Week 32 - Ankorondrano - The Rains

So... exciting week, exciting week. Let's start off by taking a moment to appreciate the rain...


Ok, now we're done. Yes, it's rained a lot this last week, which is nice, it really is. See, the day after it rains, my shoes get really muddy walking through all of the mud and sludge, so then I need it to rain again to  clean my shoes off again. So this last week has been way nice! Other than the rain, the rest of the week was good too. It started on Monday when we went to a ridiculously expensive hotel called the Carlton.

The outside of the Carlton.  I think it looks sketchy.

My entree at the Carlton.  You can see the nearly empty thing of bread in the corner.  

That was the real meal!!!

It was Elder Hardy' year mark, so we splurged a little... or a lot. Anyway, it's supposedly a 5-star hotel and it was very very good. And it cost me $16!!! The crap is this! It was sooo goood, especially the ice cream. Down side was the food was very small... Good news was they had free refills on your bread basket, and then I bought some street food after we were done, so it was all good.

Then we got on the wrong bus and ended up stuck in traffic far from home for two hours. That was poopy. Upside to that is we got to talk to a very interesting man who was telling us why Malagasies don't like people from India. Then he was talking about how Malagasies don't discriminate. Literally he said, "Ny Malagasy tsy tia karana." (Malagasies don't like Indians) then two sentences later it was, "Tsy manavaka ny Malagasy." (Malagasies don't discriminate). Anyway, he was a delight. Then it was just work as usual until on Friday we were eatin lunch at a cheap, but very nice place that sells grilled chicken, when the guy at the table next to us bought us a drink. We got Sprite, of course, don't get too excited. Then we started talking to him and the owner, they're good friends, and we found out that if we bring sister missionaries next time, they'll give us a free cake. Unfortunately, none of the sister live close...

Then, as we left, we passed a fountain in the middle of one of the busiest roundabouts. What was in the fountain? Five 10-year olds taking baths. Nice one Madagascar. Nice one. Haha everyone else was just going on like nothing out of the ordinary was happening, which is probably how it is... haha...

Nice, clean natural looking river, no?

Then Sunday was fantastic because so many people came to church! I'm so proud of some of our investigators right now, especially Norbert!!! He is my favorite grandpa aged investigator by far! I love seeing how much he's growing!

A quick Malagasy Morsel for the week is Mazotoa. (technically mah-zo-TOO-ah, but it usually ends up sounding more like mahz-TOO)  I write this sometimes at the end of letters, so I figured I'd teach y'all what the heck I was saying. It's the active command form of the word Mozoto, which means dilligent. So it means, "Be dilligent!" It's a nice traditional Malagasy goodbye. So yeah, that's neat.

Mmm... Not quite...

That's about it for this week, I just want to let you all know that this gospel is still true. And we can always get better at something. That's not a bad thing that we're not perfect yet, it just means we get to be in the excitement of growing all the time! Love you all, and have a fantastic week!
Mozotoa e!

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!

Week 30 - Ankorondrano - Welcome to Ankorondrano!

(Answers to questions this week)

(What is the difference between Ambohimena and Atsirabe?)
So Ambohimena is an area inside of Antsirabe. So each city is made up of smaller areas and they each have a little fokon'tany or little like township with a town hall and then police that work in that area. But then the one for the city is over all of the little ones. I actually never worked in Ambohimena, but that was just the name of the Branch because lot's of members were from there. The technical name of my area was Ambohimena 1 or North. Then if you go to LDS.org and use the find the closest ward thing, then it goes to google maps and it will show you the ward boundaries and church buildings. So the official name of my ward now is the Antananarivo 1st ward, if you want to look it up.

An area close to where he is, from Google Maps

(It doesn't look there there are roads in the residential areas - just houses packed together.  How do you find your way?)
Yeah, there's not a ton of roads, just alleys in crazy mazes. It's pretty exciting.

(Why can we see Antsirabe listed on the map, but not Antananarivo until you zoom in more?  Is it bigger or more important?)
I have no idea why tana isn't out farther. Tana is waaaaay bigger. Antsirabe is kind of a little bit of a tourist place though. But not as much as a lot of the coast cities.

(How do you pronounce Ankorondrano?)
Alright, Ankorondrano is pronounced ahn-koo-roon-john-oo. And the r is rolled, not american. I will admit I still barely know my way around at all.

(Elder Coleman is taking your place in Atsirabe.  Do you have his old companion now that you are in his old area?)
I have two companions, Tavo and Hardy, but Elder Coleman's companion now is my old companion, so if you look up his blog you'll see my old area.

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!