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