Tratra ny taona vaovao daholo! Happy New Years everyone! Literally in Malagasy, it means, 'catch the new year' which I think is kinda funny. Guess you can't take this language too literal sometimes. It's so weird to think that 2013 is already gone. Can someone explain it to me? Cause I swear yesterday I was saying goodbye to 2012. Guess time just keeps a'flyin!
This week was at least a little more interesting than last. New Years is more of a big deal for Malagasies than any other holiday. Ya know how Christmas is the big thing back home and then things are winding down a bit by New Years? Well it's the complete opposite here. Christmas is just the warm up for celebrating New Years. It was a much bigger deal, which made the day a little interesting for all the missionaries. All the times we had that day were dropping like flies. We still went out and tried to stop by a few people with literally no success. We had a whopping amount of 1 time. Haha. At least it's something, right? It was pretty much the same story for the other missionaries too. We did get the house cleaned up pretty good though! That's how we celebrated while everyone else and their dog was getting drunk. Haha okay so not everyone or their dog. But the streets were in no short supply of drunk people. All around interesting day that I'm glad is over to be honest. On New Years Eve, we didn't really do much. We planned to stay up til midnight, but we all just fell asleep while talking.. Haha. One of the Elders set an alarm for a minute before 12, so we got up, said Happy New Years, and went back to sleep. Kinda uneventful, but at least I didn't miss it!
In other news, the elections are officially over! Yayyyyyy. The big winner is a guy named Hery. His last name is way too long for me to remember. I don't know anything about him, but he looks like a cheery guy from all of his propaganda posters everywhere. Haha anyways, hope he does some good for Madagascar. Things here were pretty quiet after the results came in. I heard there were a couple of small riots and some problems between the police and a gang, but I didn't see anything. So nothing big came out of the elections, at least here in Tamatave. Tana might've been a little more heated, but as far as I know, it was nothing like the results back in 2009 where missionaries had to get evacuated. Glad nothing like that happened. Glad all the election stuff is done and out of the way.
Other than that, not much else new around here. Me and Fish are rockin the area. We now have 12 investigators with bap dates. We may only have about half of those work out as planned depending on if we can get a few of them coming to church. But still, that's 12 who have accepted the invitation to be baptized. Hard to get down about that! The language is still a bit of a challenge for me sometimes, but I've been able to get by pretty well with where I'm at. Still working and trying to get better all the time. I love lessons where we read from the Book of Mormon. I don't have a whole lot of strengths yet when it comes to Malagasy, but reading with decent pronunciation is definitely of of the few. I'm starting to really love this language and I'm gonna do all I can to be able to use it well.
Funny story of the week! We were waiting outside an investigator's house for the guy to show up and while were were there, a random guy came up to us and started greeting us as the French do. You know, that thing where they 'kiss' both sides of the cheeks. Yeah. Very hairy, sweaty, and just awkward... haha. So there you have it.
That's about all I have for the week. I'm gonna get on to other emails and stuff now, but Happy 2014 to everyone! I sure do love you guys. 'Til next week!
Tiako ianareo!!
-Elder Mumford
Random kids that came up goofing around with us while we were waiting for a time. Fun stuff :)
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Another view of the our church building! Coolest one ever :)
The only Christmas lights I saw.
Me with those kids again.
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