Christmas in Madagascar! (and leg injury...)

[Elder Soper's Dad: Last week Taylor sent us the first letter below, after the pictures, with a fake story of how he got a serious injury to his leg...  haha?  :)  We decided to hold off on sending it out until we got the real story--which follows in the second letter.  I've also attached some pictures and videos below from his skype session with us.   Merry Christmas!]

Baptisms last week in the ocean.

 One of the dopest investigators I've had on the mission, Germain. He asks the craziest questions, usually to try to stump us; problem is, I'm easily stumpable, so what you want Germain? He's came to church yesterday, and he loved it!

My favorite kids making their first debut album.

Awesome new church with a forest across from it

Letter from Dec. 19, 2016:

Karakory ma jiaby!

Gored by Bessy:

While walking to our next lesson, as carefree as could be, we swung around a corner and encountered a fussy Bessy charging at me--an actual Malagasy cow, not a large, furious Malagasy woman to make that clear. What happened is a couple teens were harassing Bessy by throwing rocks at its head, infuriating her and causing her to charge for whatever the heck was hurting her head. Unfortunately, it turned out to be me that Bessy accused as its harasser. As soon as I saw this furious cow barrelling at me, I turned on a spur with flailing arms and desperately dived to the side. I fell on the ground and quickly scrambled up the muddy bank. Climbing up the wooden fence, suddenly, a piercing pain erupted in my leg and traveled up to my head. I looked down in horror to see the cow's horn gored into my shin, drilling a hole to the bone. In shock, I flopped over the fence into someone's trash-filled yard, and with me just laying there, Elder Kruger sprinted over and started to pull my leg, just like I'm pulling yours, haha!

I really did get stitches though, haha! I'll explain the real, less entertaining story next week. :D On another note, I'd like to invite everybody to take some time reflect. Take one minute to sit down on your comfy chair in the corner of your living room. Then, ponder about how wonderful it is that we know of Christ's ministry and His suffering for us. We know attributes like kindness, longsuffering, meekness, a pure heart and clean hands are what Christ was and what we need to aim to be. We know that through serving one each other, we can receive enduring happiness, as allusive as it may be. We know there is a loving Heavenly Father rooting for us on the other side. Through learning and applying this knowledge, we can return back, together! I testify that these things are true! In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Malagasy Morsel of the Week - Valan'Omby

Christ's perfect life started with His humble birth in a manger. 'Valan'omby' is what Malagasies use even though it technically means 'barn.' Christmas is a great time as a missionary because everybody's heart seems to open up, becoming more sensitive to the spirit, and thus ready for change.

Love you all!

Elder Soper

Letter from Dec. 26, 2016:

Hey Everybody!

Real Stitches Story:

Sorry I lied about being gored by a cow last week, haha! The real truth is much more underwhelming, yet just as painful. As I was carrying chairs up some stairs in the brand-spanking-new church, one of the young men thought it would be hoot if he tripped me on these stairs that happen to be designed like knives (cement blocks with sharp, metal lips). The result wasn't just the predicted, slight embarrassment where I would awkwardly slip, suffer no damage and simply chuckle for a bit with the young man, but rather my shin landed straight on the metal edge of the stair and chopped straight down to the bone, causing me to think twice about wearing shinguards as a missionary.

After writhing in pain for a while, I quickly caught a ride to the closest hospital, which turned out to be the worst quality we could find: a dirty, unkempt place, with inexperienced doctors, limited resources and people walking in and out, peering over the shoulders of the doctors to just give a wince and a, "Ooh!" Just for the fun of it, they poked me with some unknown, useless anesthesia, so I felt every little movement as they forced my flesh together with 9 stitches. Now it's over, phew.

Christmas-time is great here in Mahajanga! Yesterday, Elder Kruger and I finally extended a baptismal invitation to one of our favorite families, Benja and Aina! Real quick, I want to describe what kind of people they are. They live next to an orphanage, and even though they don't have much of their own, they agreed to take in a couple of the surplus orphans--which seem to overflow here in Madagascar--and raise them as their own. Aina really cares for everyone around her. Her main motivation from learning from us is so that she, in turn, can teach the orphans the Gospel. Benja and her came to church yesterday too! Awesome, genuine family! I'll definitely talk more about them in the future.

Also, I got to Skype all of you guys!! Even though I miss home, I don't want to leave Madagascar anytime soon, and the longer I'm doing this work, the more I value my family. Having the privilege to Skype you guys reminded me of first, how much I love my family and second, how important my use of time for these two years is. I can't waste time here because it's time away from you guys! Love you so much!

Nativity Sketch:

We did a sketch on the Birth of Christ for the branch activity on Christmas Eve, and we sort of took it our own way. To 'Malagasify' it, me, being Mary, wore common Malagasy woman wardrobe of thin cloth wrapped around my body, tights and a make-shift turban. Looking back, a wise man would have opted out of the role, but this sketch might just make me the next Chris Pine. Within the sketch an angel communicated through telephone because he was too lazy to show up in person; I rode an auto-rickshaw moto to Bethlehem, gave birth on stage to a creepy, deteriorated baby doll; and, there was large range of lowbrow, bizarre elements that probably frightened most of the kids. In the end, the branch seemed to love it, seeing as everybody kept laughing and wooing, even the old and ever-serious Ralaibary.

Malagasy Morsel of the Week - Mitsingehagehana:

When one's so full, it's hard to breathe. I've always wanted just one word to describe that feeling; now I have it.

Love you all!

Elder Soper

A new calling, yikes...

Hey everybody!

Great week! Our church is moving locations, so we did a lot of member visiting to make sure they won't go less-active. It's in a beautiful place, with a view of all of Mahajanga out the front window. Our previous church building was a poopy, cement building right next to a noisy street. Also, there's been a lot of hurt feelings in between the presidency and the members recently, due to odd fights about money and callings; so hopefully this move will bring not only a nice change of venue but also of perspective.

I'm trying to get as many pictures of boats here in Mahajanga. It took some sprinting to get the right angle.

 My good friend Dax System (his rapper name) that I talk to every morning during breakfast. I disapproved of him dying his hair red. What a punk, but we're still cool.

 Haha, Elder Kruger offering coconut to two people--getting denied twice because it fell in the sand.

Some Weird News:

I'm not sure if everybody knows what's going on, but I was just called as the 2nd counselor in our Branch Council, and now Elder Kruger and I have to attend most of the meetings throughout the week, which kinda puts a wrench into our normal missionary program, but it's an exciting assignment. It's fun to give my 2 cents when talking about important business like the logistics of handling money and member records of which I have no idea about. It's almost like when everybody assumes you're expert on fixing cars, and you want to feel cool in front of them, so you take a look inside under the hood, fiddle around, touch of few parts and mumble some things while shaking your head. Then, you end up just agreeing with the next random comment like, "Oh yeah, that's what I thought." We'll see if the branch here in Mahajanga turns apostate soon enough with my help, heh!

Bocce Ball:

When it rains, many of the back, earthy paths flood with water (looks like chocolate milk by the way), and we always have to use new, creative ways to get across. Usually, we either hold on to wooden fences, overestimate our jumping abilities and leap right into the water, or find another route. But this time, we were a bit smarter. We heaved and strategically threw rocks into the mini-chocolate milk lakes to make a make-shift path. However, without looking, I threw the first and biggest rock, and it splashed up on and all over a sweet, old grandma, sort of hidden from my view behind a fence. She screamed in horror as she was drenched by the delicious chocolate milk. My reaction was to immediately crouch down and cover my head in embarrassment. What an ignorant foreigner I am. We said sorry a thousand times and scurried away.

Malagasy Morsel of the Week - Tombocassehy:

"Branding," as in the herd mark burned into one's sheep. A good way to think about baptism is as a sort of branding that signifies we're God's sheep. If the baptism doesn't take place in the presence of the correct, Aaronic priesthood, the wrong mark is branded, and God will act like, "This ain't mine!" and not let you into His fold.

Love you all!

Elder Soper

The work is flying right now...

Hey Everybody!

Transfer news! Zip. Elder Kruger and I are still together! I was way happy to hear that, especially because the work is flying right now. Yesterday, a couple less-active families came to church for the first time in years. Too bad the church meeting was full of odd, awkward problems with the microphone, a priest doing the sacrament prayer like a motivational chant and some odd testimonies. Nevertheless, it was an encouraging experience.

Handsome Jesus Christ:

We showed this noisy family the Restoration pamphlet that has Jesus Christ holding a lamb on the front. One of the older ladies grabbed it from my hands and said, "Beau gosse ity Jesosy ity!" which means, "This Jesus is way handsome!" 

Soap Opera Miracle:

Our Relief Society President bore a funny, sweet testimony yesterday. Saturday night, she binge-watched novellas (Spanish soap operas translated into French) 'til 4 AM. After finally deciding to sleep, she confessed in a prayer, "This is a worldly thing I just did. Novellas are my weakness. Please help to wake up and attend church tomorrow." The next morning, she was scared awake by water dripping on her bed from a hole in the roof. She made it to church on time and said she wasn't sleepy at all. Funny thing is I heard some gossip that she fell asleep in third hour and was snoring. Sweet lady.

Malagasy Morsel of the Week - Tifohidy:

This means 'food poisoning.' We had a dinner appointment with a random recent convert family, and they ended up serving us their nightmare-ish homemade pasta with little chunks of surprise meat. Even from it's appearance, all the alarms in my head were screaming, "Fake a stroke!" But, we chose to ignore all the obvious warnings from the Holy Ghost, and continued by giving the family a big thumbs up with nervous and panic-stricken smiles and hesistantly dug in. So, the next day, counting each separate trip, I went to the bathroom a total of 29 times. Here's a good reference for a scriptural description of what happened: Jeremiah 4:18-20. Please read this. 

Love you all!

Elder Soper