When the Rain Comes Down...

This place is just so awesome! Love it here! Last Monday, we had our usual soiree with the family of that sister missionary Temple Square right now. Sr Zanarisoa (the sisters have the french word for sister on their name tags, pronounced like 'sir' ten'anglais) was leaving in the coming transfer and Elder Rice, Sr Johnson, and their daughter Hoby were all having birthdays soon so we had a huge party. We had this banana cheesecake and this freaking massive cake. Like it was unreal. It was like an 8 layer cake and it was so hard to put down haha. 

English class on Tuesday went great! They asked to learn phonetics for English so I had fun with that. When I taught 'w' I had them say that part from Hot Rod with the whiskey and it was the best haha. 

The new Elders came in on Wednesday and they are way cool! There are so many of them! Seriously the whole mission except for like 5 companionships are training right now between my group and this group. But yeah they are way sweet and there's still quite a few in Tana so I get to chill with them for a bit. Elder Rice worked some magic and somehow got us into the new missionary lunch and I am eternally grateful for that. I have never had food taste so good as Sr Adams cooking. I can tell you right now that I will not be complaining about food too much when I get back to America. It will taste heavenly for quite awhile I assume.

Transfers were freaking nuts by the way. We took so many people the the Antsirabe and Tomatave bus stops. The traffic here is freaking nuts. It seriously takes us an hour to get somewhere that is like from the house to like the city park. Like I said, there are absolutely no rules for driving here. You just have to be assertive. And insertive too if anyone gets that reference. We spent Wednesday through Friday just taking people from the airport or to the bus stops or just where ever. It was a long couple of days for sure. 

I got to practice driving a little bit the other day. I will probably be driving during the next transfer because I'm pretty sure that Elder Rice will be leaving. So I will have to do the driving. It wasn't too bad. I peeled out a little bit once and only killed it a couple of times. 

Baptism on Saturday! It was way cool! A very neat experience for sure! I baptized the little girl and she's way cool. I went first and I totally slipped going into the font and almost went down but I recovered, like a boss (obviously), and rocked it. I don't know how one rocks a baptism but I did it regardless. I said the prayer in Malagasy and dunked her and she came up and let out the biggest gasp I have ever heard. It was like I had dunked her in Arctic waters or something. She was ok though so I have no idea what that was about. This woman is the sister of the missionary in Temple Square and they got permission to Skype her so she could watch the baptism. It was 7 in the morning back in Utah so she was a little tired obviously. The family didn't get to talk to her either because she had to go get ready for conference in a couple hours. It didn't feel like my baptism though cause I didn't really teach them. I had them read a scripture once on like my 2nd day here and then they got turned over to the sisters.

Sunday was a pretty good day. I got to help give a blessing to a sister missionary in the other ward and that was a way neat experience too. Feeling the spirit super strong is just a great way to start off a Sunday. Testimony meeting was good too. I don't remember if I mentioned this last fast Sunday but there is never that awkward silence where no one gets up and does their thing. There is just a constant stream of people heading on up. 

Ok yesterday, holy freaking water. It started raining during the last 5 minutes of ward council and by the time we got outside it was seriously like the flood of Noah had come back. I have never felt raindrops that big in my life. We had to walk from the church to our area in the pouring rain it was ridiculous. I witnessed a power pole explode and I saw the steps of Mordor turn into a waterfall. We were going to just go home but we had a soiree set up with Vololona. So we walk clear into the middle of our area in the pouring rain, and she cancels. 

Today we just played soccer against that ward again. They kicked our trash this time though so it's whatevs. Didn't really do much other than that though.

One more thing. There is an upcoming need for an office couple in this mission. So, if any of you know of anyone who could be an office couple here that would be awesome. Having someone in here I know would be way cool. I'm not sure how it's done but I'm sure their stake president would know so yeah. That's something that needs to be done way soon cause the current office couple goes home in June.

I've attached a pic of the baptism so you can see. The sister I'm standing next to is Sister Stewart, the one who's Patriarchal Blessing I found in my hymnbook.