Saturday, May 2, 2015

Ambohimanarina, Madagascar Week 17

April 13, 2015 Second Baptism

Well today was a pretty busy week, like usual. We had interviews with the Mission President on Thursday, and then we had a baptism this last Saturday. My Malagasy has gotten pretty good, it is safe to say I am ahead of the bar at this point in time. I feel like I understand the language better than I can speak it, there are few words that I don't understand when teaching lessons. On a less holy note, I also know almost all of the swear words here, I will now be prepared in case an intense Bible bashing session begins, j/k. But, all in all, I feel confident in my ability as of late.

Interviews with the President went well, it was pretty short, but I didn't really have any questions to ask. He told me to just continue working hard and being obedient. It was pretty good I guess.

Last Saturday we had another investigator get baptized. Her name is M--- N---, she is the niece of a member in our ward. N--- lives with T--- (the member) instead of her parents. She is 15 years old. Elder Schroedter and I started teaching her a few months ago. She is doing good, and comes to church every week. She wanted me to do the baptism so I happily obliged, I was way less nervous the second time. The words just spun off of my tongue this time around. (Although I did have a little rough start entering the font. I started getting nervous as I forgot which wrist I was supposed to grab with my hand, after a small setback I thought to myself "Well my right hand is supposed to be up, so I can deduce that I am to use my left hand to hold her wrist" (A sound deduction, if I do say so myself).  After positioning my body around I figured that it would make the most sense to hold her right wrist and not left) so in the end it went well. The water was also freezing. But freezing is better than cold in my opinion. She looked extremely discomforted when her entire head was immersed, but I would say that a little discomfort for a cleansing of all past sins isn't a half-bad deal.

The other day while we were contacting I saw a very strange sight. Out in the middle of the rice fields I saw two little Malagasies dragging a pig across the mud by it's hind legs. The Pig obviously didn't want to become the supplement to rice, but the Malagasies tried their best to haul it across the fields. At one point the pig got to a hill and the 2 dudes didn't know what they should do to get it up, so they took the beast by the ears and pulled it up the hill. I have never heard such wailing and screaming. The pig sounded like it was giving birth or something. It was bad. But they eventually got it up. Afterwards the pig was not very happy, and attempted to ram into the young Malagasies (luckily there was a leash holding it back). But I found it very entertaining watching the Malagasies drag the pig to the slaughter to the best of their abilities. One weird food that you can buy here is the face of a pig. I find it pretty gross-looking, but it probably isn't too bad tasting. I always get a little grossed-out when I see the various severed animal parts hanging in little street shacks out in the sun. People here buy meat that has been out in the sun for days, I guess their bodies are already used to it. 

This week we had fewer lessons than usual, most of our time was spent going door-to-door for hours in the hot African sun (probably the funnest activity in the world). Yeah, I don't like tracting at all. This week I found salsa for the first time in a supermarket, and it was a glorious occasion. Never has salsa tasted so good. I was a bit disappointed though, as I could not find any tortilla chips. I had to use some local chips that were fairly close, but extremely different. I have even been putting salsa on pasta that I make haha, I do like salsa. I also bought some nice expensive cheese for 15,000 ariary, about a days worth of allotment found. It was the first real cheese I have had in Madagascar, and it was quite delightful.

But, this week wasn't extremely eventful, so that is probably all.

Goodbye,
Elder Anderson

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