I Update This Blog Once In Whenever I Feel Like It

kind of like the garbage who come to our house whenever they run out of money to buy alcohol. they must have a lot right now cause our trash is building up.

Elder Walker officially shipped out this week for Fort Dauphin and i now eagerly await his replacement, the New Zealandish Elder Reynolds. Me liking Flight of the Conchords should be the only thing required to make this companionship work, right? I once said of this man "weve both been on our missions for more than a year and i just barely found out he existed" -ive never been credited as observant.

Im staying in Andranomadio in Tamatave btw for the 0 people who both care and are geography prodigies

Im heading into my final vestigial transfer i just kinda tacked on at the end because im afraid of going home, and i cant even express how bizarre its been seeing my mtc group going home. Heiden has already gone full portland on me, im talking a steady stream of photos of flannels and beards and old cars, and Cyusa is heading out tommorow. By the time you read all this, there will be offical no one in the madagascar mission that was here when i arrived, even all the office couples have shipped out. Im a coelacanth, a streched metaphor i brought up to mention that the fished a real coelacanth out of the toamasina coast recently. Cool!

youll be wanting some pictures after that block of text.

"bad tempered dog"

Morarano companionship of Lingani and Keyes, our resident South Africans. Keyes Is leaving tommorow to go open up and area in the city of Ansirabe with my son, Elder Wilmot. fun fact, my mission looks like the timeline of groundhog day. I went to ambohipo twice, i was with garcia twice, and now ive lived in a four man house with 3 white guys and one black guy, two being from South Africa, one being American, and one being from an island best described as "near Australia" twice. (Wilmot, Iata, and Deklerk was the first house, for those curious i.e. no one)

Sahidy and Perline and their family. Theyre among my favorite investigators of all time, and consitently hilarious and overwhelming. Perlines talks at all times with the urgency of a blaring submarine alarm in the thickest of Betsimitsaraka accents all the while being busy busy busy. you cannot stop her from doing stuff and shes constantly feeding you as you try to teacher her around all the flying strawberry juice, herbal tea, cooking bread fruit and fried bananas. All the while Sahidy is pontificating in his raspy halting manner as they talk over each other, all in pretty thick northern accent. Theyre pretty sahirana (struggling? busy?) right now going back and forth to the countryside to bild a new tomb for their ancestors and moving the bones and doing a the required parties and whatnot that malagast tradition dictates, as well as trying to quit coffee and alcohol, so their progress is a little slow at the moment. A favorite moment is when Perline described the health effects of cigarettes as making a spider in your insides, every time she calls us "prophet boys", and when she profusly refused for not having and food ready because she was just busy dealing with setting up her grandmass funereal, a recent robbery of her house, fixing their phone, etc., and then conjured a pot our of nowhere of cooked akondro lahy (man-bananas) andwouldnt lest us leave until we ate all of them.   

Walker and i bonded over being ridiculously anaylitical. We had a lot of stupid arguments as to whether or not its possible for the universe to have a limit or whether or not its possible for your eyes to perceive 3D images. This is graph we spontaneously drew on our fridge while trying to determine the ideal amount of lessons to hit in a week, factoring in the progress of your investigators, the quality of your lessons, and your personal enjoyment. 45 to 55 was the hypothesized magic range. We experimented and determined it was correct.

 

So Walkers departure and Reynolds arrival are separated by an unfornate gap, so ive been working with members ofr the past three days, the aforemention Be Fabio (Big Fabio) and yes thats his real name. His twin, who is even shorter, buffer, and is just as negative and reserved as Fabio is smily and hyperactive, is named Be Mario. Fabio is very good at english but sometimes he throws out a hilarious "dont camera me" or "they had a big tree christmas"

Everyone say goodbye to Dongfan

Thats all for now. Im sending this to all of you now but its inteded as blogpost, so enjoy your digital sneak peak you first world computer owners

Madanascar

long time no see

and long time no write! so first things first, i should probably tell you my transfer news. I just finished training Elder Wilmot in Ambohipo 2, now theyre closing down ambohipo back to one area and shipping elder Wilmot, Elder Iata, and Elder ME out. Wilmots off to a city called antsirabe, Iata is staying in tana and going to go be companions with his cousin(!) and im shippinf out to and area called Ambolomadinika ("little hills" which is also gonna be the name of my first psychedelic noise pop album) in a coastal city called Tamatave (in the french) or Toamasina (in teny gasy). Im beyond excited, and ill be living with my old friend Elder Johnson again! its funny because we only worked together one transsfer, but im gonna end up living with him longer than anyone else. So im gonna be packing my bags, learning teny betsimitsaraka, and taking plenty of anoying pics of the beach and the jungle! my new companons name is Elder Band, but i havent met the guy yet. pics next week!

...of elder band, but plenty of pics of ME this week. 

ive been campaigning my whole mission for them to make this change

So one of the weird events of this week is that my old companion, Elder Garcia, went home (or "died" in the extremely narrow missionary vernacular) but i was lucky enough to get to see him on the way out, and the APs even let him have a long talk with me right before he went home. We had a great discussion about life and the mission and whatnot. Garcia has big plans when he gets home to grind out a bunch of work hours in a lumber mill and then go to BYU, get married and start haing kids very quickly. >He wants to be and english teacher and basketbal coach, as well as have 5 kids. "why 5?" "i grew up in a house with four kids, and i always felt like its just barely wasnt enough" we also talked about the insanity of Kareem Abdul Jabbar holding the all time NBA scoring record despite never shooting threes (garcia is good enough at english to make basketball interesting to me)

the cousins, the Venuatu Two, Iata and Tavo. Tavo had the same trainer as me, and Iata and i have gone on so many splits together we consider each as as having already been companions (wrote his name in my Preach My Gospel and everything) Ive learned enough of their national language, Bislama (a kind of pidgin english) to insult them and have simple discussions with them, though they prefer talking to each other in their island language of nadoar. Fun fact, their island is called Tana, which is also the nickname of the capital of Mada. ask Tavo to tell you the story abut when he was harpoon fishing and got dragg away by a shark and got his coral scars, and ask Iata about how he t-boned his horse into another during a race and got his back scars. Ive been promised a tract of land, free housing, free food, a horse and a girl when i come to visit Venuatu.

amissionary classic: the coke break. we sat in this little bar area and sung malagasy songs together. some girls were peeling potatoes behind the divide and joined in with us. It felt so picture book, in a way, like the unassuming start of a movie.

I took Elder Bingham, a registered audiophile, to help me purchase the very best (fake chinese) Beats by Dr. Dretm. Theyre really good and i hope they last. even if they dont, they cost like fsixth of the price of real ones so...

i also got a malabary made ofr myself, or traditinal malgasy mens formal wear. this is what male farmers (ie 95% of the countries men) men wear when they arent working. also tryin to collect the different tribal hats. this one is Betsileo

Razazarohavana (im pretty sure i slaughtered the spelling of this) my old betongolo housemate, former missionary and current bum. i saw him while on a split with Elder (T)Ahlstrom in Ambohimanariona, a branch which prays at a glamour church the church built right next to the US embassy. "you the guys with that nice church by the american embassy?" is a common question.

Delphin and his family, one of the awesome mebers of Ambohipo! Delphin (the young guy) was baptized by himself and helps us all the time, and were teaching his family now. His house is notable for being built on a cliff fce, with the ladder that leads up to his families room a few inches from the edge. freaks me the right out every time. they make fun of the trepidation i take on that latter, while three year olds rocket down it like its nothing 

 the missionary wall, its has all the pictures of the current missionaries. It was weird seeing garcias picture move over to the other side. all my friends are dying! im gonna watch ahlstrom and johnson die, then liao cyusa and heiden not long after that. Horspool and Te'e are already long gon, and im starting to get pretty close to the top

i also got a super tacky suit jacket made that i love, and took these tacky phots to compliment it

the kids of Zakary and Felana, absolutely angelic investigators that Elder De Klerk and Iata Baptized. the kids are Elisa, Emmanuella, and Iando.

Felana

Zakary

Elisa

Emmanuella

Iando

photo evidence that malagasy kids are taught from the womb to twerk. their mother was sitting there, clapping and cheering her daughter on and telling her to go lower

caught a pic of this guy who got super angry at me because i walked near his shoes 

it was so nice to skype some of yall on moms day! kids, tell your mom you love her (I love you Mom)