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