Wilshi brand basketballs

Cool week, not a ton new, not feeling creative so im just going to commentate on the pics uploaded

part of learning malagasy is learning the indechipherable way malagasies write numbers

no joke i cut the palm of my hand on a nail and the crown of my head on thorns within an hour of each other. it taking all of my self restraint to not (sacriligeously) comment further on this

we found two chameleons on the path and caught them and are keeping them at our house now

a must have for every missionary with an adequate understanding of malagasy, the malagasy dictionary (the kind the defines malagasy words in malagasy, a malagasy dictionary by malagasies, for malagasies. malagasy)

i thought it was way cool but a picture of a boook is pretty boring but thankfully i quickly found a page with an entry describing the word for a person with no fingers. the dictionary is ripe with quality information like this, and entries such as "white people rice: a kind of grain grown by white people in cold places like europe. its ground and baked to make baguettes." (this is the entry for wheat, if you cant tell) Trying to explain this dictionary to malagasies is insane cause they cant understand the value of describing gasy in teny gasy and they usually think its in french and for vazahas to learn malagasy. so many more white people own this then real malagasies....

took a selfie with Mamy (means "sweet") a delighful member of ambohipo while waiting for a haircut from his relative, Hanta. They are both of the Bara tribe, who are traditionally cattle rustlers and have a large presence in toliara. Mamy is frm toliara and so naturally i love speaking to him. He has one arm. (NOTE: neither mamy nor hanta are cattle rustlers, but are in fact well to do hair dressers

oops i took some selfies displaying my radically pointier new haircut. i ve mixed feelings about it.

we had a pool tournament and i was in charge of designing team names for each companionship. its just the companionships names mashed togethr. i like "Taintuleka"

(note theres a missionary here named elder tainter, no joke)

radical shots of the pool and baseball action that went down

2280 - Rinah

2298 - Christian and Frederic

assortted shots of many amazing church members and investigators. Rinah, the girl in pic 2280 was tracted into by me and te'e and taught for a while 7 months ago before i left for toliara. Now shes a fully baptized member, has read the whole book of mormon, is doing her family history and preparing to go to the temple. Shes amazing. and who was that stellar missionary that found her again...

2298 is Christian and Frederic, who you may remeber all the way back from Betongolo days. i call them lionel ritchie and michael jackson, which is exactly hitting the nail on the head, but they think its funny

the rest of the pictures are pictures of ivandry, the center of tana, and the first ward and stake in the country. this place is incredibly progressive compared to even the parts of tana right next to it, and bears a remarkable resemblance to america at some points. i went into office buildings, shopped at a walmart like shoprite, and entered into a real life strip mall and almost cried. i had been preparing to reenter that kind of stuff in 6 to 7 months, not in the middle of my missionary. thoroughly bizarre, and it made me feel weirdly guilty. its hard to concieve of toliara nadn ivandry existing in the same country. but i did see a pig get lifted up by its ears and tail in bboth places though (by the way the sound a pig makes when this happens is bloodcurdling and i think the worst ive ever heard) Notice the BNI Madagascar is open 24 hours a day, 24 days a week

in other news, today is the year and six month and one day mark of my mission, making me a dead sister missionary. Extremely weird to think that if president finds out abot my extra x chromosome ill have to get sent home, and even weirder to be treated as "that old guy" by my fellow missionaries, who are largely 18 and 19. im proud also to be the weird guy at the ambohipo house, because im known now for loudly having malagasy conversations in my sleep, one of which was interuppted by a fart and chuckle (i was conscious for none of this). I dont know how to say this in a non braggy way, but im just extremely happy with the fluency level ive reached in malagasy and the people are constantly complimenting e on it and it just makes me feel all good and inflated ego-y. im currently learning Atondroy, Antaimoro, and Antainosy dialects, and i watched a movie in tandroy at our ward mission leaders house in tandroy the other day and understood all of it! feeling super accomplished. also im way more proud than i should be of sleep malagasy talking.

anyhoo, ill turn off the hot ego air now.

I love you all! have great week! please keep in your prayers the wounded missionaries and all those wounded and killed in the belgium bombings recently

malagasy has two different passive verb forms "to offer" (as well as different active, circumstantial and command verb forms)

ugh i left my camera cord at home so no pictures

so not a ton new since i last wrote, its still ambohipo, im still training elder Wilmot. its been slightly hard, cause i think its been a bit of a tough transistion from south africa to madagascar for elder wilmot. he got to experience his first major rainstorm/flood on saturday that pretty much obliterated our whole program and shoes and his flashlight (or "torch") so he seemed slightly down about that. with the exceptions of rainstorms though, we had some amazing blessing/luck according to your persuasion throughout this week.

for example, we had two amazig street contacts that were completly unexpected this week, once while we were walking a man working a taxi phone stand (he sits at a little booth and you pay a little money to use his cell phoe, he also sells cell phone minutes) waved us down and flashed a filthly looking book of mormon at us. hes like "my friend left this here. this is you guys bible, right?" were teaching him next sunday so im excited to see how it turns out. then also, as we were leaving the church, these two guys just stop right in front of us and really awkwardly smiled hugely and slowly put out their hands for a shake. the mans name is edvand, the sons name edmond, and edvand really wants his son to learn english with us as well learn how to be a missionary. (edmonds down with it too); we told him we can totally make his son a missionary but it might take a year and a couple of gallons of water first. appointment on tuesday. edmonds already called us twice to remind us. also, i called out their accents, guess where their from? toliara, of course. so we hada great time mivolabola-ing in teny vezo. being good at toliara dialect has seriously ratcheted up my contacting success, it seem half the population in ambohipo is from there and it makes us instant friends.

other than that, we als o got a new investigator this week, a guy who learns at the english cklass every week and is now also interested in the gospel. we had a chat about his life and he has some pretty typical malagasy college age guy problems; he left his home and family in finarantsoa to learn at the college in tana, but now hes out of money and food so he cant go to school anymore and hes looking for work. he had a job before, making clothes. they worked him from the early morning until a short lunch break, then until 3 or 4 in the morning, at which point he was allowed 1 or 2 hoours of sleep before work started again. he made 20000Ar a week there, or about 6.67 US dollars. basically a sweatshop. yeesh. i told him he was right to look for different work (does this count as counciling people?). we're working on getting him some proper clothes os he wont be too embarrassed to attend church.

i got to pull a slick move this week, we visited out investigator, Omea, but the man at their house bailed at the lesson and we needed a man present to teacher her, so i contacted her neighbor, Mika, a young guy i had chatted up the day before on the street and convinced him to sit in with us as a service to his neighbor and to som poor travelling preachers. so of course he agreed and we got a new investigator out of it. later on we went to teach a recent convert, Iando, but her man friend had also bailed that day so i just went right back to the investigators house we just taught (Gina, Sage, Vero, and Manda, who all also happened to be from, you guessed it, toliara) and asked manda if he wanted to know what its like like to be preacher of god. so he went with us and taught Iando. it would have been a much more graceful victory if i hadnt done so much fist pumping. (Iando also speaks teny vezo so im a pretty popular guy right now)

Sorry if the stories were boring this week! ill try to be more organized and spontaneous next week. lots of love, from the undefeated egyptian rat screw champion of the Ambohipo house, Loholona Mankahery (i changed it agained to have a more Imerina infix)

 

above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of The Salto Texas Man

(dont mention my long abscence)

i had a great idea during branch presidency meeting to form a new class during the third hour of sunday for all the youth who arent baptized but over 8 which not only gets us out of having to sit through elders quorum but is finally gonna get like 5 to 7 10 to 15 year olds baptized. and we can grab people from the ward to teach so they can help us to communicate with extremely thick extremely unable to understand vazaha speech kids. plus we dont have to waste proselyting time anymore going to visit them during the week! yay effiency. i named it the baptism prep class

biggest obstacle so far: the unbatized 12 year olds know the doctrine better than our 25 year old members

the ward and missionaries havent got around to baptizing them for a variety of reasons: the parents went less active while they were 8, or they were living in the country, or their the only member of their family who prays at the church, etc etc
ones been praying since 2012

other events:

one of my favorite investigators aunt died so we went to her funeral. they keep the body in the house for 3 days the vezos here "not for 3 months like those tandroys". the whole family comes out to see the body get taken to the ancestral home and placed in the family tomb. resting in the family tomb is a huuuuge deal in madagascar, and you really should live in the same neighborhood as your dad, grandad, and rest of your extended family. theres a proverbs here: one house while alive, one tomb when dead. its good cause you dont have to teach them about the importance of families or their eternalness

we have dinners with the members alot here, but not as much as they want. members in madagascar are desperate to feed the missionaries, they fight about it. but we legitly have no time in our program to eat with them, too many lessons. a common convo: "hey sr noro wants a soiree, can you guys go?"

"is she willing to do it at 8:30?"

"no, she says she sleeps then"

anyways when you do go they throw a TON of food at, insane amounts. and its rude if you dont almost all of it, but your not alllowed to exactly all of it. just a tiny bit left. also it rude if you thank them for it. its a hard situation to navigate.

but seriously look at all this rice

the loaka

sr zaza, a saint who would have been bishop down here long ago is she wasnt a woman. frying up some bokoboko, which translates to breadballs. imagine less sweet donuts.

      

went on a split to elder johnson and leos area #ToliaraUppers and we taught their super cool investigator whos a pro chef who lost it all by getting in on the drugs and women and some bad indian guys who were working in the south of madagascar and framed him for armed robbery and murder, now hes living in a little reed shack in toliara looking to cook at one of the italian places here and change his life around and is just extremely cool and nice and dilligent at reading the scriptures and coming to church and everything. completely keeping all the commandments now. 4 years in a malagasy prison, which is worse than the worst thing you can imagine. living in a nice house here already seems tougher than being in prison, honestly. they dont really feed prisoners here. 

this picture represents the despair of malagasy prison

also seems relevant to malagasy prison

the paint arounds his eyes are because his eyes are infected. "malagasy medicine. often the vazahas do not beleive"

theres so many people at church right now they have to sit outside and listen. unfortunately the branch will never split cause theres no men and no leaders

we biked out to this beach on the far side of town last p day. ethereal, in a word

some primitive salt collecting facilities on the way

oh

he returns to the sea

Letters from Paradise

November 9

ive really sucked at writing you guys recently, actually my whole mission, but i just want you and dad to know hàow thankful i am to you guys for supporting me in this and letting me do this. its been the bestexperience of my life. if you or dad or connor or anyone want to tlk to me on pdays, im always on at 8 in the morning and 12 nooon my time; sorry i dont know what is for you. i love my companion and my investigators and my area. i wrote a little to aunt sharon today about weather, ill copy paste that here.

As for mada, it has the climate like some sort of ancient jungle. theres only two seasons: dry and pretty hot in the summer and rainy and really hot in the winter. But mada is also huge, so it has tons of different climates. In the mountain highlands, like in the capital or Fianarantsoa, it gets pretty cold, like sweater weather during the dry cool season. from my experience tana is always too hot for long sleeves unless its raining, but it get way cold at night during dry season. Here in Toliara, its the hot rainy season but were on the southern west coast, which is a desert. So we actually get no rainfall, just dry oven heat. But we also got hit by a tropical storm last tuesday, and the city just couldnt handle it! no one knew what to do with water, the streets still havent drained from the flooding and all the water in the air actually kept the city cool for a few days. It was there first time in months i went 24 hours without sweating, so i loved that.

we working with the recent converts and less actives here and that been extremely rewarding. also, rumor has it the mission prez might expand the toliara area and add another companiàonship of missionaries down here. Im super excited for that.

if you looked at the pics, you can see one of our recent converts, luc, who day job is pulling a bike rick shaw, is an amatuer artist who loves spiderman, so we took some pics together.

thats really all i have time for now! I love you guys! tell dc good job on his costume, kyle too!


November 16

thanks for all the pics and info about the orlando trip! doesnt make me jealous or anything...

just living that toliara life down here, loving the work and my comp. Johnsons one of the coolest people ive ever met, hes got stories for everything and has essentially lived everywhere. went to school in new york on a volleyball schoolarship. hes an easy laugh and super open and honest, so i like him a lot. Not to toot my own horn, but we work really hard. (horn tooting sounds)

really nervous prez is gonna take me out of toliara. im not ready to leave. But it is hotter than satans counterfeit holy undergarments down here. it rained yesterday and so for the first time in forever theres humidity here and im sweating like a pig.

went to a young single adult activity this week, it was cray; hour bus ride, packed in like cattle. johnson was too tall and had to ride on the outside and got filthy. the beach was worth it. no pictures cause my camera ran out of bat, oops. we also went and toured a boabab forest, and our tour guide said not once but twice "this tree is famous for looking like a vagina" about two different tree. The forest was the hottest place ive ever been and was miserable. one of our members broker her sandals so i gave her mine and had to walk on the bare sand/cactus needles and i think i got something degree burns. jk, im fine.

also related to sandals, i bought kapa pire, or sandals made out of tires. theyre custom cut for me and cost 90 cents. worth it to be malagasy. also started growing out my thumbnails and painting them to fit in with the punk rick shaw puller crowd. again, worth it.

also we had three investigators at the activity, which was kind of a miracle because they were told they couldnt come because they didnt bring bus money but then we heard it was oaky but they had already left. had to bike throguh random streets looking for them but we found them! boring story but crazy if your there.

we didnt get back until 5 but we went on member splits and still pulled out 5 really great lessons so basically #dreamteam

just found out my year in country mark was last week, i forgot just like the year mark. i suck at anniversaires. weird that im "old" on the mission now but i like it. it means i can be confident.

thinking of you! love you! say hi to granma and the aunts and uncles and cousins!


November 23

transfer news is crazy. they sending two new elders down here (leo and liao) and were splitting the area. johnson and i are in charge of choosing boundaries and finding a new house and terminating the lease agreement with our current landlord. our whole pday is gonna be taken up cleaning house hunting and contract arguing. i probably wont even upload pics. theyre splitting the area because johnson and i are killing it down here, be proud of your boy.

im am incredibly physically exhausted. i have biked innummerable kilometers this week in ties in arizona hot wheather. we taught 40 something lessons this week.

I love all you guys! sorry for the crappy update.

i took almost no pics this week. theres no reason for the ones i took other than "waiting for bike repair guy"

this lady demanded her picture be taken. i dont know her. lots of people have really bad attituds towards white people over here. people think they shoud get free pictures, and the bike guy i was waiting for trid to charge me double the normal price. i had to argue really violently with him to get it down. felt bad afterwards. hard to represent christ cause you have not allow everyone to steal from the church through you, but you have to fight with everyone constantly to get anything anywhere near the right price. i hope i dont sound bitter, im just rushed

for real i love it here and i love all you guys! sorry for the sparse communication! ill try to write every week. tell me if you want to be taken off the list


November 30

hey-o, this is gonna be way bad cause no time and no pictures, i bought a sketchy sd card and it  wrecked my pics from this week, WHOOOPS

news: we found a new house, got out of our old contract, made new one with some nice yet intimidating muslims, spent all friday picking up the two new guys and moving all the stuff, split the area and now im working with elder liao (chinese american one transfer my senior), i got called as district leader which is lame, we all live in the same house and for the first time in my whole mission im livibng with more people than just my comp and its way fun, etc. life is great. i love everything. all of our bowels arent working right now and our new house is so convieniently located and has such nice toilets (nice toilets=existant toilets) we often end up visiting it several times a day and the house is just so much nicer and cleaner and has a shower than the one before it just makes me way happy; last house had guardian/beggars that were way annoying, no lighting, no shower, no runnning water, and a healthy population of hand sized spidzers and foot sized cockroaches. and it was filthy. new house is literally an american hotel (not really but it feels like it to me right now) and its for the same price. also, our old landlady was so uneager to do repairs on our house she lets us out of the contract, no fighting! blessed, i guess. with the area split, i am now officially the little lord of toliara south, or lowers as i like to call it. were doing a lot of tracting but its way fun because people are nice and i know vezo now! not fun is the heat which makes you thirsty which makes you drink unfiltered pump water, which brings us back to the toilet situation. trouble in paradise. love you all! next week!

December 7

hey i upload a bunch a pics every week to google drive, if yall want in on that send me a note and ill share the folder with you. in the meantime, my mom has access to al of them.

So lots of stuff is going on. Mission President Foote surprise visited us and gave us interveiws, it was great experience (not in the least cause he took us out to this fancy pants restaurant to eat for free... unrelated, barracuda tastes good but fishy)

While he was down here, we talked a lot about changing the way we find and teach based on toliaras special qualifications. for example, theres absolutely zero foundation or leadership for the church here, and no one whos from toliara knows how to run anything, so like all our leadership in the branch is people from tana. but on the other hand, when looking for investigators, we can easily teach 40 people a week, and if we dropped them all tommorow, we could get 40 again, no problem. so essentially it means we not teaching peole anymore unless they start progressing, and fast, and have the potential to bring leadership ability into the church. and that means teaching a lot of people and dropping a lot of people and finding again. were working with a lot of turnover but so far ive already seen huge success with our newer and more refined strategies. 

me and elder liao are continueing our work in lowers, its been more fun this week because its less cold starts with 24hour tracting and more return appoints. i think weve already found some cool people. We just met this lady, marsheline, who learned one lesson and then came to the church! who the heck does that? but because people are like that in toliara, were working on finding more people like her and working with less bums.

bowel update: i actually have reputaion for having a strong stomach in this mission which is apparently true? i was the only person who wasnt violently ill this past week so that was nice. im back to solids. I broke a paper weak muslim toilet seat this week, picture attached in the drive folder.

huge thanks to all you guys, especially mom for the package i just got! i love the ties and socks, im now officially the flyest dressed person in toliara (sorry elder johnson) im also really enjoying (not) sharing all the american candy i just got. i always think i like madagascar food, but then i eat the real thng...

oh and a big shoutout to my grandma who made some crazy missionary stockings for me and my companion! i gotta take some pictures of them when i hang them up for christmas!

next week everyone!

December 14

wat happened this week:

nothing to odd; was little frustrating cause were  really strugling to find time for cool people we meet in our program, but our program is *technically* full, which would normally be a good problem EXCEPT no one keeps their fricking appointments. so me and liao are contantly left high and dry in the middle of the day with nothing to do because we cant even tract because our programs full so we cant give them new times. frustrating and i find myself getting angrier at undilligent investigator more than i ever had, mostly because in tana its worthwhile to try and work with mediocre people but here they just waste our time we could be using to help someone else. focusing on the christlike attributes section of the PMG. 

other than that things are great, we working with about 40 kinda bummy people but in that there are some diamonds in the rough, theres this recent converts wife whos almost certainly gonna get married and complete the family, and i just went to the wedding of this other investigator who finally got legally married to his wife and he and his wife and theyre kid are getting baptized next saturday! its a huge deal because ive been working for a year now trying to baptize an FLF (father led family) and this is my first one. reveling in that.

other than that, i uploaded some pics and a vlog to the googledrive. remeber to send me a message if you that shared with you so you can see it. 

Thanks for all your emails! i love all you guys! Especially Mom§ cant wait to see yall in 10 days ish

January 4

hey yall, things are still going great down here in mada. this week with rough, with the aftereffects of the news years party still not wearing off. people are STILL drunk and asleep, at 12 in the morning on january 4th. whatever. other than that great week! transfer news is ill be staying with elder liao here for six more weeks, which im super happy about. ill almost certainly leave next transfer though. we saw a lot of success with our investigators recently, i have real confidence in all of them to make it. we have alot of people right now who really get it, but struggle with reading and coming to church consistently, but that light years ahead of everyone else ive ever taught on my mission, who dont get it and never come or read! theres really so much potential here. ive really watched my testimony grow these passsed couple weeks as ive fasted more intently and tried to focus oon bearing testimony in a powerful. there are concepts that i didnt think i understood or full knew that i do now. for a while i kinda felt like my prayers were ineffective but ive really seen them be answered a lot in the last little bit. we even had three investigators come to church this week whom ive never even met before, just decided to come by thereselves, and thats a miracle as far as im concerned.

i love you guys so much. thank you for making this mission thing possible for me. Mom, i really hope everything goes smooth and is relatively easy with your treatment! ill pray for you guys.