Ambohimanarina, Madagascar Week 6

January 26, 2014 - Tropical cyclone hits, flooding and cockroaches. Prayers needed for investigators to come to church.

This week wasn't bad. We got a referral from a recent convert and he is looking strong as of now. He already has a baptism date, his name is M---. I personally think that tracting is sort of a waste of time, you waste hours knocking on doors, and most people won't let you in. If they do let you in though, they usually aren't the strongest investigators, most of the scrubs won't even come to church once.

There is this one family that kind of gets old, in fact, every day they all age a little. But yeah. We come like twice a week and give our longest lessons (because they ask loads of questions), and they still won't show up to church. We ask them why they won't come to church and they will say that the things they are learning still don't help them. What they don't understand is that in order for them to help you have to actually come to church. Last week our DMB (ward mission training leader) helped us a lot so we had a lot of Member Present Lessons. The mother of the family is name C---, the husband is T---, and their children are named D---, and other Ina names. But C--- always asks loads of questions so last week we taught a 3 hour lesson with the DMB. I felt bad for the poor sap, he had to answer loads of questions loads of times. C--- would keep on asking, "What is baptisms for the dead?". She legit like asked the question 4 times, and Tojo (The DMB) would keep on answering. We told her to come to church, she promised she would, and to me and my companion's utter amazement, she didn't show up. But yeah, I really like Tojo, he is a pretty cool guy. He is also really good at English, and really funny too. It seems like the only Malagasies who speak English are members of the church (probably because a lot of them have gone on missions and learned English there).

It seems like all of our progressing investigators right now are all under 15. We have M--- (a recent convert's friend who just committed to baptism) who is 12. We have J--- (a less active turned active family friend). And we have L--- (I don't think that is his real name because it means tall head, and the zone leaders were talking with Tojo about how he has a longish head, and then when we asked what his name was Tojo said it was L---) who is 9 years old and not a member. The best investigators are the ones that have relationships with other members of the church.

Last week part of Madagascar got hit by a cyclone or something (that is what the rumor on the street was at least). It rained non-stop for like 2 days in Tana. We have a sodding awful roof, so our house flooded like mad. There was almost an inch of water in some areas of our house. The funny thing is that it flooded right after we cleaned our extremely dirty house (we cleaned it as fast as we could because we heard that a missionary couple was coming to check the place to make sure it was tidy and clean). We did pretty good for the hour and a half we had. The couple only had a few complaints about the cleanliness. If they would've not called us and just shown up we would've all been murdered on the spot, our house was a bloody mess. It was so bad that we had like 5 dead cockroach bodies just in the bathroom alone that had been there for ages. We most likely would've all been sent home because of how messy it was. But yeah, the next day it rained and rained and rained, and our house got nasty again. When Elder Schroedter and I entered the house Elder Tangarasi was using a bucket to try and remove some of the water from one of the rooms. Elder Hein then said this (in his favorite English Soccer Commentator voice), "The island man is trying his best to stop the house from flooding, but I believe his efforts are in vain. The water is coming in faster than he can dump it out". We are thinking that we are probably going to move out soon, so that will be nice. I really don't like our house right now, it is too messy and has lots of broken parts.

Saturday Elder Schroedter and I ate at what we call "The Sinoa Place" (Sinoa means Chinese) because it is owned and operated by a Sinoa. While we were there we met two big white dudes from Australia. We have seen them a few times before. They were talking and said that "After you get to know Mormons and meet them, they really aren't that different from the rest of us". They were drunken out of their minds. They asked us what drink we ordered, and then we asked what they had. One responded and said, "water" (which was honest, he had like a sugar problem or something), the other then jokingly said, "I've got water but it seems that it has some bubbles in it, I'm not sure what they are though" (He was drinking beer). We then all laughed. They were loud throughout the entire dinner, it got annoying at times. One time I overheard the two sharing a joke with each other. One said to the other, (read with your most thick Aussie accent) "Do you know what Holy Smoke is? Its the steam that comes from the Pope's piss". I thought that was funny. Most of the time whenever I see other white people here they are usually older, larger, and drinkers.

Well folks, I am out of time. That is all for today. I'll be here all week (for 21 months in fact).

Elder Anderson

Mom notes:

We heard about the cyclone through the news last week. This is the report from yahoo news. 

Antananarivo (AFP) - A tropical storm which battered Madagascar at the weekend left 46 people dead, according to a final toll published by the authorities on Wednesday.

More than 120,000 people were left homeless or otherwise affected by the storm known as Chedza which lashed the Indian Ocean island with heavy rains for days, according to the national disaster management office.

Benjamin forgot his camera cord but we found some pics from Elder Hein who lives in Benjamin's apartment! 

This is a pic of Ambohimanarina. Some areas are 4 feet deep. Notice the main road in the middle of the pic is a river.

Another view of the Flooding.

A pic of Elder Hein showing the water they trudge through. He commented that it is cold except when they walk near overflown bathrooms!