It is blazing here in Tamatave...

Ahoy antsika jiaby!

Another great week that came in warm went out hot! It is blazing here in Tamatave. Sweat is my middle name. This week was full of little, excellent experiences, like tootsie rolls.  (Elder Monson and I are getting along way well, btw. He has a similar humor to mine.)

We went to a lemur park on pday!  I'll send more pictures next week.

Deny Other Beggar, Then Beg:

On a somewhat back-alley way, we happened across a very drunk, elderly man. He kept calling us 'papa' in a cute, froggy voice and asking for money. As we were talking to him, another drunk man happened on us. He started yelling at the old man, "Don't ask these humble missionaries for money, you dog!" He pushed him, and the old guy stumbled over mumbling some swear words as this other drunk man ushered us away. Right as we got around the corner, he said, "I'm pretty hungry. All I need from you guys is little bit of money." Gosh, what a punk.

Evil Baby Laugh:

Gino, our investigator has a baby who's face is locked on furious. It stares at us the whole lesson like it wants to choke us out. At the oddest moments, it will let out an spacely low, villanous laugh. Think of the most generic villain laugh, and you got it, but baby version.

Naked, Old Men:

I'm getting tired of seeing naked old men when we tract into houses. For some reason, they're never ready for us to enter. Without fail, Elder Monson and I witnessed naked old men almost every day this week, not a very edifying experience.

It is Possible:

Elder Nortje and his trainee have an investigator that loves speaking English, and whenever they ask him if they can pray, he responds with a stiff, robotic, "It is possible."

What's Up:

Before the start of a lesson with one of our regulars, they asked what the best way to say 'inona vaovao' is. It technically means 'what's new,' but we told them it's 'what's up,' which literally means 'inona ambony' in Malagasy. When we explained that, the wife blurted, "God, right? God's the answer, huh?" That's the best response I've heard to that though!

"What's up, man!" 

"God."

Malagasy Morsel of the Week - Zoky & Zandry:

'Zandry' is a title for someone younger than you. 'Zoky' is for when they are older than you. When someone yells out, "D'ahoana zoky be!" I can't help but feel a few butterflies flutter in my stomach and blush a bit. 

Malagasies are all about respect. The amount of respect someone has for you is determined by where they put they arm during a handshake. The closer is to your hand, more respect. The farther back near the elbow, less respect.

Stories for Next Week:

-Pillow Prayer

-Drunk Gma Cut Me

-Teaching Primary

-Tantely Lesson

Love you all!! <3 Have a great week!

Elder Soper

Another great week here in Madagascar...

Ry Fianakaviana,

This monsieur is 100 years-old. He kept saying in a high-pitched, trembling voice, "I'm really tired. I need to lie down." He knows what his body needs; that's why he's made it so far.

Hey everybody! How are the kids? Nice. Good to hear. Another great week here in Madagascar. This week went by pretty fast seeing that I caught a pretty intense cold and fever. Luckily it wasn't severe enough to prevent me from working, but I probably put investigators off when I started coughing and sneezing all over their stuff in addition to my constant wailing and throwing sand on my head habit. I was bit off. Hopefully I'll recover quick.

Elder Monson's Progress:

Elder Monson is literally training himself. He's got an odd, savant skill where he can hear something and repeat it perfectly. Sometimes, he'll repeat some of my favorite phrases that I say when I can't think of anything, and I'll be like, "Hey, that was mine ya jackwagon!" Just kidding, but it's easy to see he's a flippin' prodigy with Malagasy. I think he may be one of the best ever to come out of the MTC, and I'm lucky to be able to train this bloke.

Franck's Cyst:

One of our recent converts, Franck, lives in a little bamboo hut on the side of the main river in Tamatave. He's always a basketcase. Either he has a fever or flu, pneumonia, and now he has a gigantic, pulsing cyst under his armpit. We had to teach him while staring at this revolting thing sit there. Franck was not shy about it though, but he should have in my opinion. The river he lives by is literally a landfill. Some Malagasies push around big carts, knock on doors, yell, "Fako! Fako! Fako!" (trash) until you answer and they'll take all your poop for a price. Then, they push the cart to the mouth of the river or the beach and dump it all out just to earn a couple bucks. We think Franck is always sick because of the bad air from the river.

New Missionaries:

We got two trainees in our house. They split Nortje and Parraga's area, and they are both training. I was pretty relieved about that because they are probably some of my best friends on the mission so far. In our house now, we have Elder Bennett, a way buff lacrosse player, and Elder Shoemaker, a way tall, star basketball player. Both of them are awesome dudes, and our house is boss now.

Hitting my Head on Everything:

I've been hitting my brainholder on everything recently. Every time I stand up, I hit the roof. Every time I leave, I hit the door frame. Investigators think it's funny, but I'm slowly forgetting my childhood I think.

Danced w/ Drunk Guy:

Fun little experience. There was a drunk guy that was dancing and singing like Bruce Springsteen, a lot of gravely growling and belting with all the air in his lungs. At one point, he had one knee to the ground and his other hand to the sky. I joined in on the dance for a couple minutes while a group of Malagasies spectated. He taught me how to Tango.

Fight:

There was a lot of hub bub yesterday in our main work area. We saw a crowd of dozens of Malagasies crowded around cheering something on. Apparently, a major fight was going down. Whoa, cool! I want to see! Right as we got there. Everybody separated like Moses and the Red Sea--really surreal experience because all the people kept saying, "Here come the missionaries. They'll stop the fight." It felt like they were waiting for us. When we got through the crowd, we saw two drunk dudes, screaming at each other about how one stole the other's money. Hard to understand because they were mainly barking at the ground and emitting random, unintelligible grunts. But it was sad though, one of the guys is an investigator of ours. It was tough to see him all bloody and crying. Eventually, the police came = all good.

Malagasy Morsel of the Week - Patron'Aomby:

'Patron'Aomby' means rich dude who owns a lot of cows and attracts a lot of girls. There's a song called 'Patron'Aomby Barinjaka' that you all should look up and tell me about.

Stories for Next Week

-Pillow Prayer

-Don't Worry about Tomorrow

-Gino's Baby Laughing

-English Class Convo

Love you all so much!

Elder Soper

Awesome week!

Ry Fianakaviana,

Awesome week! We had another baptism--Lucien!  I'll send pictures next week.

Watching the eclipse

Church --> Kablam! $: 

This is definitely one of biggest highlights of my mission. About 36 investigators came to church! First, a couple of the families that we recently dropped because they were losing steam decided to come. Then, two couples that moved from the countryside randomly chose to attend our church just because they like the design of the chapel, heh, good choice; it's just like fish jumping into the boat. We had some members go pick up a couple people, and last, our normally diligent people keep coming. I'm scared a lot of these people won't come back next week, but still it was a surreal experience seeing all of the hard work finally pay off.

I wanted to give a talk in sacrament meeting because I was tired of all the members simply reading out of the Gospel Principles book. It is literally mind-numbing to hear some of the talks--no experiences, stories, metaphors, just doctrine. Given the topic of Apostasy, I spit out as many jokes and stories as I could. However, at the beginning, nobody was even giving me a chuckle--guess they're not really accustomed to it. 

Luckily by the end, they loved the last two metaphors. I used the Malagasy myth about the vazimba (midgets), that steal things, can jump inhumanly high, make odd sounds like 'heyyyy-o' where they start off soft, then loud and go soft again. They live in remote, dreamlike cities covered in fog, high up in the mountains. Careful for if you follow a vazimba skipping down a foggy path, you'll soon lose your way and be tackled by several vazimba's, taken to their stronghold and killed. I don't know if I should have, but that was my main metaphor for apostasy. I also shared Dad's story about how he got stuck trying to climb out of a window in the restroom when he was 12 to escape from church, and they could not stop laughing! 

Visa Poop:

Elder Monson needed to get his visa stuff figured out, so we went down to Tana for about 3 days. I've been on the bus ride back and forth from Tana and Tamatave 5 times. Every time, the person that sits in the cursed, back corner seat by the window has thrown up, all 5 times. The 4th time was me. I actually didn't feel carsick, but the driver stopped really suddenly, and I slid forward, hit my stomach on the seat in front of me and threw up out the window. Very unexpected, but I just went back to sleep.

I basically took a vacation while I was in Tana. I played basketball, exchanged stories with other elders and ate horrible food, typical vacation. Provided that I had no purpose there, I had the opportunity to visit old investigators in Ivandry, my first area! It was so fun to see their reactions when I knocked on their door. Some of them made the ingenuine smile face that says, "Ohhh. You're back?" While others gave me the best welcome, like Gaston's family. They kept saying, "Our first vazaha (foreigner) angel came back!" Gaston has a burning desire to become a patriarch, and he says he'll do anything to fulfill that dream of his. I kind of want to lobby to the apostles so he can get that call. He's really good at 'kabary,' a type of Malagasy poetry and very formal way of speaking. Gaston speaks at weddings, funerals, etc.

1/10 of Everything:

A weird conspiracy theory started boiling up in our Gospel Principles class: God requires 1/10 of everything we have. They especially focused on time. They started breaking down how church is 3 hours long, but if you divide 24 hours by 3, you get 8, doesn't make sense. But wait. They contended that if you divide 24 hours by 10, you get 2 hours 40 minutes (wrong) and that there are 10-minute splits between each meeting in church, which calculates to 2 hours 40 minutes! After holding my breath for most the class, I finally raised my hand and said, "Twenty-four hours divided by 10 is not 2 hours 40 minutes, but 2 hours 14 minutes, sorry." It regretted correcting them after seeing their disappointed faces.

Malagasy Morsel of the Week - Mitsabalikatehina:

It means 'to hiccup,' in the Betsimisaraka dialect (Tamatave dialect), fun to say fast.

Stories for Next Week:

-Gasy Bobo

-Pillow Prayer

-Don't Worry about Tomorrow

Love you all so much!

Elder Soper

Amazing week!

Ry Fianakaviana,

Amazing week! It was definitely one of the best so far, full of the craziest fiascoes, spiritual moments and overall awesome experiences. Elder Monson and I hit a good groove this week. I'm struggling to remember one moment where we weren't tracting, walking to a lesson and playing with kids for a couple minutes; we ended up breaking the mission record for lessons! However, Monson should be given a lot of the credit because he's more obedient than I am. Lucien still isn't in town this week, so he'll be baptized next week.

Delicious roof restaurant with great chicken and horrible milkshakes.

Parraga and Monson with their daily brioches.

Little showdown with my beach pupil.

Parraga leading his people.

Noel and Blandine's baptism.

Baptism Fiasco:

An experience about how huge expectations got pooped on. My favorite investigators were baptized this last Saturday: Noel and Blandine. And, I was incredibly excited for the baptismal service; Monson and I had the baptismal programs all ready, the font was full of actually clean, un-brown water and some of our investigators decided to come. When our DMB showed up, I quickly realized he was drunk. Shoot! I called our Branch President to see if we could get somebody else to lead the meeting--nobody was available. 

First, the service started way late because we didn't have the key to the baptismal clothes. Second, during the service, the talk about Baptism by Water was given by an extremely unprepared 23 year-old guy, Jean Jacque, and his mom wrote the talk for him. She kept whispering to him lines that he should say. 

Next, the awkwardness hit its peak when our DMB gave a 25-minute pontificating sermon about Baptism by Fire with increasing volume and angry expressions, a lot of spitting and hellfire. I eventually stood up to try to stop him, but I was repeatedly denied with an extended palm to my chest, so I sat there hoping there wouldn't be too much false doctrine, which there was. I had to get up and share that Holy Ghost can't be used to heal people or possess our body. At least the actual ordinance was spiritual and went smooth. Bluh.

Fixing My Camera:

My camera started to have a tantrum. I would turn it on, and the lens would extend, withdraw, go back and forth undecidely and then get stuck extended all the way. It was making very odd, unsettling noises. I looked up some videos (with permission from the Zone Leaders) on how to fix it. Instead of helping me figure out the problem, it made me more stressed out than the start. I don't have access to latex gloves, a 1mm Phillips screwdriver and special mini-cotton swabs. So, I decided to try to force the lens. After about 20 minutes of playing with it, it eventually accepted my efforts, twisted, clicked and withdrew. It works now!

Yaya:

I still don't know this man's name because I never understand what he's saying. I can't explain how scizophrenic I feel when I'm talking to him. He never stops saying, "Yaya yeh yu yehyayayaya, uh, yaya, yuh, ya," even when someone else is talking. He's way smart though.

Ranja:

This family was starting to lose steam for the last couple weeks, not finishing any of the homework. We came to this week's lesson not expecting much, but we decided to focus on temples, and Ranja maybe have started crying? Couldn't tell. He kept asking, "How do I get to the temple?" He said he's scared his is wife dying before him because he wants to be right beside her when they see God for the first time. Sweet thought.

Malagasy Morsel of the Week - Ndrabondrabo:

'Ndrabondrabo' isn't a that useful of a word. It means 'afro,' and it's way fun to say. 'Dr' is said like a 'jch,' and 'o' is said like 'oo.' Say it. Like it.

Stories for Next Week:

-Gasy Bobo

-Pillow Prayer

-Ward Activity

Love you all!

Elder Soper