On the Downhill

Hey hey hey everyone!! What's going down? Well I'm officially over the hump. At first I had pretty mixed feelings about the whole thing. It kinda made me sad at first to be honest. One more year closer to leaving this place. That was my attitude. But when it got here, my attitude changed. I decided not to look at what's gone, but look at what I have in store. I've got the experience and the language down well enough that I'll enjoy and get more out of this coming year. And it does feel good to be on the downhill slope. Got one year down, another AWESOME one to come!

How did I celebrate my year mark you ask? Well. You might want to distract mom or something before she sees this (kidding). But yes, I burned a shirt! And a cravate! If you're wondering why I say cravate is because the english word for it is vulgar here in Madagascar. I know, I'm weird. But now it's just habbit for me to call it by the french name. But yes, I got pictures of it, so enjoy. Other than that it was kinda mellow. By the time we were done with that it I was tired and went to bed, so that was basically it. We might stop by a fancier restaurant or something this week to celebrate more, but it was awesome!

The week itself went pretty good! The work is still going. We've done a little more to work with less-actives and strengthening what we have already. Cause if all we do is look for new people to bring in while others are becoming mangatsiaka, it doesn't really do much for the growth of the church here. But we're doing pretty well I'd say with all aspects of the work. We talked to the Elders Quorum President this week about getting the home teaching up and going better and he said, "I'm already ahead of you guys" and he said it in Elnglish too because he's fluent. He pulled out lists of names with their assignments and he's been getting people excited to do it. So we'll be doing our best to help it out and make sure it gets done! Hopefully we'll see some growth from it. I haven't talked about this, but recently all of Mada has been having huge drops in church attendance for unknown reasons, but hopefully this will help get it up.

Funny experience of the week. So we were doing some porte a porte and had been kindof a long day and we decided to stop for 5 minutes and grab a coke. While we were sitting, this old lady comes up and with the oldest granny voice you can imagine she asked me what I was doing here in Madagascar. So I straight up told her that I was born in Tamatave and that I'm a malagasy person. And she kept saying over and over again that I was white and I couldn't be. So I told her I was an albino malagasy and she was having trouble thinking of anything else cause I was speaking malagasy to her. So we joked around a couple more minutes and of course I told her the real reason and invited her to church. And by the time she had to leave she called me a vazaha-gasy, a malagasy white person. Haha so that made me smile! It's the little things like that that keep me going!

Well I can't really think of anything else right now. Next time I write I'll have transfer news, oooooooooooooh man it's gonna be crazy. Literally anything could happen. I can't even really take a guess, but I'm guessing there could be a curveball or even a spitball coming my way. But we'll see! Whatever happens I'll be ready. Wouldn't mind Antsirabe... But if not it can wait a little I suppose :)

Love you all! Have an awesome week! Enjoy the pics I put up too. Amin'ny manaraka indray!

thatcrazykidinmadagascar,

-Elder Mumford