Chicken Blood

Hey hey everyone! How's life hanging out there?

This week was pretty good. Kinda average really. It was one of those weeks where there really isn't a whole lot of interesting stuff going on. But I'll try to dig up a few things here. The work is still going. Still not as fast as we'd like, but I'd say we're doing pretty good for being here in the swass. Elder Walker is still behaving. I have to beat him with a stick every once and a while, but it's getting better. Haha juste a blague! We're still doing well out here and having a fun time. It's still dry out here. It's to the point were you can walk on any path and not even get the tip of your feet wet! So crazy. So yep :) Oh and my birthday is coming up this week. I'm turning 21. Weird........... I'll try to celebrate it the best I can! We'll figure out something.

Oh! So you know how I've been really boring about not eating all the crazy weird food here! Well I took a little step out my comfort zone this week. More like a giant leap. So we were going about our business, no appointments at the time so we were just going around and talking to people and we come across a street vendor selling baked chicken blood. So being the adventurous missionaries we are we decided to try it. Elder Walker was first and he was able to get it down but said it wasn't very good. And then I tried it. And at that point we had a big crowd gathered around us out of nowhere. They have it it sliced up and shaped like brownies. I took one and bit into it. Nothing can really describe it best... It was flubbery... Cold... And when I bit into it a bunch of salty water squirted out in my mouth. I was not able to get any of it down, I had to spit it out or I would've lost my lunch. I was a little embarrassed in front of all those people, but eh. Who cares! At least I tried. So yeah, that's my little adventure in the world of sakafo this week.

In other news, we taught those investigators I was talking about last week. The ones that were blown away by the 2nd Article of Faith. Anyways, we were having a little review of the Plan of Salvation with them and we asked them if God has a body or is just a spirit. And their older son happened to be there and he said that God is just a spirit. But just like we taught them, the guy, Rajaona, perked up and corrected him. He even used the reference in Genesis 1:26-27. They are such ballers, what we teach sticks! And the wife, Noeline is super diligent. They were the ones I talked about a while ago about how we tracted into them on a saturday and she came the day after at church. She even came to stake conference which was wayyy far out there. So nice to see some diligence :) See? Tracting isn't all that bad kids.

I think that's about it for this week. We got suits made! And I got a couple pictures up, so ankafizo that! We'll also be doing a little house fashion show and taking pictures. Yes, don't worry, we're still Elders here. The suits are just way too snazzy not to. Love yalls! Have a great week!

-Elder Mumf

 All that foam

Exactly what you think it is

2 days of not shaving. I think I'm growing up!

Perfect timing

Me and Wootan sporting the solomaso

There we go

Don't know how this happened

It's pday again

Elder Walker

New suits!

Ritra tsara ny tanàna. Finally...

Howdy yall!!!

Hey what's up. Ino kabarinareo?? Tsy misy amin' akay e! I hope you guys know what that means by now. Oh and I just found out they have google translate for Malagasy now! So that should be useful (absolutely not). Anyways.

So guess what!! It's been completely dry this week. And it's been the best thing ever. One of those tender mercies we've been waiting for for a while now. No more soaked shoes! Watch, I say that and this week with absolutely dump on us. Guess we'll see what goes down, but hopefully it all stays maina and ritra. Our week was pretty good. We hit a lot of goals that we had set for ourselves and even mihoatra. We hit 31 hours of proselyting time which is almost unheard of here. And we taught 10 full families. We're also hoping to have a few baptisms coming up in April. So the work is still going good here. We're workin hard and have literally been talking to everyone who will listen to us. We ran into a few jay dubs and adventists who were as hard headed as ever, but we also ran into a lot of really cool people. For example we were heading back to someone's house for the return time we had set with him. The guy we were supposed to teach wasn't there, but we were still let in by his friend Pierrot. We got talking and he wanted to learn more about the church, specifically about baptism. The beauty about the message of the restoration is that you can take almost any question people have, answer it, and at the same time present the message. And that's exactly what we did. We talked about the priesthood and how that's the way baptisms are to be done and how that priesthood power was restored by a young man named Joseph Smith and so on and so forth. It made so much sense to him and he wanted us to come back this upcoming week. So I'm way excited for that. We had another cool experience with a guy named Edmond who has been learning for quite a while. We talked about what he had been reading in the Book of Mormon and he was in 1 Nephi 10 or something like that where it talked about the life of Christ. It was like a light went on in his mind and he expressed his amazement that a prophet that lived that long before Christ foretold his life and his work. We also were teaching someone about Adam and Eve and they were saying that the blame for everything bad in this life stems back to their transgression, and that's when I threw down the 2nd article of faith. They almost screamed because of how clear and how much sense it made against what they had always believed. It's always so cool to see that, when you see that change in people and they begin to realize just how cool all of this is. There's just nothing like it.

Anyways, I don't have much else to kabary about I guess... I think that'll do it. Me and Elder Walker are still doing good and holding our own out here.We had a good pday today and I'm getting a couple of suits made for pretty cheap, so be ready for pics of that in a week or two. Ankoatry izany. Yeah. I love you all so much! Thanks for everything and mirary herinandro sambatra! Tiako ianareo!!

Elder Mumf.

I'm very proud of this tie

Our house before the transfers 

From left to right: Elder Ahlsrom, Elder Wootan, Elder Walker, moi, Elder Evans (got transferred to another Tana area), and Elder Price (got transferred to Tamatave)

soml

This is Tana

Tsisy Kabary

Hey hey everybody! Karakory! Ino kabary e! Tsa dia misy aty, fa mbola traboina izahay. Fa mbola salama tsara, tsy manahy izany.

Now that you understood all of that I'll get into my week :) So surprisingly enough we're not getting much rain anymore. It hasn't hardly rained at all this week and still everywhere is flooded. That's the big story here. And I don't know who did this whether it was the red cross or what, but a lot of people have been given tents to live in until the water has subsided in their houses. We were in one house that wasn't flooded anymore, but you could see how high the water was when you looked at the wall. It was as high up as their beds and everything. It's crazy to see what the people go through here! I guess this has been a pretty unusual year for this. But it looks like we're coming out of it! Plus it's starting to get very cold here at nights. So yeah, there's your REAL weather update, in case weather channel tells you otherwise.

The work here is still going a little bit slow. We do quite a bit of tracting and we've found some solid people. We usually have good luck finding, but when we come back they're almost never there so we have to do some more finding. But hopefully we'll get some luck with retaining them this week. While going and finding people can sometimes be a little mandreraka, it's actually been fun meeting and talking to new people. This week we found this guy who looked exactly like Bob Marley and, mazava ho azy, he was completely wasted. But he took us to his house and he showed us that he had a Book of Mormon! Kinda random. And he was always having a hard time remembering if we spoke Malagasy or French, so he just kept going back and forth. So we set up a time with him for when he wouldn't be drunk, so hopefully he won't be but I guess we'll see. We also tracted into a protestant guy, but then his adventist friend showed up... I learned that night that it's not even worth it to discuss things in the Bible with them. Way too hard headed. You pull out a Book of Mormon and immediately you would be asked to leave. So yeah. Let's see... We also had stake conference which wasn't too exciting. We all just met up in a huge building and people gave cute little talks about missionary work and family history. Got to see a lot of people from Ampitatafika and Itaosy so that was pretty cool to catch up with some of them. Other big news besides that was the transfers. Here there's been some pretty big drama about it all with people spreading rumors and such to the point where it's gotten out of hand I guess. I didn't even really care because I already knew I'd be training still. But some pretty interesting things happened. Two of the elders in our house, Elder Price and Elder Evans are both heading out. Evans is going to Tana north zone and Price in Tamatave, the lucky guy! And we'll be getting two Rwandan Elders in the house. And from what I've seen, they're not very good and English. Plus they're very quiet. So... It's going to be interesting. We'll just have to see how it all goes. As for me, 6 more weeks of 67ha. I can do it!

Other than that, not much kabary going on here. Today we played basketball and volleyball with all the missionaries in Tana and I balled all them up. Bought a few things in 67ha and now we're here! Don't have much time before we gotta go hit the streets, but everything is going well here still and I'm loving life. I love you all so much! Have an awesome week. Tiako ianareo indrindra!!

-Elder Mumf

Tossing bricks

Playing some marbles with kids

I had to squat down for this pic. Peeps from Ampitatafika!

God is good

Alrighty everyone this is probably gonna be kinda short. We just got to the cyber and it's already almost time to go. I'll do my best to get some good stuff in here and to get to your letters. Just don't hate me if you don't get personal ones this week! The reason we're so late is because we had a zone activity. We played football! And no, not that one crappy sport where they kick it and try to get it into a goal. We're talking american football here! It was so fun. We were all drenched in rain and got muddy too. And to top it off I got the winning pass for a touchdown. It was so fun being with everyone in the zone. It's going to look a lot different next week because we get transfer news this week! It won't affect me at all because I'm still in the training program which lasts for 2 transfers. Still got 6 weeks to go before I'm free, but that's still coming up too! So yeah, that's kinda the big news here. Everyone getting hyped up about what could be happening to them. Lots of people ready to get out of Tana.

So this week as far as the work goes went alright. We finally hit our goal of getting 30 hours of total proselyting time which felt great. It took some more street contacting and knocking doors than usual, but we got it. We found a few more people to stick on our program so that's been nice. The training is still going well. Elder Walker is improving all the time and he's learning stuff I didn't know until I was 6 months in and absorbing every bit of it. So it's been a nice luxury there. As I said before I'm pretty rushed so I don't think I can get in everything I want to say. One cool experience we had was with a guy named Joel who's been a less active member for a while. He and his wife have been wanting to go to the temple, but he has a smoking problem which has kept them from going. We've been working with him for quite a while, stopping by a few times a week to check up on him and things like that. Turns out he has officially stopped smoking! And he's been coming to church a lot lately which is way cool. Oh and for his job he was a racecar driver. Crazy right?? He would drive all over the country and stuff. But yeah, it just goes to show what a little patience and perseverance can do to help people. As long as we go about loving them and trying to help them do the right thing, their natural God given instincts kick in and they end up improving their lives for the better. God is good. So yeah, there's my little 200 ariary for the week!

Well I'm still alive and kicking. Still enjoying the work even though my feet are constantly soaked. But I have so much to be grateful for. Like all of you! Through the ups and downs I can always cound on the support from you guys. Love you all so much! I better hurry up and do what I can while I'm still here. Tiako ianareo!!!

-Elder Mumf

Flying a kite with some zazas

That's America baby

Elder Evans looking to snatch my burger

Obviously not my area

Split with Elder Roush in Mahamasina. So fun!

These are shoes directly affected by 67ha