January 30, 2012

hallo hallo hallo!!!!   

how are you!? me om pretty good. im tired and sore and my brain feels like mush but im good hahaha. so i will start by telling you about my new area. I'm in Antsirabe. its south of tana about 3 hours. up in the mountains. its almost the highest point in Madagascar. its pretty beautiful!! but i guess it can get very cold in the winter. as in like 10°c or so i think hahaha. which is pretty cold. its way hot today; oh ya! i got all 4 of my packages from home. it was pretty awesome. but more on that later. so my area is south of Antsirabe about 20 km its called Monandona. which translates into have bump hahaha kinda funny. but we have 4 different areas we work. 2 groups and 2 branches. it can get pretty hecktic. but i love it.we had a branch meeting in Manandona and the one girl was getting mad at us cause we dont pray out there all the time then we told here we have 3 other places to pray at. its crazy. definatly the hardest area in the mission to work. dont know why I'm here hahahah but Elder Robinson is a tank. he is only a group ahead of me so we do alot of learning together. i think i am destined to have young companions haha but Elder Robinson is very easy to get along with and loves to work and helps me alot with my malagasy. we get along great. he is a little different in some ways but its way fun. we have a blast. its hard for us to work our area because its so big and we arent aloud to right at night so we have to head home at like 4 so we work another area with another companionshp in Anstirabe as well. so just to give you an idea of how big out area is we road a total of 90 km this week and we had a zone confrence. so that takes out a hole day and im still not used to riding a bike and my bum hurts all the time. and I'm a little sick right now. so that slows us down a little. so a normal week we ride about 150km. so that gives you some idea i think. its alot!! hahaha but i am starting to really love it here. our area is way ambany voatra (country side) and lots of people cant even read but they love god. the problem is getting people to church... but you just gotten tell them they need to show there faith! that usally gets them. some people walk like 20 km just to get to church sometimes. thats alot of walking. the people here continue to amaze me every day.   

so another good bonus about Antsirabe is the food! they are like the food capital of Mada and have lots of(this is how Riley wrote it: ove) good hotels that sell food for cheap then youve got chez billys who has way good food but is expensive. so we only eat there once and a while. but i must say i have grown to really love rice. there are days when i crave some vary tsara maso hena kiso. which is just rice and the laoka is kidney beens and pork. if your lucky the pork doesnt even have the skin on it anymore! but the hair does a good job of scratching the tounge and throat if you have a little itch hahahahaha. tonga soa madagaskara! hahaha

 so another awesome thing about Anstirabe is that I'm living with Elder Worthen. an elder who came with me on my group. hes from Idaho and we get along way good. its cool to see how we are each progressing. he is now a senior comp already and is comp doesnt speak any english.... so he is having a tough time. but is way dilligent. so thats fun. ive taken quite a bit of money about my personal acount lately and i hope you dont mind. its tough moving areas haha. but i think im good for a while on that. so my first saturday out here i baptised a man named Jean Flerissa. it was in a pond. it was pretty cool. i didnt even know him but because of clothing situations i was the man for the job. ill send you pictures of that. i got stuck in the mud. its pretty funny. 

sounds like the family is all doing good wich is fantastic. i love hearing all about home. Emily havin parties sounds like a good time for sure. were there boys there!? hhha ooo lala the french would say haha. anyways i hope that email was descriptive enough and long enough. the last week was kind of a disapointment. oh and dad asked me if we had to buy the bikes. no the church provides them but we have to pay for repairs. wich are many unfortunatly haha.   

be fitiavana mandrakizay   Elder Bates