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