Hoo golly. A lot happened in the past two weeks.
Monday: The poop hits the fan. Sorry about the foul language.
After playing our Monday Ping Pong Master's tournament with our suits on (on a little 4 by 6 foot table), we went to the bishop's house to do a service project. During the project, they voiced concern about the Bubonic Plague might hit our area in the coming weeks--a little ominous prophecy I suppose. "Psh, yeah right," said my undeveloped, 20 year-old mind who thinks I'm invincible and nothing bad can happen to me, "It's only in other dirtier areas!"
An hour later, I got a call just we sat down to email that made my heart sink straight to my butt, a call from President Foote. All my investigators names flooded into my thoughts,
Right as I answered the phone, President hurriedly commanded, "You and your companion have an hour to evacuate. Go grab your stuff. Leave what's not important. Unplug the outlets. Bring your Area Book." Not many words were said as Elder Stromberg, his new trainee, my new trainee and I packed up. The area had just been split, and the work was what you call "going peachy" when calling in stats. All the families we were working on are still going to get baptized soon, but it just stinks we can't be there... Mine and Elder Armstrong's area will have 6 baptisms this Saturday, and Elder Stromberg's area will have 4. Darn. Cool and still great in an eternal perspective, but darn.
Now, Elder Armstrong and I are in Antsirabe! Despite the things that have happened, we are remaining positive!
In the past few days though, there has been so many tender mercies. All the displaced elders came to Antsirabe depressed; there was a negative air hanging around with everything we did. But once we got down here, the members received us with such warmth and excitement that we can't help but realize maybe God has a different direction for us. We have received so many referrals (probably pity referrals haha) that are very valuable! Within 4 days of work, we got 2 new families to General Conference this Sunday, and the members helped us pick them up! I absolutely love the members here in Antsirabe!
Service Project
Desperate to create a program on the fly, we asked around about service projects, and Elder Armstrong and I got a meeting with the local leaders in Antsirabe! They gave us all the times of the cleaning projects around town in the next couple weeks. Every set of elders and sisters were assigned an area to go rake and burn trash--in an effort to prevent the plague from coming to Antsirabe--for a couple hours before General Conference. (Burning trash ironically is the opposite of being green, but that's how Malagasies clean; we ended up burning two dead dogs too ugh). Though, the highlight was the leaders that represented each sector of the town generously gave us some time at the end of the project to invite everybody to General Conference and to learn from us! We got over 15 new investigators in our area, and the zone got over 60 altogether! My head hurts way bad though from the toxic trash smoke.
Odd Work Assignments
Right now, I have no zone leader companion here in Antsirabe. I'm a bit overwhelmed with all the money, finding new houses, buying emergency gear, etc. In addition, we're taking two days of our program to visit a remote village called Manandona about 70km from Antsirabe. It's honestly all exciting, but I feel a bit unorganized. There's about 19 missionaries here in Antsirabe when there was previously 6. So, things are a bit tight. I love my mission haha!
There's so many more experiences I want to share this week, but due to lack of time, I'll save them. Here's an overwhelming list of stories I want to write about in the coming weeks.
Other Fun ExperiencesØ
+ Failing to Teach in French
+ General Conference
+ Landy, Tony and Lalaina
+ President Bruno
+ Zone Conference Skit
+ Learning Xhosa
+ Funniest Type of Referral
Love you all!
Elder Soper
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