We had 5 baptisms this last Saturday...

It's Pac! Easter here in Madagascar is ridiculous. Parties all day and all night. All the cybers and stores are closed because everybody is out pumping their fists, drinking taoka (alcohol) and yelling at the top of their lungs. I've seen a lot of drunk grandmas that want to fight anything they see, and I'm inadvertently learning a lot of swear words when passing by.

• First Baptism: This was an amazing experience. Some Elders said they built up their first baptism in their mind too much, and when it actually happened, it was a letdown. It was awesome for me because I didn't expect to get the chance to baptize anyone until later. However, these people became ready to be baptized really quick. They have been extremely mazoto. We had 5 baptisms this last Saturday, a family of 4 and the missionary girl N. Elder Hammer baptized N, the mother and the son, but the father and the daughter asked me to baptize them. I was so nervous before the baptism because I was worried I would mess up their names. The father's name was easy (Rakotomahefa H.), but the daughter's was (Rakotomahefakotondrasoa H.), way long. In the end, it all went great. This family is already founded upon Christ, and they love the Gospel. Their other son, Ismael, will be baptized in April.

• Confirmation: The Stake President of North Tana came to confirm 3 of our investigators. His name is President Pascal. I need to tell you his story sometime!

• Splits: An Elder named Elder Andriantinarisoa came to my area on Wednesday, and I think it was one of the most fun and Spirit-filled days I've had out here. He's a native Malagasy, but he's freak good at English. He served half his mission in London, England. Him and I spent the whole day laughing, learning each others' languages and teaching with unity (hopefully). He's a great Elder, and I hope I can be companions with him sometime. I emailed President Foote to ask him if that could happen someday. President Foote seems to like granting the wishes of the missionaries. He calls himself the "super round and spiritual version Sugar Plum Fairy."

• Glass-Filled Nutella: Someone used my Nutella while I was out of the house. When I came back, it was in a tupperware container. Confused, I spread some of the Nutella on toast, not thinking much of it, but then I took a bite. When I started chewing, I realized there were about a dozen pieces of glass in my mouth. Luckily, no blood was drawn, and I didn't bite down on any glass directly, but I lost a 250g of Nutella. I couldn't imagine a more sunken down feeling. Elder Knight dropped my Nutella that morning, and the containers in Madagascar are usually glass. So, glass sprayed everywhere. He tried to salvage most of it, but there was glass all throughout the Nutella. It was lost...

• Sacrament: I love taking the Sacrament here in Madagascar. All the Malagasies love Christ and are incredibly reverent during the Sacrament. Everyone bows their heads, and they talk about Jesus Christ in the most reverent way.

Whoa, I just ran out of time. Sorry, I didn't do very well managing my time on email today, heh! I'll try to write about the weird experiences I had this week in the next letter! It was a great week! The language is going well! I finally had a few lessons that felt concise and clearish. The Spirit really works!

Love you all!

Elder Soper

Overall, an awesome week!

Ahoana Fandehana?

                                                     Me and Albert with our traded ties

Rija is holding the camera

From a soiree we had recently

Overall, an awesome week! There's a couple tough experiences that happened this week. We have some investigators that are going to be baptized this Saturday, woot! 

-Rice Paddy Idiot: 

We were walking on the wooden plank walkway raised up above rice paddy about 3 feet. I was trying to fist-bump a kid behind me on the walkway, and I didn't realize there was a slight turn right in front of me. One of the worst feelings I've ever had was when I expected my foot to hit wood, but it swung down like a pendulum as my whole body awkwardly flopped into a dry part of the rice paddy below. I kind of caught myself, so my backpack avoided damage, but the right side of my body became nice and muddy. Luckily we only had one more appointment before it was time to go home. Oi, it was not a fun experience. Elder Hammer has a picture of the mud I got on my shirt and pants. I'll get him to send that picture to me sometime.

-Upcoming Baptisms:

I'm grateful for the work the Elders did in Ivandry before Elder Hammer and I showed up. This next Saturday, we have 4 baptisms. One for N., the extremely diligent girl that wants to serve a mission. Then, three for H's family, a man who used to be a translator for a French TV network here in Madagascar, but he got really sick, lost most of the function in his legs and now he can't work at all. But, he comes to church every week on his crutches. 

-Poverty Here in Madagascar:

This has been tough to see and experience. People are incredibly happy here, even though many of them have almost nothing, but they still want to feed their visitors. It's common to see many malnourished kids on the street, and men with bum legs crawling across the street. It's still pretty shocking, but the other missionaries seem pretty used to it. Elder Hammer and I work in a richer part of Antananarivo, so we don't see it nearly as often though.

-Rija:

A recent convert named Rija helped us for 4 days straight this week. He's about 18 years old, and right now, it's vacation for two weeks from school for his age group. He said he's been bored, so he said he wants to spend his time doing something actually worthwhile. What a baller! We have him teach 1 principle during each lesson, and he gets super nervous when he teaches. He has a super strong testimony and he can't wait to serve a mission. He wants to serve in America and learn English.

-Tough Experiences:

One of our strongest investigators dropped us (S.). He's from Diego, and the culture there is very superstitious of dark magic. He became really sick recently, a bad chest cold and fever. He became really paranoid and some of his friends from Diego convinced him is was because he was attending our church... Darn.  

-Trading Ties:

I traded one of my ties with our new DMP, Albert. He's a dope old guy, and he's the uncle of N. His laugh is super high, and him and I are becoming great friends.

The mission is going great right now! Even though I'm exhausted every day, and there are tough experiences here and there, I'm ignorant enough that they aren't too painful. I've learned I need to rely on the spirit a lot because it causes me to love to work hard each day. Thanks for your letters, and have a good week!

Love you guys,

Elder Soper

Salutations from Madagascar!

Salama E!

Salutations from Madagascar! How's eddybody doin'? I'm 👌, thanks for asking. I had a great week, less lukewarm than last week; I made some noticeable progress this week. The power went out while everybody was cybering yesterday, so President is giving us abaout 15 minutes today to finish up emailing, sorry! Welp, ndao isika handeha!

-Must Be a Ghost Writer for an Apostle: On Sunday, one of the members in our ward was giving a talk that seemed way too good to be true (according to Elder Hammer, I only understood bits and crumbs). I was playing piano again, and I had a vantage point where could see that the member was simply reading a conference talk that he printed out from LDS.org. Haha! At the end, he said, "I wrote that. I really hope all of you have learned something from this talk I wrote." He's kind of an odd guy, but a ton of members were amazed and gave him a ton of compliments. I couldn't stop laughing.

-No Longer Sick: I've been starting to have more solid digestive happenings again, if you know what I mean--phew. Surprisingly, I started feeling better when I started to eat more street food and at hotely's each day. Right now, I just have a small, residual cold that has overstayed its welcome way too long. My nose is super stuffy. During a soiree (dinner appointment), I laughed a litte too hard at one of our investigators rants about how he drove his scooter into the back of a truck. When I laughed, a ton of stuff launched out of nose, and the investigator started dying laughing. He gave me a couple tissues to clean up, but it was so much, holy cow.

-Gotta Climb Out of the Comfy Box: I'm learning how it important it is to not be comfortable with where I'm at with the language and teaching skills. There's Elders that end their mission with a 4/10 skill level with the language, but it's possible to end at a 10. I'm hoping to avoid that complacency that will come when I become functional with the language. I pick one component of the language I need to work on each day, and that is helping a ton. I pray I can continue go out of my comfort zone. My goal is to sound exactly like a Malagasy by 1 year into my mission. I've got a lot of work to do, so if you could pray for me to progress and be able to teach with the Spirit more effectively, I would love that.

-Leading Ivandry: Elder Hammer decided to send one of the new South African (Elder Nortje) elders with me into my area. Elder Hammer then went to the South African's area with his trainer. I later learned he had a secret motivation to eat some delicious cake that one their other elders' members made for them. What a sneaky man with sneaky habits. Anyway, I was nervous to lead my area. We only had investigators I was confident in teaching, but I had just barely gotten a handle of the geography and where most of the paths lead to--extremely convoluted by the way. Surprisingly, it went way well. Elder Nortje and I went crazy with street contacting and were lucky to get in a few homes. Our language levels are still at a fetus level, but we were able to get across our message and teach the 1st lesson well (Prophets, Authority, Apostasy and Joseph Smith's Story) as well as part of the Plan of Salvation (a little more struggly, but somehow they understood woot).  Elder Nortje was great to work with.

Elder Nortje

-Carnivore's: We went to a restaurant for our P-Day this last week called Carnivore's. It was the Madagascar equal to Tucano's, but you eat much more exotic meats that either are delicious or bum. We ate crocodile, snake, bugs, cow heart, cow tongue, chicken gizzard, etc. The snake was the tastiest!

-Our Phone and the Taxi Man: Elder Hammer and I got in a taxi to drive home from one of our investigators that lives about 20 minutes away from our house. When we got out of the taxi, and the taxi man started drive off, Elder Hammer realized he forgot the phone in the taxi! We had all the numbers of our investigators on there, and it devastating when we realized the consequences of losing the phone and how helpful it is in being efficient. I dropped my bag and sprinted after the taxi as hard as I could. I ran up next to it, but he sped off... We came back home super depressed, but then we realized that we recently wrote down all the numbers in our area book. We totally forgot! We stilll lost the numbers of a couple new investigators, but hopefully we can get them back quickly. That taxi man better be happy with his new phone, heh.

One of my favorite effects of my mission has been the spirit. I feel it every day, and it's incredible how much the spirit has changed some of our investigators. Love you all! I'll send pictures next week because I spent too much time on this letter haha! Plus, I'll have a lot more information next week about my investigators!

Love,

Elder Soper

Good week here in Madagascar!

Salama Daholo!

Good week here in Madagascar! Apparently the power is going to go out soon here in Antananarivo, so I might have to cut this email a bit short, sorry!

-We're lucky that the Malagasy people love to learn. They don't have the opportunity to get a very good education, but there's a difference between knowledge and intelligence. They are very intelligent in the way that they know what's important. They may not have the same way of thinking as those of us from westernized countries, but they know how to be happy and when they hear about the gospel, they really latch on to it. 

-Work is Starting to Pick Up Again: My first week here, we taught a ton. The second week, however, we didn't teach much. Luckily, we found and contacted some new investigators that seem valuable, and our program looks nice and busy for this next week.

-Doing Missionary Work for Us: One of our investigators, named N, is becoming an incredibly helpful connection for us (btw, her dad is already a member and is probably going to be the next DMP; he's incredibly helpful). She got so excited about the gospel that she is starting to invite all her friends. Now, we teach her and 4 of her friends at once. One of them is named S, and he already wants to be baptized. He's is extremely intelligent. He'd be a great addition to our ward. Our ward has about 95 women and only 35-40 males, of which only 20 hold the Melchezidek Priesthood, so we are always in need of men. It's tough to find men open to learning here, but when we find them, they're are super mazoto and overall great people. The women in Madagascar generally have less problems with Word of Wisdom things as well. Anyways, N is awesome! She keeps asking how she can help us more. Plus, her dad and her get in funny debates about the gospel all the time.

-Piano Blunder: Our ward's piano player didn't show up this last Sunday. Somehow, someone knew I could play piano, so the Bishop said over the pulpit, "Elder Soper, can you come play piano?" No way I could say no haha! Luckily, the first hymn was one I knew, but the next two hymns were definitely some of the most obscure in the hymnbook. I did so bad on the second one that everybody starting laughing super hard during the Sacrament hymn. Bluh. I did better on the third one, but I'm glad the members are very understanding. It's also really easy to make them laugh. I bore my testimony and told a small joke, and a couple guys started clapping while laughing. Whoops, not very reverent.

-Our Investigators: Most of them are progressing well! H1's family and N are just about ready for baptism. H1's son, T, struggled getting work off on Sundays, so he quit his job! He's a baller! H2 and G1 still need to finish their paperwork for getting married, which is gigantic pain here in Madagascar. G2 and his wife, B, are really close to getting their marriage approved, so we're more confident about their situation. Elder Hammer have been working hard on these two punky brothers named S and P. They want to get baptized, but smoking is a cool habit here in Madagascar, guh. I really like P especially because he reminds me of myself. He and I have similar personalities.

-New Handshake: You know that handshake from Community that Troy and Abed (is it Abed?) would do? They would smack hands twice while they slapped their chest twice, a very satisfying handshake. I've taught all our investigators and a ton of teenagers in our area, and I hope it catches on and spreads some more, haha! I think it's a worthy goal.

-Growing Pains: This week was the first week where I felt confident about describing more complex thoughts without messing up. Elder Hammer has been good about making me speak a lot, and I'm starting to feel the progress. It's still very painful because it's tough to ask questions that are clear and understand their response. That's been the hardest part for me. In addition, Elder Hammer has had me lead in tracting. I'm horrible at that haha! We usually have to ask a few questions about if they have a family, a spouse and how much time they have. It's not as simple and straightforward as I thought.

-Exhaustion: I've been a bit weak from the recent sickness, so I'm experiencing a little heat exhaustion. To aid this problem, I've been drinking a ton of water. The Osprey backpack has been a lifesaver! Thanks for that!

-Amassed My Own Kid Army: While walking through a street, I saw a ton of kids. I picked up a stick. pointed it in the air and started marching. About 10 kids started marching behind me. I would yell out commands like: "Go left! Go right! Close your eyes! Jump!" (I don't know many commands haha). I love the kids here!

Alright, the power is going out in about 10 minutes apparently, so I'm going to be safe and stop now.

Love you all so much! Thanks for the letters!

Elder Soper