Austin's Madagascar Mission: Soccer Tournament...

Way good week this week! Had loads of things go good for us and I had two splits this week. Monday we went to Tsena Sabotsy and I bought a bunch of soccer stuff for the tournament on Saturday. I bought a shirt, shorts, socks, and cleats. I got ripped off hardcore on all the stuff except the cleats. I was pretty proud of those actually. They are pretty good cleats and the lady wanted 70,000A for them which is super expensive but I got it down to 35,000A which is a normal price. All the Malagasies want to do is rip white people off. That is their purpose. And we bought two rabbits for our soiree and that was way cool. We bought two, and we'll they were alive when we picked them out. But obviously we didn't want to have two live rabbits in our house until our soiree so we asked them to kill the rabbits. They have obviously done that many times before. It was cool to watch though for sure. Elder Kelsch had never seen anything like that before so it was kinda funny. But basically the rabbit went from alive to just meat and bones in about 10 seconds. It was actually way tasty too. I think today we might have guinea pig but I'm not sure.

Tuesday was Elder Razakamandimby's birthday. We got invited over to the Tolman's house, the missionary couple here. And we had the best food ever. It was so good. And now I'm going to blow your minds. The mission has changed me completely... They gave us desert; ice cream. I ate it........ and I liked it. Never thought you'd hear that from me huh? After that I went on a split with Elder Morse from my group. We had a bap interview in my area so that's why. But it was a way fun split Our investigators passed though! And the wife wanted me to baptize her so that was a pretty humbling experience. I've only known them for 4 weeks haha.

Wednesday was a bit long. I was sick starting Tuesday night and I hardly slept at all. I had a fever all night. I had a fever of 100.5 in the morning but I'm pretty sure it was higher during the night. English class was fun as always. One thing very cool, so we have a guy in our branch who was the patriarch in Tana before but now lives here in Antsirabe. He gave us a referral on Sunday and brought this guy to church with him who is way cool. We had a time scheduled to teach this guy, Rogger is his name, at the patriarchs house. Well we go and the patriarch isn't home but we meet the guy outside his house. We try to find another time to teach him and he says,"Hey, how about on Saturday after the baptism?" He had come to church once, heard about the baptism announced in church and wanted to go, entirely of his own free will without us asking. He needs to get in the font now. That is if we had a font here. That night we had a soiree with an epicerie lady that lives near our house. An epicerie is like a small store that people run out of their house. But she has a way nice house and served us very good food.

Thursday we had zone meeting which was way good. It was all about having a good attitude and setting goals for our mission. We did a mission reflection too which was pretty cool. We just started at the MTC and went up to the present and talked about all the lessons we have learned and the reason we served in that area and with this person. It was awesome. Then I did a split with Elder Fox in his area which was super fun. We stayed at the Tolman's house and had a meeting with the district president which took forever but when we got out to teach it was super fun. They have some way awesome investigators. It started pouring rain while we were going and I got completely soaked. Sometimes the rain jacket is a curse. When it rains a lot, it just runs down to your pants and then your legs are soaked. We also had to walk down this super steep path that was super slippery in the dark so that was fun too. A cool thing; we were going to our last lesson and Elder Fox asks me to give the vatsim-panahy. He says they are less active and they probably just need some love. Alma 7:11-13 just immediately pops into my mind. We get in there and I use that scripture and I talk about everything that the Atonement covers and how he loves us so much to do that for us. It was a very spiritual lesson and we felt like that was just what they needed.

Friday was pretty uneventful. We taught Solofo about the Book of Mormon. He is super inactive and so we asked him to pray about the Book of Mormon again. Hopefully that'll work. We taught this contact in her house which is super small. It is literally a wood shack with cardboard set up on the inside to block the holes in the wood. The roof is just a tin sheet. The floor is just the dirt of the ground. During the lesson, it started pouring. It sounded like someone poured the ocean on top of the house. I couldn't even hear myself think.

Saturday was the soccer tournament and it was super fun. Our team won both of our games and will be in the finals on the 14th. We had a lot of non-members come too so that was way good. We had too run home super fast, shower and change for our baptism. The baptism went well though. They were super ready. Then we taught PMG class and I had too sisters that are leaving on their missions ask me about things they should do when teaching and with investigators, stuff like that. It was weird for me because I could answer all their questions. I was asking all the questions they did myself not super long ago and now here I am. The mission does good things. And we went to contact a referral from a member and the referral was for this huge family! We got 13 new investigators out of that one family.

Sunday was a way good day. We had tons of investigators come to church and the referral from the patriarch that I was talking about; He came with his whole family to church and they all want to learn too. Way awesome. We had a little trouble with apostasy with members again today, including from the patriarch but the church is young so it's bound to happen. We taught a bunch of lessons today and they are all investigators that are progressing way well. This area is soo awesome! We went to Be Sofina to finish the day. If you remember, this is the place that had the Hobbit part 3 playing the last time we were there. We can tell they are watching a movie through like a crack in their door but we couldn't tell what movie. I figured it couldn't be any worse than last time so we knock and they let us in. Well I walk in and glance at the TV just in time to see the One Ring melt in the Fire's of Mount Doom and everything in Mordor start falling apart. Of course they are watching Lord of the Rings. Of course.

Well all in all it's been a good week. Looking forward to this next week too. Well I need to go by some ice cream now because I like it now which is weird...