Mada at it's finest...

Well, last weeks hike took it's toll on my neck. Very bad peeling. Very red. I was dying the beginning of the week, but at least Hamm and Smithson were suffering with me. I never realized how hard it could be to explain a sunburn to someone who has never seen one before. No one here understands it. I would show it to people and they'd just stare and be like, "Did a bug bite you?" I keep telling people that vazaha skin is easily hurt by the sun, and they don't get it ha. I told a few members, and by Sunday, the whole ward knew that "Elder Moulton's arms were sick".

Anyway, like I said last week, we had a baptism this last week. The first baptism for Analamahitsy in like 9 months, and my first. It was short and sweet, just like an hour meeting. On Saturday afternoon, we met a bunch of members at the church, then I got to see the font. Straight brown-yellow water, knee deep, freezing cold. I had to like push her all the way to the floor to get her all the way under. But it was a cool baptism, and now her Mom is wanting to learn, she's been getting more into attending church things now.

Valentine's Day was this week! We ate dinner with some of the members and watched this Valentine's video that a few people in our ward were in that was being broadcasted across Madagascar. I lent a girl one of my ties, and my tie was in it! Yeah! My tie is famous now.

What else.. not a ton of other cool stuff happened this week. We had some crazy rain storms that flooded the rice paddies. They seriously turned into like 4 feet deep lakes, hundred of yards wide, in like 5 minutes. I wanted to go out in them so bad, but we ended up taking a different road home. I was very sad. Mark my words, I will find my way out in a flooded rice paddy someday.

Also, Hamm and I have made great friends with the kids who live on the other side of the wall from us. Every morning we go throw a ball or frisbee back and forth with them. They are up so early calling us. Every morning while we make breakfast, we can hear like 20 kids yelling "Moulton! Hamm!" I also played some tunes on the guitar for all the kids because they had never heard American music, they said anyway. Good times chilling with all my bros. Every day we come home and they are up in our peach tree now. Apparently they were always scared to cross the fence because they thought the white people would get mad ha, we made sure to fix that.

Anyway, that's all for now, next Sunday is transfer news! So I expect I'll be headed out to my next area next week.

Mandra-pihoana,

Taylor


PS- Enjoy the photos of our sick P-day hike last week...

Anything goes...

Well, I can officially say that my cooking makes small children cry now. Last Tuesday was Alfa's (first counselor's daughter) birthday, so they invited us over for dinner. I told them I would bring brownies. So I whipped up a pan of them, following my trusted American recipe. Upon passing out the brownies, I thoroughly enjoyed them, and so did everyone else, or at least they made it look like they did. But their younger daughter, Gloria started pouting a ton, whining that they were too sweet. Haha, I guess Malagasies aren't used to the American kick in food. Alfa told me they were good, but only had one haha. I was laughing so hard, there's another knock off the bucket list I guess, ruin a family birthday party.

Anyway, the parties didn't stop there this week. The bar/epicerie up the street from our house hosted a massive beer party a few nights back. We ran up and had a good time talking with all the drunks. I was looking for a street vendor who might be selling shirts, but they had already left. There was a huge van, with amps stacked on top of the roof, blasting music. If I wasn't a missionary.. I wanted to get on top of that roof and get some crowd surfing going. I'll save it for when I come back after the mission I guess.

We got invited to another dinner this past week, too. Out in Ambohimangakely. We met up with a few other missionaries on Saturday evening and met up at this lady, Tendry's, house. They made us rice and a few different kinds of toppings. One of them was these little crab things, they look like crawdad's. I tried it, but I stuck with the beans. We played a bunch of cheesy games with them that I feel like BYU freshmen would really like.. ha. Pretty cheesy, but Malagasies love games like that. Dickson and I entertained a few of them by yelling at each other in Batman voices. They had no idea what we were saying, but I guess the over-exaggerated deep grunts make anyone laugh.

Faniry's baptism is set! This Saturday afternoon. She had her interview yesterday after church. I get to do the baptism, first one! 8 months in! Better late than never ha. I'm stoked. It'll probably be the only one I see in this area, depending on if I leave this month or not.

Okay, I guess I can try to share at least one thing related to teaching now. I always struggle focusing on that when I write because I want to cover everything else. But we did have a cool time with an investigator earlier this week.

He lives way out in the middle of nowhere (I feel like everyone does) by a rice paddy, in a one room shack, like a fourth the size of my bedroom back home. He told us on Tuesday that he is getting kicked out of his house in two months because he is behind on rent. 9000 Ar a month (about $4.50 a month). He works really hard repairing radios, but he doesn't make enough to keep up on rent. It was a huge bummer telling him we couldn't help him. He's way diligent. I shared Ether 12:6 with him and told him that this is a trial of his faith, and that if he is diligent in learning and gets baptized, then 2 months is more than enough time for God to make a miracle happen in his life. He really liked the scripture, I already know he'll get baptized, it's just a matter of time.

To end the week, I got to shoot the breeze with this guy out in Ambatobe. I was walking on this sketchy path and heard him playing a way out of tune guitar, I looked over and said hey to him and he invited us over. I fixed up the tuning, then he had me teach him a few chords. It was way fun, playing around on the guitar in the mud, with a ton of people hanging out their windows to watch the white guys ha.

Today was SUCH a sick P-Day. We went out to Ambohimangarova (Lemur Park) and Landon and Fox went in to see lemurs, and Smithson, Dimby, Hamm and I decided to go on a hike. We walked through a ton of puny villages on the path and out across some rice paddies. I've never been in a more middle of nowhere place. I know I say everything is the middle of nowhere, but it was so sick. Mountain paths here stink, so we had to hike straight up this way sketchy path right up the face of the mountain. It was just like going hiking back home. Most tiring thing I've done here for sure. I was drenched in sweat. I can't explain the place, you'd have to see it to believe it! Be watching for pictures in the near future.

Anyway, have a good one, next week again.

Taylor


Here are a few more pics to enjoy:

Storms, kids, and investigators....yep, that's Mada!

Well, rumors were flying around all week about a cyclone hitting the island. I was so freaking stoked. But sadly, we just got a little rain (a lot compared to home) because the storm passed over the north end of the island and kept trucking. I was very sad, so was Hamm, we were ready for a massive crazy storm. But we took advantage of the rain we got one night by sliding around in the flooded yard outside the house. We were extremely muddy.

Also, I got to go on splits with Elder Wilson on Tuesday, in Ivandry. We teach English together, but that was the first time working in their area. We had a jolly good time, visiting random members on the road, and talking about college. We also visited the nicest house I've ever seen in Mada. I got a few pictures. They have a foosball table! We only got to visit for a little, but they told me that they want to set up a dinner so I can come back. They're not even members, ha, so sick. That's a Malagasy for you.

Another quality of a Malagasy. Sometimes things don't completely click.. Like in America, when someone doesn't pay rent, usually they'll get a warning right? Not here. Apparently, the Church didn't pay our power bill, and we came home and had all of our wires pulled. No warning. It took a lot of phonecalls and confusion until they got someone to come back and fix it. I won't be surprised if I come home to an empty house someday for being one day late on rent.

Anyway, as I was saying before, we didn't get the full kick in the face from the cyclone, but we got a little. Our house was fine, but we went way out behind the mountain to Manazary the other day, and we visited a member, and found out that half of their house collapsed. It's kind of a long story:

So they rent a little house from someone, who is kicking them out for not praying at the church out in Manazary (Not an LDS church), so they were in the process of building a new house, when the rain came, and destroyed it. Way sad, we're trying to set up a project to get people to help them rebuild it soon. They've been way diligent investigators for over 2 years, but they can't get baptized because of problems getting their marriage finalized.

Our investigator's house.

Happier story the next day out in Manjaka. At least for the most part. We were waiting for our investigator to get home, so we starting playing monkey in the middle with like 20 kids with a crappy soccer ball. We played by this drop off, probably 12 feet down or so, and every now and then, the ball would fall off and all 20 kids would run down the side of the hill to fight over the ball, so I decided to beat them. I straight jumped off the drop off into what I thought was a nice fluffy pile of straw. It turnted out to be a pile of bricks, lightly covered by a few strands of straw. It destroyed my bare feet. Probably shouldn't have taken off my shoes for that one. Oh well, it's healing up nicely now.

Finally, last story. The ward has been doing way good at starting to help us the past few weeks. Yesterday we had a record high amount of members come out and help us. We had 6 members come to each investigators house with us haha. We had no idea that many people were coming. Just imagine 8 people trying to cram into a way tiny house, plus the family who already lives there. We were like.. stacking people to fit. But as long as members are helping, things are going good I guess, ha. I just thought it was hilarious.

Taking home groceries.

There is a really good chance I will get to baptize the 10 year old girl (Her name is Fanirisoa) if she passes her bap interview this week. Which I am positive she will. I love that family. Her parents aren't members, they aren't too interested, but her sister is way diligent. Knows the scriptures like no other.

That's all for now. We've got a lot of cool stuff set up for the next week, so hopefully it all works out. Talk to you soon.

Taylor