I'm Not Mad At You, I Just Want You To Preach Unto Me Smooth Things, Cause The Holy One Of Israel To Cease From Before Me

check out this pic of me buying knives

oh yeah by the way, i bought some knives

This lil' guy whos encased in an ox horn

This one with the weird sheath is my favorite

this one was a poor purchase, its a little too unweildy to cut steak with. useless

all together again

ive also had a blast buying and translating these malagasy childrens books

The first one is about a giant who gives the moon to his wife, so the villagers accidentally kill him because they think hes a tree. it makes sense in context.

Second ones about a cocky little upstart princess who calls her crocodile canoe stinky and the croc decides to punish her. this is the start of an unexpected and fantastical adventure.

The third one is about a guy who is born with just ahead so he seeks out god to get a better body. God turns his brothers into dogs.

The fourth is about the malagasy bigfoot, who can speak and sometimes marries malagasdy women. The villagers kill him too.

Our super cheap chinese bike lock broke so we went old school and found a chain smith to get us hooked up. its heavier but more reliable. Sometimes... sometimes the old ways are the best

Sad story: we have an absolutely amazing investigator, Velombita, who is just golden and basically has been willing to do anything to get baptized sinc week one. The problem is hes still legally married to his prior wife because in madagascar is both parties dont accep^t the divorce in a written contract, its not legally divorced. Even thoguh they live in completely seperate houses and Velombita has a new wife and takes caare of all their kids, the old wife wont accept the divorce, because, you guessed it, its not allowed in fomba to divorce if you already have kids. We took a trip out into the countryside to go visit her, but we werent able to convince her to accept the divorce. But the plains at sunset are beautiful. the man in the picture is the village cheif coming out to greet us.

We had a baptism, which was obviously the highlight of the week. The 3 female "ines" got baptized, Naurine, Perline, and Pascaline, all amazing investigators. The two little girls are member kids who got baptized by theyre older brother and father, also in this photo. Saulther, their older brother is also are DMP and an all around cool dude.

Heres Elder Garcia's type up of Perlines story

Toliara. The southwest corner of the Lord’s vineyard. 

Elder Ahlstrom and I were on our way to teach a less-active, Tsiavy, when we heard someone call out from the side of the road, “Elders!” We were startled and stopped our bikes to talk with him. His name was Raphael, and he was baptized around 2012. He was a less-active member of the church, but he wanted to come back. He just needed someone to visit him. He was walking with his girlfriend, Perline, and she was also interested to learn. We set up a program with them, and the next week we came back and taught them together. 

To our surprise, the next week they came to church together! They were already keeping all of their commitments: praying about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith, reading  the Book of Mormon, and coming to church. Their faith started to grow. Elder Ahlstrom was transferred to Ambohibao and Elder McCrary came in his stead. Raphael changed some things in his life and came back to full activity, receiving a calling to become the teacher of Elder’s Quorum. He gives wonderful lessons. Perline started to read the Book of Mormon, and it helped her to gain a comprehensive testimony. 

She was interviewed for baptism—but she failed her baptismal interview. She and Raphael live in the same apartment complex, and are next door neighbors. They aren’t living together, but they are living very close together. The Law of Chastity, which we thought we had ironed out and solved for them weeks earlier, was still a problem. We taught it again, and they committed to live it. She was interviewed again, and she passed. She was baptized two days ago, and confirmed a full member yesterday. They were both so happy at the baptism and after she was confirmed. They are a great couple that one day we hope will one day get legally married, live in righteousness, and go to the temple to be sealed for time and all eternity. That is what missionary work is all about, helping these people to have faith, repent, be baptized, and endure to the end. Raphael and Perline are off to a great start.  What a joy and a blessing it is to bring souls to our Father in Heaven.

the dirtiest, most annoying, but also cutest pack of kids in toliara. its impossible to teach lessons when theyre in the neighborhood, they just wont shut up.

a video of the said pack of kids. my voice is really annoying in this for some reason? i hope thats not what i always sound like. sorry for changing the camera orientation part way through but i repented.

Toliara pixxx

Our English calss in Toliara. Theyre great, but i miss the giant one i taught for a year straight in Tana

We helped a lady mash up her flour #service

packages from mom and supplies from Tana. Thanks Mom! I love you much more than my face betrays in this picture.

Miscellaneous pictures of Toliara

Garcia 2.0, or, Garisia, 20, Manome Ny Filizantsara

So heres the deal:

Ambohipo is past and gone. They whitewashed it, so that means even Elder Te'e left to a different area and they got two new missionaries. What does that mean for me? I got shipped down to Toliara, a port city of 150,000 on the southwestern tip of madagascar on the dge of the desert that dominates this province. Even weirder than that, im hooking up with my prior companion, Elder Garcia, for round 2. As our mission president said, were gonna light the place on fire.

So Toliara is a place with a lot of personality, being so far from the capital. its an extremely un european place, unlike tana where you can often see the french influence. most people live in huts made of dried grasses and reeds, and theres i think two gas stations in town, which are pretty much the height of society here. I think the most startling thing is the almost complete abscence of cars, the entire city is populated by bikes and pos pos, a rick shaw pulled by a bike. the other options are real rick shaws, 18 wheelers and ATVs. So i am, finally, a real missionary. i bike places. its cool. and by cool, i mean its really frickng hot. hot like a costal desert city in southwestern madagascar.

Also, have you ever tried biking through sand in the middle of a windstorm? it sucks (actually, it blows). but otherwise, the bikes are sooooo much better than dealing with walking and public tansportation in tana.

Really, Toliara is just a beautiful and amazing places and the wether is generally so nice. Im really just in paradise. Plus, more importantly, the work goes really well here. We have so many amazing members and investigators. The branch is really young here, just 4 years old, and we had about 88 people at sacrament meeting last week. Its quite the experience, cause we have no resources and were kinda just on our own out here.But we have the entire city to ourselves to teach and help and its been so amazing. The people are so friendly and humble. "tracting" here just means choosing what house you want to go into. you knock, and they say come in without even looking to see who it is.

here ill copy and paste a story elder garcia wrote up:

Toliara rocks on.

We had a miracle this week. It was truly unbelievable. We had a time with
these two people, Andre and Evelyn, at five o' clock, but we showed up and
they weren't there. So then the classic question...what do we do now? My
failproof answer: tract. So we went over to the next door on the left where
a woman was selling cuts of goat meat in her yard. Her name was Augustine
and she told us her husband was going to be home in thirty minutes. So we
deicded to teach and contact her until her husband would get home. We had
member help with us, a guy named Rostin who helps us all the time, and so
we did. At about 5:50 her husband Velombita showed up and so we talked to
them for about ten minutes. They are Roman Orthodox and he works as a part
time guardian and plus driver. They have several young children and are a
lovely family. We taught them that they should pray and ask God about the
truthfulness of the message and that they should read the pamphlet and that
they should really come to church. And they promised to. But people always
promise to come to church and most of the time they don't. We had to get to
another time at 6 so we left it at that.

That Sunday, just two days later, I look over to my left and Velombita is
sitting there! He came to church having learned for ten minutes! His wife
couldn't make it that day, but she promised to come next week. He stayed
the entire time and in Elder's Quorum, near the end, he said, "You know, I
just love this church and I want you all to know that if it is God's will I
will be here every Sunday, and I want to walk with you all and come close
to Jesus." It was so beautiful. We had some spare time last night so we
went to teach them again and we taught them the 1st lesson in its entirety.
They understand so much already that wasn't clear and it looks like it is
only unward and upward from here. They are excited about coming to church
this Sunday, getting ready to get legally married and getting baptized. A
testimony to me that the elect are just waiting to hear the word before
they will accept it, and that there are those who are kept from the truth,
only because they know not where to find it.

Elders Garcia and McCrary
Toliara

Totally true. Thankfully Garcia is better at writing about spiritual stuff than me.

probably my favorite thing about toliara is that the population is almost entirely vezo, with some other southern tribes like Mahafaly or Antainosy mixed in, plus your occasional Betsilao. But there's almost no merinas, the big tribe in the capital whose dialect is "official" malagasy,(the fact that they won a big war a long time ago might have something to do with it). Anyways, vezos have a bit of a tempestuous relationships with merinas, or as they call them "amban'ny andro" (beneath the day).  Vezos think all merinas are arrogant and they hate theyre dialect. Its funny, cause what vezos always say is that vezos dont hate merinas, but merinas really hate vezos and the vezos are just reacting. but during my year in tana i dont think i ever heard a merina so much as mention the vezo tribe.  So because of that, vezos really like to speak in theyre dialect and dont appreciate people speaking in "teny amban'ny andro" so ive been having a blast learning teny vezo, its really fun.when i used to take notes on new words, it would just be "duck=kanakana" but now i have to make a whole chart like "duck=kanakana(amban'ny andro) or garaday (vezo)". i said "youre all still crazy" to a group of kids the other day and realized that none of the words were the same as how i would have said it two weeks ago (mbola adaladala ianareo rehetra vs mbo gegigegy rozy jiaby)

the hard part of living with all the vezos is that being so far from the capital people are way more into the traditions and fombas down here. mostly thats cool, especially when your tracting, because a fomba malala-ing vezo would never turn away a visitor, but it makes helping people get married really hard. Probably the single biggest obstacle to the work in madagascar is that you can baptize some one who isnt legally married, or vita soratra (finished writing). And in mada, its really hard to get vita soratra, you have to find or make a copy of your birth certificate, and most people dont even know what year they were born, and that always takes money, sometimes a long trip to your birth town, and often times a little bribery. then you have to pay a fat 20,000AR to the government, while most people dont have two pennies to rub together. i talked to a guy this week who was renting his (rather nice) grass hut for 25,000 AR a month, or about 8 US dollars. But to make all this even harder is the problem of vita fomba gasy (finished in the way of the malagasy)

Here in Toliara, since people are much more set in the old fombas, it is absolutely taboo to get vita soratra, or vita vazaha (finished white guy style) before you are finished vita gasy, which is even harded than getting vita soratra. To be vita fomba gasy, and specifically fomba vezo, you must complete three steps

1 Hitako Maso: the people must see you going together and living together. someone who is not your family must call you "mpivady" (spouses). this step is easily completed

2 Fividian'ny Omby: The big one. you must purchase a cow for the bride's parents. this is almost impossible as most cows run in the miullions of ariary. together the family gets together and eats the cow. the meat of the rump is given to the parents of the bride, as it is the right of the eldest man present at any occasion to eat the meat of the rear of the animal. sometimes weddings are called vodin'ny onjy (the goat butt)

3 Sorona Ankizy (child sacrifice....kidding! it means sacrifice for the the children) Next, the couple must go to the ombiasa (witch doctor) and get a sacrifice of a type of animal,according to when theyre children were born, to remove the curses from their heads. if they still have not had kids, they have to go to the ombiasa to remove the cuurses from their children coming in the future. this is also very expensive.

and so it is very hard to get married in toliara. most people just kind of live together and have a family with vague plans of buying a cow when money suddenly falls into their lap out of no where. And we have the pleasant task of either helping them save up a bunch of money on rick shaw puller salary or risk the condemnation of their families by just going for the soratra. thats life tho

We went ot the catholic book store today. it was great. I love nuns, theyre so nice, especially compared to your average 25 year old drunk cyclist trying to cut you off. Nuns make the world a better place, and even though one of our investigators left town the week of her scheduled baptism to attend a catholic nun jamboree in Fianarantsoa, im not even mad. one more nun will do my soul good.

i got some time, so ill actually include some pictures and explanatyions this time

 

this is what Toliara largely looks like

we told these kids we were gonna row back to america

 the wildlife here is pretty great. lots of geckos and big spiders and some crabs. lots of people raise goats, i almost was attacked by a stampede of a herd of them once. the roads are very commonly populated by carts pulled by cows. The insect life is also amazing a very different from what ive seen before. tried to get a pic o this praying mantis but my camera wouldn't focus

Black Nadia is the Lady Gaga of mada and she personally founded this salon in toliara garcia got his hair washed at. walking into a building this lux was a weird experience

i climbed a thing

our house

garcia and i bought a chicken and brought it to an investigators house to kill clean cook and eat it

the killing video (BLOOD WARNING)

The post meal traditional vezo dance video

 i actually learned the male part of this dance, but i forgot to ask someone to film it. Nohirina said that my father must have secretly been vezo.

I guess this is goodbye to everyone from your boy in paradise

Apoplectically apologetic

its been really hard for me (as you might have noticed) to write blog posts for a while, which is as much due to my own laziness and inability to prioritize as well as the circumstances. so in oncve sense, i apologize, but in a nother sense, its a worthless apology because allthough i realize im a bad communicator and im treating you all unfairly by keeping the radio silence i dont really have great desire to change. Frankly i dont really enjoy writing about my life or expriences unless i can do it in a format i enjoy and can feel semi proud of, like the blog. but this also makes it harder and takes time. Si Ive resolved to write... a serious family email... (i hope you appreciate what a sacrifice this is to me but lets be real, i should stop whining)

The Comp: Elder Te'e is from Tonga and tells me he has a reputation as being one of the skinniest tongans ever. dudes about the same height as me but with about 10x as much muscle, so that tells you whats normal for tongans. hes about a year and a half into the mission and had to learn malagasy through english, which is very much his second language. very impressive. He is suuuuper quiet and passive though, but a really good missionary. you just have to get him going first. im not sure if this has been good or bad for me, as im sure you all know i dont exactly like making descisions or being disciplined or taking initiative.... but im essentially (trying to) doing all of that now. Interesting thing about him, hes super mahay-dalana, he can see a path one and have it memorized and mapped out immeadiately i think he knows the arra better than i do already. Also an enormous reserve of innate cleverness, he told me he just learned to play chess last transfer but he is insanely good at it. you can tell he doesnt really have an overall strategy but the mans logistics are perfect. he will not once make a mistake or not see something. you never get something for free from him. 

The Area: Still Ambohipo, still strong. Our ward is absolutely fantastic and ive made a lot of good friends here. Ive also seen baptized or baptized 4 people here so far, all just amazingly strong members now. Our Bishop is probably the best bishop in all of madagascar, just saying. We also have 2 families ive been working with since i first got here, both have made amazing progress and overcome alot and i really want to get them baptized before i leave. with some luck they might make it. Ive already told you a little about both of them, the couples are Nalia and Alex and Haja and Sonja. both are waiting to get legally married before they can be baptized (no one here is legally married). The problem with nalia and alex is they had some marital issues and money problems but weve worked that out and haja and sonja had a whole bunch of stuff come up (2 deaths, a hospitalization, a fight with the power company down here...etc.) Now theyre ready but waiting on the signature of Hajas boss for the marriage. In madagascar, if your a soldier youre not allowed to get legally married until your boss signs of on it... which usually takes several years cause you not allowed to push him towards doing it and it has to be submitted by form and go through all this bureaucracy and most of the time the boss isnt even in town anyways. Hajas boss has been in Toliara for months now... maybe i can get garcia to contact him for us.

Me: six-foot-two in heels. I had to take a sixk day yesterday which im happy to report has only been my second on the mission. i mostly read CS Lewis and walked the trail of tears ie the dozen or so yards between my bed and the bathroom. Doing better now. Trying to be more disciplined and more proactive in learning the language. i learned a lot of proverbs (ohabolana) and riddles (ankamantatra) and slang (teny bandy) this week and its been super fun. i also gave one of the talks at the baptism this last saturday, which was pretty darn intimidating. i went up confident cause i love public speaking but what i learned was i love public speaking in english. in malagasy i get the flutters and the locked throat and the red face that people always talk about and frankly it wasnt enjoyable. ive always loved manipulating the english language and i felt like my little painters brush was replaced with this unweildy massive log. But aside from speech giving (kabary) i love malagasy and im getting really comfortable in it. I still have so much to learn and still talk awkwardly but i get along alright. Ive said before talking a second language is like trying to talk around a wet sock in your mouth, and its still like that. But i ve gotten much better at wet sock talking. I think its like swimming, when you first jump in its terrible but as you go one you become skillfull and talented and its even a joy. But its never as natural as running, especially with something as alien as malagasy. I love madagascarand i love the mission, and im very happy. Writing this has made me self rflective though, so sorry for the overall gray tone. 

Well that was pallid and flavorless but at least i got some info out to you guys this week! I love you all

Elder McCrary, ny anarako

By the way, i should tell you guys the history of my name in madagascar

at first, i went by McCrary, but its very hard for people to say and read (most common guess is M. C. Crary which i kinda like)

so i started showing people my malagasized spelling, Makarary, which was much more clear. But it means nothing and malagasies are big on names meaing something and the closest sound to it the makes sense is makamarary, which means to bring sickness. so i stopped that.

then i went by Maka-irery, which sounds close to the original, and means to bring by yourself, or to bring only. It was a good name and people got it but it still didnt really have meaning, so now i got by

 

Makahery, which i think sounds even closer to the real name and means to bring or take power or strength. A good malagasy name

i shared pictures on google drive with some of you a while ago, so check that out for visual aids

anyways, rehefa lava ny bozaka, very ny kisoa. rehefa lava ny firesahana, very ny soa. (when the grass is long, the pig is lost. when the talk is long, the goodness is lost.)

BYE

"He is small, and he is french. I am able to kill this guy."

So out of some mixture of laziness, guilt at not having written, and no longer having access to pictures, instead of delighting you all with one of my blogposts extraordinaire i will instead be writing a normal missionary letter home, containg the events of the week. I know, yawn. Please forgive me.

Some fast fax to get you all up to speed:

Elder Garcia got called to this desert coastal city called Toliara. Fun fact: its namesake of the coton de tulear dog breed. Its also the metalworking capital of Mada. He tells me hes already bought a knife.

Im staying in Ambohipo,  my new companion is Elder Te'e, from Tonga.

New mission president is here, President Foote. Hes a pretty dang cool guy. We've already had an interveiw and he plays basketball with the missionaries. Very different style from President Adams. I magine the Terminator and Yogi Bear side by side. He actually came to church at out ward last sunday and I spent the whole time translating for him and his family. It was my first time translating live for an extended amont of time, difficult but fun. Felt good to realize that i was capable of doing it, but also opened my eyes to just how much better i could:need to get at malagasy. Fun fact: 50% of translation is making stuff up and adding your own thoughts (if your translator is me)

so bad news, my camera got stolen again. in the church. at a baptism. such is life.

ill probably wait a while before purchasing another, i have to think well about how im gonna protect it.

PS this blog post was suppossed to get to you all a week ago, but the power went out. So you get it now.