The fruits our work are finally starting to show...

Hey everybody!

One of our families, Felix and the gang, were supposed to get baptized yesterday. However, I didn't feel right during the baptismal interviews; so we made the decision to hold off. That was tough news, but other than that, my love for missionary work and the Malagasy language has grown a lot lately. I asked our wonderful member help, Tahiana, to help me change my accent to sound more like a native Malagasy, and I think it's working! It usually degenerates into him and I repeating a sound in different ways until we sound the same, heh.

Teaching Coco's fam.

Other good stuff, the fruits our work are finally starting to show. Though what's odd is the families we didn't expect much progress from are becoming better than our usual progressing investigators. Roger, an Catholic investigator we haven't been able to meet with for 3 weeks, read 230 pages in the BoM during that time, and his family came to church! Woot.

Devil's Got His Crosshairs on Us:

On Tuesday, we tracted into what seemed like a pleasant, prudent family--little husband with great smile wrinkles and wife who looks like she would kindly laugh at anybody's dumb joke. The perfect family to be baptized! Yet, because I accidentally woke up at 6:35 instead of 6:30 that day (against missionary standards), they were unassailably destined to wind up being as terrifying as could be. At first, we we didn't realize that, and we gave our best effort to give a high-quality lesson. But after I asked a question about prophets, the switch instantly flipped up to 11. The wife began to angrily rant about how the devil has his crosshairs on us two, about to shoot. I desperately tried to hide my terror as she confessed her sins to us saying she feels tempted around two young, handsome missionaries. When she stopped for a millisecond to catch her breath, I interupted saying we were short on time and needed to run to our next appointment. So, we asked if we could end with a prayer. The quiet, little husband quickly stood up, and he then started to whisper-shout as loud as he could--though the smallness of his body was a big hindrance on his shouting capacity--all the while whipping his arms out in random directions like a new tectonic Nazi dance. I couldn't help but be fascinated witnessing this. To add to the spectacle, during the five-minute prayer, the wife rose her hand up to the sky yelling out an impressive variety of grunts and hallelujahs. Our recent-convert member helping us that day also thought he should join in and started yelling, "Amen!" throughout. The husband finally ended the prayer, fell back onto his couch and gave us a last, wrinkly smile. I had no idea how to react, so I just kinda said, "Wow, you guys are way good at praying. Um, we'll see ya later!" 

Malagasy Morsel of the Week - Unpronounceable Names:

Madagascar is the island of long names, . If you don't know Malagasy, trying to pronounce a Malagasy name is like having your mouth filled with marbles. Give it a try on a few:

• Safidiniarivoharijaona = thousand clear choices of John

• Razafindrandriatsimaniry = grandson of the noble who envies noone

• Andrianampoinimerinatompokoindrindra = prince who was given birth by a Merina (main Malagasy tribe) who is my real/highest lord

The last one was a 19th century king and the ideal father figure of modern Malagasies. That's gotta be the longest name ever. Also, I'm pretty sure Madagascar's president has the longest name of any leader in the world, Hery Martial Rakotoarimanana Rajaonarimampianina, coming in at 44 letters.

Love you all!

Elder Soper