Lovin' the life!!

The weather never changes here. I can't wait to go lie in the snow during my first blizzard back home. The heat is way dope for the first like.. few months in country. Then a year goes by and it's like.. "okay, it's a little old now." Oh well.

President came to Tamatave this week to do interviews and to do some training with all the branch presidents. We only got to see him on Tuesday morning for our interview, then in the evening for a meeting. But it was good to talk to him and Sis Adams for a while. Ha, it takes like twice as long to get anything across during meetings in this country because the speaker always has to pause so we can translate for the Malagasies, and so Sis Adams can translate for a French couple here.

So Tamatave is way Islamic. It's all over, not sure why I never mentioned it before. But we are teaching a Muslim family now. It's always interesting teaching them, we have to figure out a whole new approach to the lessons. Luckily most everyone here is way chill, no one here ever likes to bash really. Back in Tana we got it all the time.

Also, this past Friday, Pikar and Alexis, two Young Men from Ambolomadinika showed up at the house and wanted to come help us. So they came out with us all day. Such studs. I put up a video. They look way young but Pikar is actually 17. He's a pro at all the lessons, we even got him and Alexis to do some tracting.

Pikar (17) helping us tract

During our tracting experience, we got into a WAY nice house. You can always tell how rich someone is in this country by their couches. Most well off people will buy couches that look really fancy, but when you sit on them it's way stiff. But the really rich people have squishy couches. So you know they're legit, ha. So they had us come in, and after talking for a little bit, they told us that their mom has a devil and hasn't been able to walk very well for 2 years and is really sick. They wanted us to do an exorcism, it's weird how used to hearing that we get. People always ask us for exorcisms. We told them we don't do that, but we could give a blessing. So we did that and we're going back tomorrow. So we'll see what happens ha. People here are obsessed with that stuff. Everyone thinks their house is haunted or they have a devil.

Our two lunch and dinner spots are getting way good at our orders. We literally get the same thing every day. I don't even have to order anymore. I ride up on my bike and make eye contact with the girl up front and she already has it on it's way. The girls there are pro.

We've been finding lots of cool families lately. The countless hours of tracting has been starting to pay off.

Check out pictures, love you.

Faneva and Meva

This is what the kids wear for a while after they get circumcised. Hilarious.

Christophe

We got fed a ton this week for some reason, it was dope

Pres Be Vahiny and his wife

Eating dinner with some members

Taylor

PS: My clothes are doing fine. I'm not planning on bringing most of them home though. I figure I'll just give away all the shirts and socks and pants before I leave, people here would love them and it wouldn't be worth bringing them home since they have gotten a little worn. 

Service, Searching, and Teaching...sums it up!

Helping Hands last Saturday was sick. Not too planned out, but we're still learning ha. All the branches met at the beach at 8, and we had our little motivational speech. One of my favorite parts of the speech was when the guy talking was like "Alright everyone, remember to do good today, Jesus loved the beach." Can't argue with that I guess.

We spent a few hours picking up trash at the beach and putting it in big piles. I was kind of wondering what we were gonna do with all the trash, since Mada doesn't have an organized land fill or trash system or anything, people just bury it. Which is of course what we did, we just dug way deep holes and torched what was dry and buried the rest, ha. We smoked the heck out of that beach, it was so funny. The news came and filmed it. I got nice and red from it.

Branch President of Ambolomadinika's family. They make us corn with coconut every week.

Burning our garbage

So our finding has been going way good the past week or so. We've only been knocking on the really nice houses lately, looking for families with people that work. It was kind of scary at first when I tried it in my first area, but luckily it's gotten pretty routine. We also have had some classic slams in the face. It makes me laugh. This one guy opens the door and gets way scared when we knock, so we've gone back like 3 times just to see him slam the door on us over and over. He never lets us get a word out ha.

Yeah, the new area is huge, but we are looking for new people close to the church, gotta get them centers of strength. I figure if we go way far, the odds of people walking all the way to church aren't too high, but if it's close to their house, they're more likely to come. So aside from the way diligent people who already do walk way far every week, we stick close to the church when we find.

One family this week has become one of my favorite families just after a few lessons. The dad, Gerard, made Webb and I some way good chocolate coconut ice cream from scratch. We watched him break open the coconut, shred the meat, and wring the juice out of it. He's gonna teach us how to make it this week.

At church, we finally got everyone to watch the world broadcast they did back home a month or so ago. And we introduced auxilary meetings, they've never done them before. So hopefully we can help them get that organized. We get to attend the first few times to help them figure it all out.

The training is really not even a big deal. Webb's a big boi, he just asks me questions when he needs vocab, but he knows what's going on. We just follow this little program during comp study, but other than that, he's good to go.

I haven't gotten the last package yet, we never hear about mail or anything unless it's already been sent to Tamatave. So if it's in the office, I don't know yet. But they're good about sending them out of the office quick.

Check out pictures. Love you.

Taylor

Alexis and Pikar, my boys from Ambolomadinika

Spongebob, ha!

side of the road bike repair company. 500 ariary for a tire patch. 

This morning watching some guys fish

Fish and rice, nice and crunchy

Stinks to be him

Fabien, mini missionary from Mahajanga

A house full of Malagasies, and exploring our new area!!

I put up a cute new video...just click on the youtube link "Mission Videos" at the bottom of the right-hand column to check it out.

It's a pretty weird adjustment living in the same apartment, but working in a new area. I love Tamatave so much, I'm excited to get to know both branches. A lot of people we visit are already people I've met at church, so it's not too rough of an adjustment in that aspect. But I'm still really sad to have left Ambolomadinika when we were just starting to get it going so well. If there's any place I would want to see again someday after my mission... Tamatave. I could live here. That's an exaggeration, but I love it.

Reinhard got sent off to Ambositra this last week. Just him and a Malagasy, it's a 2 man province. We have 4 Malagasies in our house now, and me and Webb. And the other house has 3 Malagasies. It's a very Malagasy zone right now.

Me and Reinhard with our Gasy comps

Rakotomalala's first p-day in Tamatave

this morning playing volleyball

We do street contacting like crazy right now in the new area. We've got some time to fill, so we just contact and contact nonstop. It's pretty different going from having a Malagasy comp to having a brand new missionary comp. It was nothing but Malagasy for 6 weeks straight, I loved it. Webb is a cool guy, everyone has to go through the stinky phase of not knowing the language, but he's getting it. And yeah, he and I are doing the last 6 weeks of the training program now.

And yeah...we definitely have 3 hours of church. YM/YW.. I don't think that happens. But they do have activities with all the youth and single adults every once in a while. This Saturday, the whole district in Tamatave is doing Mormon Helping Hands and we are going to clean up the beach. Hopefully it's just a trashy beach and not the one full of human poop we went to that one time.

Primary

All my girl friends in Ambolomadinika

And what else is new.. we ride bikes now. It's alright, except for the whole helmet hair. But other than that, it's really not that different from the last area. I took pictures with a lot of people I was teaching in Ambolomadinika. Enjoy...

Alexis, Fredo, some kid, and their Mom

Fabrece and I

Fania and I

Mondy, their kid, me and Jean Chris

Me, Isabelle and Ramafa

Odette, Bebe, me and Josephine

Me, Nadia and Lydia

Yvette and I

Ramafa, Solofo and I

Anyway, thanks Mom. Love you.

Taylor

Transfers, ha!

So transfers came. Our whole house was positive there would be no changes because we're still all new to our areas. But nope, every single companionship in our house is changing. I am being transferred to Andranomadio. It's an area that touches Ambolomadinika. I won't even be moving beds. So freaking weird. I still pray at the same building too, just two hours earlier. I'm sad because Ramafa and I have been doing work and the area is going really well, but I'm excited to get to work with both branches that pray at the building. I already know a bunch of people there pretty well. My new comp is Kendall Webb. He got here to Mada 6 weeks ago. I've lived with him since he got in country, so we're already buddies.

The baptism went way good. I love that family. All of them are members now, and way diligent. If Ambolomadinika has baptisms any time soon, I'm for sure going to them. Plus I can still do splits in the old area every now and then. I'm gonna get to know Tamatave pretty well. I'm stoked.

Pikar & I

Me Augustinne and Augustinno

So last week I attempted to make orange rolls. Kind of hard since I had to guesstimate literally every measurement, but they turned out good. We took them to my favorite family's house and had them with Nutella since we had no icing. Way legit. We used the Nutella you sent me. Then they made pizza for us last night.

Making orange rolls

The family that moved to Tana is the family I sent you pictures of last week with the kid. We are all standing. Anyway, we don't really hear from other missionaries anymore, the government changed the phone plans, so now everyone has like no minutes, so we can only use the phone to call investigators now. So I never hear from anyone anymore.

I'm not having any pain anymore, but we can keep watching. I really feel back to normal now, not having any problems.

The insoles are way nice, yeah go ahead and send like one more pair. They last a while, so this new pair will for sure last until the end of the year at least.

I'm sending a bunch of pictures. Got some good ones this week. 

Love you, Taylor

Here goes...

Angeline and Jessie

a cockroach we killed

Way gangster in front of the Toamasina graffiti.