Antananarivo Madagascar Mission, MTC Week 2

November 20, 2014

Manahoana olona rehetra! (hello everyone) Week 2 is now over, I feel that during that time my knowledge of the Malagasy language and the gospel has improved greatly. I can form most of my thoughts into Malagasy sentences know, the only thing I need to work on is to further expand my vocabulary and learn the rest of the grammar and rules.

My companions and I get along really well, despite the fact that both of their native languages aren't English. This Tuesday the General Relief Society President gave a talk during the devotional, she talked mainly about the atonement and the role that we have to play in it. The District meetings aren't my favorite because my District is comprised of me and my 2 companions. During the meetings it is just us 3 leading a discussion about the gospel or reviewing the Tuesday devotional with a member of the branch presidency for an hour, we all have to have a lot of things ready to say.

Waking up early is still not fun, rising at 6:30 is drastically different than my summer time rising at 11:00. Every morning my companions have to yell at me at 6:40 in order for me to get up. The most commonly used phrase by my two international companions is "Wake up Elder Anderson!". The showers at the MTC are really bad. Every morning I miss my old shower, the showers here are either freezing or scalding and have a weak stream.

During these last 2 weeks my companions and I have improved our teaching skills a lot. Now that the language barrier is starting to become less of an issue we can plan for our "investigators" (role-playing teachers) a lot more efficiently. Although during one of the earlier fake lessons this week instead of saying Fantatro fa hanampy anao ny Bokin'i Mormona (I know that the Book of Mormon can help you) I said Fantatro fa hamaky anao ny Bokin'i Mormona (I know that the Book of Mormon can read you). So my companionship laughed after the lesson was over because of the mistake. Another funny moment was during our classroom time and our teacher was teaching about conversion and coming closer to Christ. During this time the mood was very serious and spiritual. Our teacher then asked how we can personally come closer to Christ, and Elder Gariki from Tahiti responded saying, "Elder Tangarasi can stop go to the bathroom so much". After that it was hard for me to stop laughing during the rest of the time in class. What Elder Gariki said was funny becuase the past few weeks Elder Tangarasi has had a really bad cough, so whenever we would go by a restroom he would go.

My time is running out so that is all I can write, I love you all and wish you the best.
-Elder Anderson

Elder Anderson, Elder Tangarasi, Elder Gariki, Elder Heiden,
 Elder McCrary and Elder Cyusa.

Mom note:
Benjamin has not sent any pictures home yet - so this is all we've got :) He's not as into pictures as his mom and sister, Christine.