Great week!

Dear Family and Friends,

Great week! We had a couple slow days in our best area last week, so it prompted us to change our program radically and try some new stuff.  It worked--it's going much better now. Here in Madagascar, you can do what you want with the program usually. In the beach provinces, you can get up 50+ lessons if you want, and here in the city, maybe 35+. However, it mainly depends on the quality of one's program. Almost everyone is willing to learn, but very few people are genuinely interested. After months of work, our program is full of people reading the BoM, coming to church and really trying. It's been really refreshing.

It could be possible that Elder Stromberg and I split the area and train while zone leading. It might be a bit awkward, but our area is in a good spot for it. 

These kids were sliding down on a little piece of cardboard. The little girl with the onesie fell off and rolled down into a cushion of trash at the bottom. If that were 3 year-old me, I would be sobbing. But this girl laughed and let all the other kids slap off the dust all over her. Then, they ran up and did it again.

Soccer

Missionaries vs. Malagasies  2 - 1

Manakambahiny (our ward) vs. Mahamasina (Elder Dlokova's ward)  4 - 2

Good week for soccer!

Gigi

An old Malagasy veteran. About a month ago, we accidentally tracted into him. I was trying to show Elder Stromberg a former investigator, but when we knocked on the door, Gigi came out. Both their houses look the exact same, but they're in totally different areas, heh. I was thrown for a huge loop. It took me a bit to regain myself, but we ended up setting a return time with him. After a mediocre (our fault) first and second lesson, we gave him the Book of Mormon and didn't think too much about him. By the third lesson, he had read to 1 Nephi 3, nice. Then by the fourth lesson, 3 days later, he had read to flippin' 2 Nephi 17! We asked him if we would come to church, and he said, "No promises," which usually means 'no'. Whoa! He tricked us! He came to church with his daughter! Some people are just more ready to be taught then we are ready to teach them, haha!

Law of Chastity

In a Gospel of Christ lesson, one of our regular families started to reveal to us all of their marital problems, sharing all of the uncomfortable details even. We sat there listening to them use exaggerated euphemisms and metaphors for a half-an-hour to indirectly insult the bad habits of one another. For example, one would say if only one person brings home rice, but the deal was the other one would bring home the meat; however, when they got home, the one gave all the meat to his friends. Apparently, that was supposed to be metaphor of how the  doesn't bring enough money into the home; how the other says 'hi' to too many men. I ended up getting way confused.

Malagasy Morsel of the Week - Baoby

A slang word for money. When we're out of taxi fund, we tell the taxis, "Yo, we got no Baoby Marley! Can you give us a ride?" They love the joke so much that they usually give us a ride for about 5 minutes for free! :D

Love you all!

Elder Soper