their baptismal date is in three weeks, but they could be baptized at the end of this week. They are way prepared.

One thing that I've been hearing a lot about from Malagasies is the Ebola. They tell me thaqt 2 people have it in America and everyone is freaking out. One Malagasy told me that the Ebola is very bad for Americans because they have huge potato processing plants and "once" Ebola gets in, everyone will get sick from their potatoes that they eat every meal (most Malagasies think that since Americans don't eat rice every single meal, there must be something else we eat just as much). She then went on to tell me that Malagasies wouldn't get the Ebola because they have better food, and the Malagsy people are strong. So there you have it. No need to worry about Ebola here, my rice and cold meat will keep me safe! (Also, it's always "the Ebola" so I capitalized it to show what a big deal it is here.)
Right after I learned all of that, we had a teaching appointment with J. and L.  J. has been learning for a while and two weeks ago he brought his buddy, L., to church with him. They are both super dilligent and they read their scriptures, oh I don't know, religiously? See what I did there? Anyway, yesterday we taught them and a ton of kids came to listen too. There were maybe around 15 of them. So we just reviewed the plan of salvation with all of them, and J. and L. essentially just taught the entire lesson to the kids while we watched. It was fantastic! J. has started to progress a ton since he started learning with his friend. Good support is crazy important!

I actually included a picture this week. I finally got my camera to work for long enough to take a few pictures, and now it is in a coma again. The first one is our mansion. Six missionaries live there and it's not as spacious as it may look. If you look closely on the right of the picture, yes, that is razor wire on the wall. I'll send some pictures of the inside next week if I can resuscitate my camera again.

The second picture is our church building right now. We still don't have an actual church here, so this is the one for now. Yes, that is my trainer, Elder Cartmill, caught at a bad time, in the bottom corner.

The last picture is our Preach My Gospel class! These are some of our branch missionaries who are getting ready to go on missions. E., the one flashing gang signs with me, is our young men's president, ward clerk, ward family history consultant, seminary teacher, branch missionary, and I think he is the young single adults leader. Then S., the one with the Book of Mormon is the chorister, branch missionary, and seminary teacher too. Then the other people live in the sister missionaries' side of the branch.

This week's word of the week was almost mpilofo, which means a try-hard, but it was more difficult to think of a spiritual thought to go along with that. So we'll go with a pretty neat word instead, mivadika, mi-VAH-deek(ah). It means to turn from a higher path to a lower one, or turning away from something that you know is right. Pretty cool concept, huh? This word becomes applicable when we are trying to get members to do the things they know they should, but just stopped doing because it's easier to just... not... We've been focusing on teaching about the blessings that they will receive when they start living the gospel again, and it's been working for some, but some just have hard hearts and don't want to change yet, which is tough to work with. However, it's God's work, and everything will work out. Work hard and do your best!
Mazotoa!
Elder Rasmussen

Week 13 - Antsirabe - Gonna Get a Suit

This week has not been as exciting as some of my other weeks, but it has still been good. I learned a lot of good words this week, from femmy to the milky way to the different classes of rain... So that's pretty cool. Training is about 3/4 of the way done, which is definitely weird. And then we have interviews with president this week, so that will be pretty neat too.

So, one thing that I'm not sure that I've said about Madagascar yet is that they get lots of random crap from China. I think of it as like the factory outlet for China because we get all kinds of clothes here that have stuff spelled wrong or maybe there were just too many or things like that. I tell you this because a few days ago I saw a Malagasy wearing a hoodie from the HHS French club from 09-10. On the front it had a logo and the words, "We don't surrender..." Then on the back it said, "We're just too cool to fight!" I thought it was hilarious because number one, it's making fun of the French, number two, this Malagasy had no idea what the heck his shirt said, and number three, it was a french club making fun of itself. And it was here in Madagascar.

Speaking of clothes, I have found a new outlet of my personal funds... There is a very good tailor here in Antsirabe and I'm going to get a tailored suit for about $40... I figure if I'm going to get a suit it needs to be at the beginning of my mission when I still haven't lost all of my weight, that way it will fit after my mission too. So today I'm probably going to go buy some fabric in Tsenasabotsy, the big market. And then in a couple weeks I will have my suit. I'm pretty pumped!

Other than that, not much new has happened this week. I taught a bunch of lessons and we've got people getting ready for baptism next month. I taught district meeting and that went pretty well. The work's just chugging along.

This week's word is sambatra, SAHM-butch. It means blessed. We've been teaching a lot of the commandments this last week and we have been teaching A LOT about the blessings of living the gospel. If we just trust in God and do what he would have us do, then he will provide for all our needs and our righteous desires too. It's a great deal! Giving up some earthly pleasures for our short time here on earth in exchange for peace during our short time here on earth, and eternal glory and exaltation after! The church is true.

Mandra-pihoana!

Week 12 - Antsirabe - Lake Stinky Water

So I'm just going to start with the transfer news and get that over with. Elder Glazier went to Fianarantsoa, about 6 hours south of Antsirabe. So, that's a bummer. However, it is in my zone, so I might see him in a couple weeks. He did come through Antsirabe, but they got in super late and left early in the morning and the zone leaders stole the Andranamanelatra Elders' car, so we couldn't go visit them real quick. However, we also moved houses because we got new elders who are whitewash training in the area where our old house was, so we moved to the house that's actually closer to our area. It's also much bigger and much nicer and it has two and a half bathrooms for seven elders instead of 1 bathroom for four elders. So that is very nice! Also, the new elders are all really sweet, so it's lots of fun to get together with them all.

Then the next big item on the agenda is rain. It first rained like 2 weeks ago, and it's rained a couple times since then, and it is fantastic! When we are on a flat stretch of road on our bikes, our bikes have wakes like little boats as we go, then when we are going down a hill, there is a monster river going down each hill! If you just go straight down, you're good, but if you try to turn sideways, then the water catches your tires and you can fall over pretty easily. Then, at the bottom of the hills is a big lake. When we bike through there, because real men don't stop for anything, our feet are submurged for half of the pedal, so it looks like we are rowing a boat or something becuse the foot dips in, then pulls back, and then pops out again just like an oar. Of course, this particular lake that forms at the bottom of two hills we go on all the time is next to an actual lake, so the drainage is pretty good, but there is still a LOT of water. (fun side note--the name of the lake is literally Lake Stinky Water, Malagasy names are sweet. And very honest...)

So yeah, the rain is great. We get super soaked, especially our legs. I haven't gotten caught in the rain without my jacket yet, so I've still been doing good other than my legs and head. My bag has been doing great. It's a waterproof champ and I love it.

Fun story: **DISCLAIMER** you are not allowed to get freaked out about this, Mom. So on Saturday we were mandeha tongotra, or going on foot because our bikes are fosa orina and they break frequently. Anyway, this guy held his hand out to us as we were finishing the descent next to Lake Stinky-Water so we of course shook his hand and kept going. We expected him to try to beg a little more and then we would just say no and keep going. Instead, he followed us and walked right behind us. We stopped halfway up the hill to "go over our plan for the day" and lo and behold, he stopped too! Then we asked him what he wanted and he asked us for the time, then we gave it to him and left. And he followed us on the other side of the road now. We stopped again to admire some fabric, and he asked some other guy for the time, then waited awkwardly staring at us. This guy was obviously no pro. So then we went up the rest of the hill watching him tag along at a distance. Then we went into Tsena Asabotsy, the huge market, and lost him pretty easily in all of the alleys around the bike booths. Then we went on with our day. Pretty cool, right?

Then, yesterday was fast sunday for us because we don't get conference until the end of this month. Church was great, we got four investigators at church that we've been working with, and they loved it. We also got a crapload of inactives there. For those of you not familiar with that unit of measurement it is exactly 20ish people. I was pretty stoked to see them all.

For this week's word of the week I was pondering about which of the Malagasy swear words that I learned from some of my Malagasy buddies I should teach y'all, but then I decided that I should probably not do that. Because bad words shouldn't be used... especially not shouted at the vazaha missionaries walking by... not that that kind of stuff happens though. I know a few of their favorite sayings now, so now I can walk over and inform them that they really shouldn't be using those kinds of words. What would their mothers think?! Then they realize I can actually speak Malagasy and understand them and they get all embarassed. It's great. Especially because the other people will get on them for swearing in the presence of "holy men" I like feeling like everybody's got my back.

Anyway, the real word of the week is antenaina- ahn-ten-NAH-ee-nah. It means to be expected. I learned it as I was reading about the responsibility of parents to teach their children in Gospel Principles. Too many people expect other people to teach their children about the gospel, but ultimately that's the purpose of the family. The most important work we do is within the walls of our own homes. And our Father expects us to teach our children correct principles. I'm pretty glad that I have parents who understand that and I learned about the gospel from an early age in my own home.

Also, don't be ashamed of your beliefs. Lots of people are scared to let other people see what they believe and that it's different from most people. For example most people won't let us come teach if they have other family over, but they should be the people that you want to hear the gospel the most. Then lots of people in part member families don't understand how powerful testimony and simple discussions can be in converting the rest of their family. The Lord has promised that if we open our mouths it will be filled. If you're trying to do his work, he will help you every time.
Anyway, that's all for this week, you all better love that general conference. Don't take it for granted!

Mazotoa daholo!
Elder Rasmussen

PS sorry about the lack of pictures. I'm getting new batteries for my camera this week.