Crazy day, crazy week!

Wow...hectic week.

I guess first off I can give you the biggest news. Marsh is leaving, he's going to Antsirabe, a province south of the capitol. And I am getting Ramahafadrohana. I am so stoked! He and I were already friends back in Tana. He's the one who's Dad I taught in Ampefiloha for a while. I am so stoked to be with a Malagasy. Freaking out. I thought I was training, but I'll take this for sure. And Dimby, the Gasy I lived with in Analamahitsy, is coming up here with Gaul. He was screaming like a little girl when I called him, we're all so pumped to live together. And Swindall is training a new kid, it'll be a way fun house. I'm bummed Marsh is leaving, we've had such a fun time the past 6 weeks. Bummer it was such a short companionship, but it's all good. I'm not sure how many kids are coming into Mada from the MTC, we just know who will be trainers, but to be honest, being out in province, we don't really hear the full scoop on transfers. All we really know is what happens to us. I'm sure the white girl will work in Tana, near the office. 

Anyway, I'll get back to all the goodness from the week.

I had a fun few days of wretched diarrhea earlier this week. I had some close calls. It's a good thing Malagasy's are so chill if you just barge into their yard asking to use their outhouse. We actually got a new investigator family out of it.

We haven't had power pretty much all week. So we've been doing laundry by hand. Not a ton, but whenever we need it. Just day to day, cuz sometimes the power comes back for a few hours randomly, and we all hop on the washer like animals.

Yeah, so that year mark came. Like I said last week, I was trying to ignore it. It honestly didn't feel any different at all. Except for the fact that now I can look in my journal and see what I was doing a year ago. 

We just had the 2 baps this week because the other people need to wait a few weeks, but they'll get there. Stressful story time. Saturday was probably the most stressful day of my mission so far. Literally everything that went wrong found a way to. On a baptism day.

It started in the morning, when we were getting ready. Some of the other elders who were supposed to have a joint baptism with us, called and said that they were gonna do it another week. So the whole program they had made for us fell through. So we had nothing planned, no talks or anything, just a few hours before. So we were calling people like crazy asking them to do talks.

Then we made the bap program at the cyber, which had a way slow connection, and when they printed, they came out way terrible, so that was a waste of time and we were pretty on edge.

We went to the church at 2, and saw that someone had emptied the bap font. The baptism was supposed to start in like 20 minutes. We got a tiny hose running in it and told everyone to come back at 6.

After an hour of filling up.

At 6, we came back and some of the girls in our branch told us that they had been hauling buckets all afternoon filling up the font for us because the hose was going so slow. Thank goodness for them, they were drenched. I am so grateful they did that, but I won't lie, I did laugh when I saw how wet they were. No American girls would even consider hauling buckets and getting all wet in church clothes to help out a baptism. Okay, maybe that's harsh.. I'm sure there are some, but it's definitely pretty normal for Malagasy's. I love them.

Then the power went out. And the generator was locked in a closet. So we had to call the ZL's to unlock the closet. Then we realized that our President never brought the bap clothes for us. So we had to call another Branch President and he unlocked it for us. As we were cranking the generator, the cable broke. So we had no power, and by then it was getting dark.

Trying to give power back to the church, this is how they do it. 

So we set up some chairs in the courtyard and had our moonlight baptism, with no electricty. The people gave their talks by cellphone light, and the water was freezing, but it was done. We had 7 members, a security guard, us two, and the two people getting baptized. Lots of stress, lots of stressed out prayers, but it worked out. We were pretty happy to get on that posiposy and catch a ride home when it was all over.

Haha...yeah, I'm still going strong getting different watches. Watches and ties.. it's the only way we can change how we look out here. The Gasy's love my new Malagasy colored watch. Multiple people have tried buying it from me, ha.

That's all the fun news for this week. Love you all, talk to you soon.

Taylor

Check out some more pics...

Birthday Celebration! We love this family!!

Always something new in Mada...

So today is Tregeagle's last full P-Day in Mada, so we all got up at 4:30 and took a taxibe to the beach to watch the sun come up. It was a little on the cloudy side, so it wasn't as insane as we were hoping, but it was still fun. 

 

going to the beach at 5 am

The best part was what happened later, ha...We were walking up the beach to cross the port, and for about.. a quarter mile, the whole beach was just covered in fresh human poop. Way awesome. They like going out in the early morning and letting the tide carry it out. It was definitely a new experience. Madagascar always finds a way to top itself.

Things got wild a while back in building up to elections. The Tana elders and sisters got a curfew. But we didn't because we're a ways away from all of it. So apparently the government decided to push back elections until August. So we'll see what happens then, ha. I hope we don't get evacuated, ugh, that would stink. I'd be fine if they just keep pushing back elections til I leave. They've been pushing it back for like a year now.

getting ripped before going out

Going posiposy in the rain

the best compose I've had here, at a members street shack thing 

Nasty fruit things

Pretty sure someone was doing something sketchy here

This old bebe had a crazy dreadlock

yeah, that's hair

We should have 5 baptisms this week, that'll be way cool. And also, I found out that 2 more people from Analamahitsy that I started teaching back in December finally got baptized. Way cool, the dad was a bum alcoholic when we found him, and now their whole family is going to church and has callings. I was stoked to find that out. They are people that I never really told you guys about though. I taught them for like 3 months. Hoby is the girl in Ampefiloha that I told you about that read like all of 1 Nephi in a week. She got baptized last weekend. 

The girl in the "stoked" picture last week is one of our investigators. We've only taught her and some of her family a few times, so I'm not sure of their story too much.

This kids name is "Vazaha" (Foreigner) Not sure what his parents were thinking. 

Another one of my girlfriends

Bienvenue trying out the fisheye on my camera.

Tania fisheye'ing

The language isn't too much of a problem anymore now. There's still things I don't understand, but that'll be going until the end of the mission. But when you first get in country, you always have that depressing cloud of not knowing the language following you, on top of being stressed out about teaching. But now I basically just worry about the lessons. Thank goodness I never have to do that part again. I still make sure to thank God for that every night, cuz I know if I forget I'll end up being terrible at Malagasy the next day. He likes doing that every now and then to keep me humble.

Yeah, marriages here are rough. It's pretty rare to find a couple with kids that actually "love" each other. Even people with kids sometimes have a hard time answering questions like "Why is your family important to you?" They just say "I don't know" a lot of times. A lot of people have a ways to go, but it helps us appreciate the people who genuinely do try to get married. But this mission is still new, give the church a while here, and people will have things figured out.

Oh, so I had a few skin tags. Well I've had them forever, so Marsh and I decided that there's not better time than on the mission to take care of little things like that. So he did me a favor and cut them off with some toenail clippers. It got bloody, ha.

Yeah, the year mark is this week. Pretty nuts. Not gonna lie, I'm trying not to think about it. I try to not look at any calendars or even write the date in my planner. It helps time keep moving. I hope you enjoy the pics!

Love you!

Taylor