Elder Chance Fox: T-Bao All Day Every Dayyyy‏

Elder Fox reporting after first week of duty serving as T. Branch specialist elder. It is very weird not to teach in A. Branch anymore, lets just say that.

I, however, have tons to write and vrey little time, so I'm about to go crazy typing everthing that comes to my mind, so hopefuully the majority of it comes out in english.

First thing, I forgot to tell you about the coolest thing in the entire world that happened last Monday, right before I cybered you. It slipped my mind for some reason. But me and Mitchell that morning went and watched a mpanefy (metal worker) make a ring out of volafotsy (silver). There we were, sitting there on the ground with him as he slowly hammered this piece of silver into a ring while speaking to us in basically straight Antandroy because he is so bad at official Malagasy, while a monkey sat on his shoulder. Yes, that is right, this bracelet maker dude has a lemur. And it was sitting on his shoulder while he was hammering silver and engraving it with the awesomest of awesome squiggles and lines. So cool. We got to play around with the lemur, as it was jumping all over the place and on us like a little puppy, doing flips and stunts. It is not a scene you see everyday, lets just say that. Sometimes the lemur would take off leaping through the trees and on roofs and stufff, but would always come back to his owner. Mom, can we get one pleasssseeeee???

After monday we spent a lot of time saying goodbye to families that Mitchell loved, having soirees, eating tons of food, getting fat, and taking pictures. It is always hard for missionaries to leave their areas and say goodbye. For me I have the comforting thought that I may get to come back and see the people again; so that makes it easier for me personally, but there were certainly tears shed as Mitchell left. Plus people here aren't quite yet used to the way of the missionary, always coming and going and breaking hearts, so they get a little bit more attched here than we normally see in other places. Then, come Wednesday morning, he was gone, disappeared into the blue sky.

Add caption

However, he left on the same plane that the three new missionaries came on!!! (so I couldn't be too sad at such a glorious bday present) Elder Ry and Elder R work in A branch now, and me and Elder Hein in T. Branch. They are all great guys, me and Hein get along very well so far so there are no problems to be seen. He is a BYU soccer player from Texas, who served in Ambositra before coming down here.

We couldn't hop straight into the work though, because I had an entire area to explain to Elders Ry and R and show to them due to the fact that they are whitewashing an area that already has a full program of great investigators. So Wednesday we did a tour of their area with members, so that the members would be able to help them next time and know where all of the people are. We were able to work all of Thurs but on Fri they didn't have any help in the early aftrenoon, so we had to go over to their area again and explain and help with things before working in T branch. Needless to say, this week I am looking forward to lots of quality time to focus on our area, do hugeeeee amount of contacting, and build a program of investigators that can help this T branch out. Last Sunday they were struggling, and need lots of hard effort from the missionaries and branch council, and members at that, to keep from straight blowing up and dying:).

On Friday we had a very interesting time talking to a group of huge, bearded Pakistanis that came down here to Ft D to meet with some of their Muslim brethren, I assume in some sort of council or something. But they pulled us aside and started spitting this absolutely crazy language at us, which, as we come to find out later, was Urdu. We didn't understand, but one of them realzed we spoke English and ran and grabbed his friend who spoke it. We ended up talking to a group of about 15 of them for a little bit about what they were doing and we were doing. One pulled out this little jar and started rubbing perfum on us, which was a bit on the weird side.... actually, the way weird side. But no big deal, it was a cultural experience right?

Later that day we were walking home, Hein tripped while carring a glass bottle, the bottle smashed, and he gashed a monstrous hole in his wrist. It ended up being a huge, hectic ordeal of yelling at people to get a taxi, sprinting to the house to get stuff for him, and then having a neighbor take us to the hospital Jason Bourne style, just blazing through the streets super fast. Ridiculousness. He got all stitched up and is doing fine now, but it was a stressful night. Expensive too.