No Town Like My Hometown

Hill we climb in Tana

Hello yet again mes amis,

     So it seems the global location of the island of Madagascar has changed, and we are now floating somewhere just above the arctic circle. Please send supplies immediately as all inhabitants are perishing quickly due to sub human temperatures, not enough clothing, and a shortage of lemur skins to make blankets. Thankfully, however, the lemurs have all adapted and evovled into artic lemurs, known for playfully throwing snowballs at innocent Mormon missionaries. but really, i'ts way too  cold....

     ...and therefore manara is a good word to know, which means cold in the southern dialects. I'm sure everyone in Ft D is using it alot, as the flashing freezing is taking its toll on the tropical paradise.

     ...and second of all, I will apologize for a horribly boring email last week (maybe thats what we get for sleeping all day, eating doritos, and never going out to work.... that was a joke) so I will try to at least pretend our lives were interesting this week.

    And I guess it is pretty funny how earlier in the week we had a meeting with our bishop and then followed a member around to find some less actives houses, found them, and then followed him to get a bus (because neither I nor Christiansen know the entire area all that well)... this member guy ended up walking us sooooo far into another missionary area even just to take a bus to go back into our area, which wasted like forever as we walked basically all the way to Diego (north Mada). By the time Christiansen realized where we were it was too late. We were both pretty ticked, but got over it and had a good laugh at how pointless our 720 mile trek was. I now feel the pain of all those pioneers... (okay it was like an hour, hour and a half, but still.)

The big center room of our apartment



Our Tana Apartment from the outside.





      We had two splits last week, on Tues and Thurs. On Tues I went to an area called A (which prays at that HUGE orange church in Tana you all probably have seen). It was a good time with a Malagasy named Elder R. It is somewhat funny, but mostly annoying and unnecessary, how nervous and un-normal people get on splits.


T's baptism

    AND GUESS WHERE I WENT ON THURSDAY. My old area in Tana BABY!!! ahh it was the best thing ever, definitely one of the best days of my mission. Especially as we pulled a surprise visit on E and suprised her  out of her mind. It was like being home again. I saw E, F etc, and Sr D, Fr H, and T, and G too. And G is baptized! (which I already knew from before, but is still super awesome) and is now a diligent member of the ward (he went around and helped us on Thurs) who is preparing for a mission! I am convinced he will come to Washington, although he wants to go to Australia... I guess we'll see about that one. But anyways, it was a good split. The area is still doing pretty well and that ward and Eveka R are killing it. they are doing the best out of any ward in Mada, besides A Branch in Ft D (but thats Ft D, so we dont count it).

Zone getting ready to go street boarding.

     Elder Christiansen and I have started a new game/competition to help us learn Malagasy that is pretty hilarious sometimes-- at the beginning of each day we each choose 4 words that we have to use throughout the day and  pick one that the other person has to use. And of course, it's a competition, so we have to keep score, and we try to steal each other's words throughout the day and use it before the other person does. It has led to some of the most hilarious and roundabout ways of explaining things in the entire world, but is actually effective in helping us learn believe it or not. Let's just say that I had never heard an example of falling on your chin and splitting it open likened to repentance before Christiansen threw that one in, hahah

Street boards...families can be together forever/temples.

     The work in M is going, not quite at the pace we want because we are changing alot of the program and going at the work with a much different approach than what was happening before, which was less than not effective. Lets just say that the ~43% activity rate we calculated on Fri might have something to do with it.

Dad:

     Right now in the mission there are... not nearly enough missionaries. Tons of areas have had to be closed. I want to say there are 70+ in Mada, plus about 18 in Reunion and Mauritious. we are expecting some big groups to be coming in this summer, keep fingers crossed.

       We get to go on lots of splits, we are shooting for 2 a week. We go on one with the APs tomorrow (which means I will probably get to work with ELder Jensen again woot !)

      Well, for all our sakes, I won't compare the work here to the work in Ft D. Let's just say that nobody deserves to go to Ft D, ever, it is too good.


SKYPE

   We are going to try to get on at 7am our time Monday morning, if the cyber is open, but if not it may end up being about 8am our time. I will leave it up to you to calculate what time that is for you because I dont know. And if it ends up being later than that then hang in there, because these Mada cybers can be quite unpredictable!

 

Spiritual thought--

Tsarovy (remember) that everyone can change, for the better and for the worse I guess. But the thing that brings the change for the better is the BiM. It is beyond awesome the effect it has had on those I teach. I can't do anything for them but ask them to read for themselves and answer their quesitons-- and when they do, with sincerity, they become the best of the best of members. All we need to do is look at F and G for an example of that. I didn't change them, other missionaries didn't change them, but the BiM completely destroyed their doubts and hesitations in the best way possible. Way cool huh? Way cool.

With massive amounts of fitiavana/amour/love
Elder Fox