Another Crazy Week in Paradise

First off, last Monday at our Soiree I got some rice a loaka which was way good. It was like peas and some carrot stuff but they freaking gave me so much. They just kept piling rice on my plate even though I told them they had given me enough. So yeah I got so much freaking rice it was unreal. I seriously had like half of the pot. But I ate all of it because I'm a champ haha.But they next day, it was revenge of the loaka. I will just say that it was painful and leave it at that. 

We haven't done much of anything all week because we've just been making area maps for the new areas opening this transfer. We've been doing a bunch of other stuff for this next transfer too so we've been stuck in the office like all week.

This week in English class we had them split into two classes to help those who are not very good and those that are pretty good separately. I got the Not so good class with Elder Hammer and Elder Fox and that was way fun. Just so you know it is way hard to explain baseball to people that have no idea what it is and in a different language. 

The other night we were walking home and this guy was peeing on the side of the alley and he turns around and calls out to us as we walk by. He was super drunk and he was covered in his own pee so yeah this guy was just money in the bank. Anyway yeah he ran to catch up with us and started telling us how he was a kick boxer and had successfully killed people in matches before. But he loved God and he knew we are servants of God so he wanted to protect us so he was nice guy. 

Our shower finally got fixed this week. It went from old man drool to raining manna from heaven. These last 6 weeks have been interesting showering out of that shower. I could have gotten more water from the sink honestly but it's whatevs.

So as I said, we were stuck in the office most of the week but here are a few things that happened this week:

The AP's went on a split on the other side of Tana and parked their car on the side of the road and walked to the house to stay the night with the Elders they were splitting with. The next morning they come out and the car is surrounded by Malagasys and a couple members of the Malagasy army. The Malagasy army guys are trying to break into the car because a car had been stolen that was white and apparently the robbers had killed a Chinese guy too and took the body with them. The stolen car was white. The Ap's car is blue. It was noon so you could see perfectly into the car to see that there was obviously no dead Chinese guy in there. And then they refused to pay for the damages. They said they were only doing their duty which is apparently to break into cars. Also, if the Ap's had gotten there any later, they would have just stolen the car. The justice system of Madagascar everyone. They steal your car to protect you.

I saw a dead people celebration the other day when we were tracting. We climbed this hill and it just had tons of fasanas on top (Graves). There was one with just tons of people around it and they were playing music and dancing and pulling the bodies out of the fasana and just dancing all over the place. 

Speaking of contacting, We contacted for 2 hours the other day and totally got like 6 contacts so that was way sick. We also found this way cool part of our area that is just gorgeous. The rice patties are especially nice.

Ok and I officially have a baptism on Saturday. It's a lady and her 2 kids that the Elders used to teach but they got turned over to the sisters when the area split. So I taught her once on like my first day here. I will be baptizing her 2 kids so that'll be way cool. I'm way stoked.

Today we had a joint Tana zone activity at a military base where we played basketball, volleyball, and ate rice and loaka. It was actually way fun. That's all we've done today.

Alright well I'll see y'all next week! Keep on keepin on!

Elder Coleman

Weird Happenings

Ok so crazy story time. Last P-day, after I got done emailing and stuff and found quite the surprise in my newly bound hymn book. This will require some explaining of the P-day 2 weeks ago. Remember how I talked about the Reunion Elders and Sisters coming over for that MLC? I think I might have mentioned Sister Stewart but if not here we go. Basically, she is legendary over here in Mada for being super attractive even though no has really even seen here. Anyway, she came over here for that MLC on Sunday. Monday morning, I take my books to get bound including my hymnbook. I have not been anywhere near the Reunion Sisters at this point. I drop it off at the book binder and whatever and we go to our regular soiree. It is here, at the soiree that I meet Sister Stewart for the first time (in the pictures shes the one that is not super tall and white but kind of darker but not black if that makes sense). So I meet her and whatever and she's pretty cool but yeah she has the MLC the next day and then leaves the day after that. So fast forward to last Monday. I open my hymnbook and there is a laminated piece of paper in the book. Upon closer inspection I realize that it is Sister Stewart's Patriarchal Blessing. Yeah. It makes no sense. It is a sign from above. Or so I thought. It actually makes a lot of sense now but I still like to think that it was a sign. And after I found that, Elder Rice and I were moving stuff around in our apartment and we found a picture dated 9-15-13. Not that big of a deal right? Except that it was 9-15-14 when we found it. Update for y'all: Friday the 13th has been canceled, it is now Monday the 15th that is the day for weirdness. We took a picture and printed it off so we can put it on the wall next to the other one and start a tradition.

Lesson wise, this week has stunk. Like absolutely. We try to go by Moe's house but he is never home and he hasn't come to church yet so we will probably have to push back his baptismal date. We went by his house on Tuesday I think and his wife let us in. And guess what he was doing? He was passed out in the other room because he was drunk.  Pull yourself together man! Hopefully we can get to him a couple times this week and get him fired up and going again to get him baptized and to quit drinking and smoking. Not in that order obviously but you get the idea.

Vololona and her family have been progressing very well. Elder Rice had me commit them to come to church and as soon as I asked, the dad started saying, "Sunday is the only day we have off and it's the only day we can wash clothes and clean and"... on and on and on. Vololona just stopped him and said, "Those are just excuses, we can go." Yeah she's way awesome. But they didn't come to church so super lamesauce is what that is. We went to go teach on Saturday but they weren't home and the neighbors said they would be back on Sunday so no idea where they went. 

We had Andry go with us for a little bit one day (He's a stud 19 year old. He's Soa's cousin and they live together. He's in one of the videos I sent home with the locust eating). He took us to some less active members that we had no idea where they lived. We taught this guy who is almost literally falling apart medically. He just had surgery on his mouth to pull out some teeth and stuff cause it hurts him and he has a hard time walking. There was a time where his legs were paralyzed and he couldn't move around at all but he's recovered mostly from that. Now he can't control his bladder and he will just pee himself on occasion. That's one of the reasons he doesn't go to church is because he's afraid he'll pee himself while he's there. If he could even make it there that is. I felt way bad for the guy. We talked to the bishop on Sunday and set up homebounds for them because they have never done it before. Some priests took him the Sacrament on Sunday right after church so that was way good. 

We taught Soa last night and it went pretty well. I'm getting better at these spiritual thoughts in Malagasy. Afterwards, she asked us to give her daughter a blessing. It was a way neat experience. I just did the anointing because I literally can't give the blessing because I can't exactly speak this language. We had the words written down though for the anointing so I just read it off a paper haha. But it was a way sweet experience and the spirit was very strong. I'm sure Elder Rice gave a great blessing even though I have no idea what he said.

Tinamora is a way neat lady. She has seriously the cutest little girl I have ever seen. I sent you that video of her saying just that. I feel bad for Tinamora because she isn't married and she can't get baptized because her "husband" won't marry her and she won't leave him because of the 5 kids they have. Maybe she'll find a way to get it done. She made us crepes too which was way awesome.

Being in the office has it's perks. We get to receive transfer news early. And last night we got jsut that. We are getting some other Elders in our apartment and getting some changes to the AP's. Also, Sister Stewart is coming to Mada. I guess this has been a plan for awhile and while she was here she got some books bound and one of them had her patriarchal blessing in it. The binders took it out to bind the book and put it in my book by mistake. So it's not as divine as you think. Except she is coming into my area so take that how you will haha. 

A pretty uneventful P-day today except that we had a ping pong tournament at the church with most of the missionaries in Tana. It was way fun even though I suck at ping pong. Let's just say I lost in the first round... of the regular bracket and the losers bracket... haha. We went and picked up our African shirts which are just way sick. We really didn't do much other than that. 

I tried to make crepes the other day but PAM doesn't exist out here so I tried to butter the pan down hardcore to make it work. Well long story short it didn't. I ended up making crepe balls that we just put nutella on and ate and it wasn't too bad. 

I think that's about it for this week. Keep on keepin on down in Southern Utah and the various other parts of the world that this email is going to. Peace!

Elder Coleman

P.S.

You never go to a college football game once, heck you never talk about going to a football game once but now that I'm on the other side of the world you just think you can go and do whatever you want? Just kidding that sounds way fun. But yeah you'll have to take me when I get back. It's a must so yeah put that in the planner. 

That's way cool that Erin came to visit! How is she doing? And Janikah, how's she? 

Good job on the missionary work! Way to be planting seeds and what ever! 

The picture from the car was some kind of mob that was doing a celebration outside our house for 2 days straight. No sleep was had basically. They blasted music all night. The girls were Vololona's and that's like a permanent makeup. It like bleaches their faces and when they take it off it makes their skin lighter for quite awhile.

I don't like ice cream. I like nutella. Big difference there.

We have a microwave yes and I don't think I'll need it but you can send it if you want. A bottle isn't exactly a bad thing to have. Also, Gummi eggs are must in the Christmas package. A drink mix that goes in water would be great too like gatorade or lemonade or something. And music again, you can put Disney songs on there because President changes in June so I might be able to listen to it when the new one comes in. Any food from America that won't expire in the trip over here is perfect. Money is not a bad idea either. I could always use money to buy cool stuff. Just put it on my card and I can pull it out here. Speaking of which, If you could tell me how much money I have on my card that would be awesome. I pulled out 200,000 A a couple weeks ago and I'm not sure how much that is in American dollars. I think it's like $80 or something but I'm not sure. I don't dare pull out any more personal fund without knowing how much is in there.

 Antananarivo sunset

 Not sure what's going on here? They interrupted spa day?

 Walking through the rice paddies.  

 Interesting?!

 Very humbling.  Look at their toys.

 Not sure about this either? Some kind of celebration?

Doing Some Work

So it's crazy how fast time goes here. It's seriously ridiculous. I will be in this country for a month on Saturday. This has gone by way faster than the MTC. 

Ok to start off the week we had our usual soiree with Sr Helen and her family. We had the Reunion missionary leadership over here in Mada for a couple days for that thing I talked about and two sisters from Reunion came over. There is only one set of sisters here in Tana (In fact they have half of our area) so they were with them. They came to the soiree with our sisters and it was fun. They were pretty cool but they were way culture shocked haha. They practically live in Europe over there in Reunion and Maritius. 

I hit my 2 months on my mission on the 9th, whatever day that was. That's gone way fast. If the whole mission goes this fast I'll be done in non time haha but I don't want to leave; This place is so sweet. 

For that same leadership meeting that I was talking about, Elder Rice's old companion came up from Antsirabe because he's a zone leader down there and we had lunch with him in this way rich part of Tana called Ivandry. We went to this mall that was honestly like taking a step back into America. The place had an escalator. A freaking escalator. How freaking cool is that? Moving stairs. I am so grateful for moving stairs. And they had American food and it was so good.... And to top it all off- a Nutella shake. I would think that it was a Larium dream but it tasted so good. I seriously would have been fine to drop dead right there haha. I couldn't have been happier. 

The next day though even topped the Nutella shake. We went tracting for 2 hours and had 5 contacts. It was so sweet. We haven't been able to contact them yet for a few reasons such as being in the office, them not being home when we go, and we didn't know exactly how to get back to where we were for a couple days. Anyway, after tracting we had 4 times we needed to go to and they were all there except for one which is like unbelievable for us. We never get that close to 100%. So it was way sweet. And I lead some of the lessons which were way rough actually but it's the only way I'll learn to speak this crazy language that isn't Spanish. 

Alright cool story time. SO we have this investigator, Moe, who is the only member in his family who is not baptized. His wife and his daughters are baptized but he isn't. He has problems with drinking and smoking. So we go by to visit him the other day and he is outside his house pulling weeds in his flower pots. We say hi and offer to help and he takes our help. We help him and he lets us come in to share a spiritual thought. Ok this is going to be a little hard to tell because it's a lot of connecting with stuff during the lesson and after. Ok so Elder Rice sits down and feels like he should talk about baptism but he doesn't want to so he turns to me and tells me to give the thought. So I, not knowing anything that has come to the mind of Elder Rice, open my scriptures and think Helaman 5:12 sounds like a good one. We start in on it and all of a sudden I feel like I need to ask him the question of "Why is Jesus important to you?" And he just starts going off about how Jesus has made all the difference in his life and has saved him and all this stuff. At this point Elder RIce was like "Well that lead right back into baptism" because Moe started talking about how he feels the Spirit sometimes but he wants to feel it all the time. So Elder Rice challenged him to be baptized on the 18th of October. He just has to not smoke or drink and come to church every week. He said he really wants to be baptized and he will do his best but he wants our help. He wants us to go by his house every day so that way he'll be too scared to drink or smoke because apparently, when we came by his house the other day and he was about to drink and after we left he was like "What am I doing" and didn't drink at all that day. So that was way sweet! We went by his house the next day twice but he wasn't home either time so we left him a note that said we came by and to be diligent. He didn't come to church on that day either so we were really sad about that. We'll go by his house today and see what was up. I believe he can do this. He came to church the week before so he can make it. He's a way awesome guy he just needs to get it done. I think once he sees that he can do it, he'll be solid. Hopefully that is.

Next up, Tina Mora. We went by her house the day after Moe and she was the first lesson we taught that day. I was again given the job of giving the spiritual thought so I opened my scriptures to Ether 12 so I just went with Ether 12:6 which turned out to be perfect. She read that scripture and then started in telling a story where that has happened in her life. She has a daughter who can't talk very well cause she has something wrong with her throat or something. They were going to have a doctor look at it but he lived a long way away so they saved up money for a long time and prayed that it would be enough. The time came when they were going to go and they got all their money and got on a bus way late at night and got there at like 7 in the morning. The doctor told them their appointment wasn't until 2 so they were a little worried. They didn't want to spend any money because they didn't know how much everything would be and they still had to pay for the ride back. So they bought a little bit of food and tried to spend as little money as possible and continued to pray that they would have enough money for whatever was going to happen. The time for the appointment came and the doctor gave them the news that this was an easy fix and she would just need to take some medication and it would be all better. And the medication was like dirt cheap. Like Malagasy dirt cheap which is way cheaper than our dirt cheap. So they had enough money to make it home and a bunch of money still left over so they were really grateful for that. It was a way awesome story.

Next up, Jean. We started the first lesson with him and I got to take the lead on that. He quite the interesting ideas on the Godhead but we got that all sorted out. He's progressing a little slow but everyone learns at different speeds so it's fine. We will continue with him if he is ever home. And he doesn't come to church. Like none of our investigators go to church. It's way frustrating.

Vololona and fam. We did the whole Plan of Salvation lesson with them the other night and it went way good. They understand it really well even though I taught it. It helped that I had a drawing of it to. I pretty sure that piece of paper taught it better than I did for sure. They are a way sweet family and are progressing really well. 

Ok next thing, I might have a baptism on Saturday and it may be moved to next Saturday, I'm not sure yet. It's this lady I taught like one of my first days here and she is a friend of Sr Helen and her family. They are hoping the lessons will be done in time for this Saturday. And they want to get a Skype call to their family member on her mission in SLC which brings me to my next topic.

The next time anyone is at Temple Square, get a picture of the sister from Madagascar because I am with her family every Monday and I'm sure they would love to see a picture of her. 

Alright so with the same family, we sang in church yesterday. We sang Secret Prayer in English because that whole family is way mahay (skilled) at English. The one served her mission in Durban so shes super awesome. Yeah but the singing went pretty well even though no one had any idea what we were singing. They knew the tune though because that song exists in French.

Today we just went and explored Tana a little bit. I went and picked up a bunch of books that I had bound and bought a lamboany which is super cool. I can't really describe it so I'll send a picture at some point. I also put in an order for this custom made African shirt that is way sick. I'll send a pic when I get that next P-day. 

Sorry for such a long email this week but a lot happened! Hopefully, this much will happen every week!

Elder Coleman

P.S.

We would always like some more food haha. But no were pretty good thus far. I will be in this area for probably at least 2 more transfers. I have one more transfer of training and then I will be here at least one more transfer to show someone the area if they decide to send me somewhere else. So 12 weeks at the minimum and 6 months and the max so it's hard to say. I see guys all the time from the MTC that are in Tana. I pretty much see all of them in the Tana at some point during every week.

We just do whatever the people ask us to do in church. For example, this week we taught the Young Men about modesty because the girls in this ward are pretty bad about that haha. To put it bluntly, some of them look like foza (prostitutes). Yeah I learn the important words in Malagasy. We just stick with the investigators usually.

The stuff was way good in the package. Propel has seriously never tasted so good. I haven't had the Gatorade yet, I want to save that for my month in country mark to celebrate. Elder Rice's year in country mark is two days before mine so we'll have some kind of big celebration or something.

We just have Ramen Noodle like stuff usually but we've had Spaghetti a few times. We eat out a lot because it's not very expensive and it's way good. I think we are going to make crepes tonight. 

I heard about the I-15 thing. Sister Cloward pulled up a video on Facebook with that van going over that waterfall or whatever. That's so crazy! I feel like that is going to be everyday here once rainy season hits. 

There are only three sets of sisters in Mada and I don't know how many are in R/M. Two sets are in Antsirabe and the other set is with us. 3 of the 6 are natives and i haven't met the 2 but the 1 here that's from America is from Boise. She goes home here pretty soon in November.  

Music wise, The playlist on my iPod called Church would be sweet just not the MoTab stuff. Piano Guys would be awesome. The soundtrack for the 3rd Hobbit would also be very nice. And songs that we've sang in Xpress since I was in it would be good too. Have McK ask Mrs. Terry if she has a list of the songs we did the past three years. The African ones would be the best for obvious reasons. Soundtracks in general would just be really good. 

Austin calls these the "Stairs of Mordor"  

If you know Austin you understand this!:)

 African shirt

Austin's Singing Group

This Place Still Blows My Mind!

Well this week has been pretty uneventful actually. We have just been teaching this week as much as we can. It's kind of hard to do when you're in the office but it's where I'm needed I guess so that's where I am! We have this way sweet family that we are teaching right now. The mom's name is Volonana? (I think I spelled that right I have no idea) Good luck pronouncing that. But yeah this family is sweet. She is married which is super rare down here and they have two kids, daughters, one 14 and one 11. The 14 year old has a kid because I guess she got raped so now she has a kid she has to take care of too. Anyway, They are super receptive and knowledgable. She wanted to learn from the missionaries because she would see them walking around outside in the heat and she wondered why 2 white kids would come all the way from America and live here if what they were doing wasn't true. So she's super solid. Their only problem is they don't come to church. Like ever. So we're working on that. 

We've been teaching them and Soer Soa (the lady who fed us locusts) and a couple other investigators and less actives in the ward. Or we try to anyway. They like to not be home and to go to sleep at 7 so that's super annoying but it's whatevs. This whole week we've just tracted all day and got absolutely nowhere. We get to the door and ask if we can share a message with them and they say Yeah! So we ask when we can come back and teach them and all of them say "uhm well we work every hour of everyday so there really isn't a time" What do you mean there's no time? You don't have time for Jesus? This is your salvation we're talking about! Come on people! It's super frustrating but we'll get someone eventually. And at the very least we planted a seed. 

Friday Elder Rice got sick and was up all night in the bathroom so we didn't leave the apartment all day. It continued in to Saturday but he felt better by the evening so we got out a little bit. So I just read a lot of the Book of Mormon. Like all of Mosiah and half of Alma. Alma has some way good mission stories that are just getting me super pumped! I felt super energized and motivated all week and I still do so that's good. The sons of Mosiah are just the best missionaries ever. I just want to be like them. They are straight up #studs. 

We are having a leadership conference in Tana tomorrow I think and we got the zone leaders from Reunion over here. Boy are they in shock haha. They practically live in Europe over there and they are staying in this for a couple days and they have no idea what's going on haha. We had one with us on splits last night and it was good because our people all spoke French so he was able to throw in his own ten cents. It was way good he did a good job.

That's it for this week I think. Things are going good though! Keep on keepin on!

Elder Coleman

P.S.
 I just got one of your packages today and it wasn't opened so I'm sure everything's in there. I won't open it until I get back. I forgot to tell you that USPS priority flat rate boxes make it here the fastest and if you put pictures of Jesus on them they don't get broken into. Just for future reference. I don't know how conference will go but I think we get it in English and Malagasy so I'll probably end up watching both. The language is coming along pretty well I guess for only being here for 4 weeeks or whatever. I can kind of understand what's going on sometimes. For Christmas obviously just ties, maybe some books. What I would really like is some music. Music would be great. An MP3 and a speaker would be money. Anything uplifting is what I can listen to but not disney. So that means Lord of the Rings and Hobbit soundtrack. All of the movies would be great. Movie soundtracks would be awesome and EFY music from LDS.org would be spectacular. No MoTab, I can get that super easy. So yeah just uplifting music would be great.

Weather's good. It's been a little chilly the past couple days but it's starting to warm up now that we're going into Spring. We get along way good. He's awesome and helps me out a lot with the language. Yeah we have fun too so that's important.

I am being eaten alive by fleas. It's freaking rediculous. I want to just burn every flea at the stake. Super Annoying.

The Plagues of Egypt!

Ok yeah so like 5 minutes after I sent last weeks email, we walk outside and the President of Madagascar totally drives by. So yeah that was pretty cool. I feel like he's more of a dictator than a president but I'll get to that in a minute.

So first of, it's nuts that I've already been in country for 2 weeks. Time freaking flies by. I thought the MTC went fast but sheesh! Yeah It's unreal. Tuesday was way cool cause Elder Rice baptized this kid from his first area. The kid had just turned 8 and when he was asked who he wanted to baptize him he said Elder Rice. This kid is just a stud. His name's Frank. He lives in the 67 area (that's literally what it's called but it's french so it sounds way cooler) which is FUN FACT the dirtiest area that missionaries work in in the WHOLE world. So yeah it's kind of a big deal. When it rains, you walk through sewage up to your knees. I don't know about you but I definately want to do that. But yeah it was a way cool experience. We went to their house afterwards for a little suare thing and it was a very humbling experience. The ceiling is six feet tall and they have two rooms kind of. The kitchen is kindof a room and kindof the walkway outside and the main room is the living room and bedroom combined into one. With one bed. For the whole family. I'm not sure how many are in that family but I think it was two boys the mom and a girl. Anyway yeah I felt bad for eating the food they gave us cause I figured it was probably all they had. It was way cool they are an awesome family. After that we went back to our area which was like a 20 minute bus ride which in all reality would be a lot less if there were traffic rules in Madagascar. We had some time left but by the time we got there it was like 7 and everyone goes to bed at 7 here for some reason. So we tried to go to the houses but no one would let us in so we left. And here comes the fun part! As we are walking home, there are these two drunk guys in the alley ahead of us and there really wasn't a way around them so we had to just go past them. As we got closer they came over to us and wanted to cause some trouble. Elder Rice told them that we were from the American Army and they quickly apologized and tried to bless us and stuff so we left haha. 

The other day we had a bunch of lessons fall through. By a bunch I mean all of them. And we were kinda discouraged and walking back home when some guy came up to us and said: "Hey, can you come and talk to my friend cause his life sucks right now" Obviously that was in Malagasy and I'm paraphrasing but yeah anyway. We go over and talk to him and they both wanted to learn from us! And as we are walking away some other guy comes up and wants us to teach him too! Two contacts within 5 minutes that came to us! How sweet is that? We haven't taught either of them yet though because we've been busy in the office but we will!

We were tracting the other day and we saw these girls pointing up at the sky. I was like "what is that all about?" So I look and there is a bunch of locusts a little ways away. And then all of a sudden they just descended around us and everyone just starts going nuts! The locusts are everywhere and there are literally trillions of them. As we are walking back, we come to this open square area where Malagasys are everywhere smacking locusts out of the air. Some guy jumps and freaking volleyball spikes a locusts out of the air with his hat. And some other guy had a door that he was swinging around knocking locusts out of the air. They were all collecting them and throwing them in any container they could find. Some people had whole 1.5 liter bottles filled. And yes bottles. As in more then one. 

The next day, President calls us and the AP's into his office. So naturally I'm a little scared cause I have no idea what's going on. He tells us that we have a situation. The President of Madagascar had his power go out and couldn't get it back on so he threw the top six guys of the power company in jail. Yeah because Presidents do that. But the power company was going to go on strike if he didn't release them and turn off all the power to the country until he let them go. So we got to do a episode of Doomsday Preppers. Yeah but the whole thing never went down so that was disappointing. I was hoping riots were going to break out that would've been so cool. They're having peace talks today actually so it might still happen we'll see. 

Today was fun. We played soccer against the Antananarivo 1st ward and holy crap are they good. I mean I thought I was pro and all scoring in MTC soccer but I felt accomplished if I could touch the ball in this game. They had jersys and everything! We still beat them though but no worries. And our ball fell into a sewer multiple times so that was fun. It was completely white when we started and slowly got turned blackish. Throwing the ball in was not fun. Not at all. We ate at this American food place not far from the soccer field and it was way good! Kind of expensive (in Malagasy money) but way good. I went and picked up my bible from the book binder and dropped off my BoM so I could get the same thing done for it. Yeah we are so rich here. We get 435,000A a month which is freaking rediculous in Malagasy terms.

Oh I did forget to mention that the other day we taught a bunch of lessons and Elder Rice told me to take the lead on all of them and he said I made sense so progress! I am getting the language, slowly but surely. I will be so happy when I am able to speak to people semi-fluently.

I think that's all for this week. I'm sure I forgot something. I need to remember to bring my journal everytime I do this.

Hiresaka amin'nareo herin'andro! (Talk to y'all next week)

Oh I did forget one thing. The locust swarm I talked about? And people collected the ones they murdered? Yeah they eat those. And yes I was fed them at a members home. In all reality they actually weren't bad. It kinda tasted like bacon. 

Carmelled pork was on the rice and it was way good. I've already had it a couple times since then. Food wise things are good. Nothing to complain about. I did eat locusts last night which actually wasnt that bad. I sent a video. Teaching is slow because we are in the office a lot but we get some in every now and then. The place where we ate locust was a member's house and we are teaching someone there. 

Elder Coleman