Happy New Year!

Hey everybody!

Work's great. Job's great. Food's pretty great. Life here in Mahajanga is excellent! This last week was full of drunk people, wild parties and loud music 'til the middle of the night. 

My lil' goat bud.

A lousy picture of our nativity performance.

Happy-go-lucky dude.

Elder Kruger

Antlers

I have some other, awesome pictures that I'll send next week. We went on a hike to a faraway lighthouse for our pday today.  It took about 6 hours, so I'm short on time (sorry for this short letter.), but wurf it. The hike was full of wild lemurs, crazy mountains of clay, and thorns.

Some highlights from the week:

Foker - Progressing Muslim Family:

One of our most progressing families is the Foker fam, pardon the name heh! Foker is this diligent Muslim minister that saw us carrying some BoM's while on our way to another lesson. He requested to see the book and thus invited us over to teach him. Not expecting much, we taught him and his possibly multiple, hopefully singular wife/wives the 1st and an introduction to the first, answering all his odd questions along the way. After a few weeks, Foker has been reading the BoM like a maniac. Due his calling in his church, he's nervous fellow Muslims will catch him come to our church and thus cause him to be rebuked or even excommunicated. I'm counting on his promise he gave that he's coming to church once this next month, just to give it a taste, a lil' nibble. But, we'll see.

Malagasy Morsel of the Week - Modigisa:

This word means 'to pretend.' But when broken apart, 'mody' means 'to return home,' while 'gisa' means 'geese.' Whoever the heck made this word up is a genius. Because, geese are smart enough to be trained by their owners and know when they need to return to their houses (usually at about 5 or 5:30), but they relish being the jerks they really are and simply don't. However, when the owner sees them, they immediately dash back home, attempting to appear as nothing happened. Same with the word 'to pretend'; when someone catches you red-handed pretending to act dumb, act nice or act asleep, you have to desperately backtrack and explain yourself to save your dignity. Geese are bad examples eh?

Love you all, and Happy New Year!

Elder Soper