Hey everyone!! It’s good to be back after another week of good work. It’s been another good one and I hope all is going well back on the other side of the world.
Where to begin.. Well. I’m not sure if I mentioned this in an email before, but we teach a malagasy that’s super good at English. His name is Ricardo and he’s a very friendly guy. It’s the weirdest thing teaching in English for me. I find myself translating back in my mind some of the vocabulary back from malagasy. Haha. So Elder Hull is usually the one leading those lessons since my mind seems to be hardwired for teaching people in Malagasy. Ricardo asks lots of good questions and it's hard to keep those lessons under an hour sometimes, but we do somehow. So that's a unique thing for me.
The beginning of the week was a little interesting because Elder Hull once again had some problems with something he ate. Haha. On Tuesday he woke up and he was going to the bathroom every few minutes. I don't know how, but somehow I've been very blessed and haven't had really any issues with the food, even when I first got in country. But yes, the majority of that day was spent in the house with him recovering and getting in some anti-diarrheal. I can spare the rest of those little details.
The investigators are still doing well for the most part. We finally got 8 of them in and got some baptismal interviews done! One of the couples didn't make it though. The wife isn't ready knowledge-wise which is weird because the lessons went well and she was getting everything, and the husband apparently still smokes, which we made sure to check and double check that before. So those were kinda surprising to me, but we set a new goal and we're working towards it. The rest all passed though! There's one family of 4 and then a mother and her daughter getting baptized all this Saturday. So I'm way excited for this saturday! The rest of the investigators are still doing good. It seems like in every area there's one specific challenge. Well in Ampitatafika it seems that that problem is smoking. We have 3 that we're working with to help quit. They're all progressing, little by little, but still gettin there. So that's been an interesting experience helping them with that.
One weird experience. This past saturday our whole schedule just crashed, so we had a little time to porte a porte. We were going around and this guy comes up to us and asks what he needs to be saved. He let us into his house and we explained what we were all about and he wants to learn from us. His name is Martin. But we were sitting and at the end of the first introductory lesson he points to this patch on the wall and tells us that behind it is an idol that their landlord had placed there. Little creepy! So he asked us what to do to be saved from it. We told him to tell the landlord that's not okay and to get it outta there. Then he asked us if he could give it to us. And me not wanting anything to do with it said, "Uhm... yeah. Just destroy it". Haha. So that's your weird experience for the week.
Overall everything is still going well. Still workin on that malagasy, but I'm feeling pretty good about it. We were eating at this hotely we usually eat at a few times a week and because of that the waiters all know we speak malagasy. A man walks in and sits down and the waiters just start making small talk with us and the guy just does this double-take and his eyes are wide open like he couldn't believe I was speaking malagasy. We got talking and I overheard him telling someone, "That guy's a malagasy!" haha. So that made me feel pretty good. Still trying to stay humble about it and work to my ultimate goal to have a pretty good mastery of the language.
Elder Hullskies is still doin pretty good. We've become pretty good friends and we joke around a lot with each other. It's fun being a trainer I've decided. I guess we have 8 more missionaries coming in this next transfer, so I could possibly be training again, and whitewash an area! Honestly I think that would be fun, but we'll see what happens in 4 weeks! Man. My time in Ampitatafika is slowly starting to wind down. I will have been here 6 months and rarely does anyone stay in one area longer than that, so yeah, I'm pretty sure I'll be bouncing. But I'm just trying to put all of that aside and focus on getting Elder Hull ready to lead and finishing off in Ampitatafika with a bang.
Well I think that's about all I have for now. I'm still alive. And I'm still a happy boy here in Mada. I'll get on to some other emails now! Tiako ianareo daholo!!
-Elder Mumfs
P.S. Today is Pentacost here, so none of the good cybers were open. Therefore I might not get pictures up this week either, but I'll try!
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