Lemurs and spiders and dirt! Oh my!

Manahoana ny fianakaviako! (hello my family)

 

So, for general news and answers to all the questions that have been keeping you up at night (of that I am certain):

So yeah, the first hundred or so missionaries to ever expand the MTC made the long and treacherous journey to Wyview [three blocks away] on Tues. Our residence are in Wyview, which are super nice rooms that way top the normal MTC, and our classrooms are in Raintree...They just kind of threw a bunch of chairs into bedrooms and living rooms and stuff for us to study in, which is a little bit ghetto (everything is still being built/finished and all) but we love it.

(FYI, in the picture, Christiansen is the one to my left, or, as you look at the picture, right of me.)

Now for a brief funny story. We were in one of our lessons with an "investigator" (Bro. Sender, one of our teachers) teaching part of the first discussion. And so I meant to tell him that God loved the people in the ancient world so He gave them prophets and the Bible, and that He still loves us today so He gives us a prophet and the BOM [Book of Mormon]. Anyway, the word for ancient is "fahiny", which I meant to use... and I definitely thought I said it... but instead I said the word "vahiny", which means foreigner. So basically I taught our investigator that God loved foreigners first, but now He loves all of us. Christiansen and I had a good laugh about that one when Bro. Sender told me that. The Malagasy goes well, we have been teaching without notes for a while now, and are working on small-talk and questions.

Now, responding to emails:

Mom, in answer to [some of] your questions:

- We don't get to exercise as much as I like, but a slight shift in our schedule now gives us gym time five times a week, so that will be great. (about 50 min each) We have been playing soccer

-Food here is decent, better than what we will eat in Madagascar I'm sure!

- And yes, we have heard many crazy stories about Madagascar. I will distill them down into a brief summary for you. The people are humble and awesome, the work is hard, and the place is dirty. There are huge spiders everywhere, rat lemurs will be jumping up and down on your mosquito net (true story), and even I will most likely lose weight there. And also, something I think is pretty cool, they have been expanding the areas into more of the bush areas of Madagascar, so my teachers think that we will be doing some of that. Sweeeeet.

Dad:

I'm glad to know I will have so much in common with lemurs! They are my people after all....

Jameson:

There is no better boss than the one I am working for right now, that is certain! Everyday I look at my name badge and am excited/humbled/determined about the responsibility given me.

 

Well, that is about it. Love y'all, hope it goes well, and here is the quote of the week for ya (from namako (my companion) actually. I don't know wherer he got it):

 

"Humility is not to think less of yourself, but to think of yourself less" -Elder Christiansen.

 

Humilty is a huge part of this work, something that I work on everyday. When me and my companion have entered our lessons, both in English and Malagasy, with humility, open to accept direction from the the Spirit, then we can actually teach and help them feel the Spirit. It is amazing.

Love,

Elder Fox