Elder Nelson In Madagascar: It's Been a Month!

Hello everyone!

Dang it has been one month since I have been here in Madagascar (October 1) and for a while I thought it would never come but as we have been working hard every day the time has just flown by. Now here is how my week has been.

Monday we didn't do much aside from going shopping and visiting two times that sorta fell through. But all was not lost as a result of that shopping yielded the ingedients to make peanut butter cups and they were delicious (I should be able to send a picture of them). So all of you who were laughing at me that I would not have any good/ American food here (Tanner) think again, I can get all sorts of things here just usually they are expensive so I choose to not get them.

Tuesdays are the days where we do tracting regularly as we can never get anyone to learn then but as a result of that tracting we found this guy named Eddy who seemed pretty interested. Unfortunately we have only been able to teach him once as the other times we have stopped by he wasn't home so I don't know how long we will keep him. In the evening we regularly meet with a recent convert family and reteach them the lessons (recent converts are supposed to keep learning for a while after baptism) and we do our best help them along.

We have two investigators with a baptisimal date, Pasquel and Natasha, but we don't think they are going to make that date. They are a couple that has been learning for a while but they are not vita soratra (legally married, super common here) and they don't attend church very often (again very common, especially here in Tana). But they always enjoy having us over and learning so we will keep working with them.

Wednesday was pretty much the same as last week; we taught Fabrice who is just so smart that he makes all of these connections to the gospel and finding many truths just by readig and studying the Bible. We also had our service of teaching english and I help a young man from our branch named Leo understand what was being written by sorta (emphasis on sorta) translating for him, don't know if it heloped much but I tried my best.

Thursday, every single appointment dropped us except for teaching our Branch President on Hand Book two and we don't even count that as proselyting time, so a lot of contacting and trying to meet with people we missed earlier in the week.

Friday was again lots of tracting as every appointment dropped us except for this cool college student named Lanja. We just tracted into him one day and qwhen we teach him he is always thinking about the things we are teaching him, asking clarifying questions. We have high hopes for him. We also had our weekly meeting with our Branch Mission Leader, getting him up to date on things and giving him the people we want to focus on.

Saturday, sigh this is being to be a pattern, every appointment again dropped us. We did have our meeting with the Branch President but Elder Webb got us there an hour early because he wasn't sure on the time so we were at the church for two hours but it is ok because we got to have that meeting.

Sunday was just wonderful. It was fast sunday, had a ton of member help, and we got most of our appointments and an unscheduled appointment. It was so awesome, we taught wonderful people, and for every appointment we walked between two areas that are seperated by about ten minutes of walking but it was still good. As we were walking up the hill to our house we were a bit hurried as it had been fast sunday and we had been working out in the heat with a lot of walking so you could say we were a bit thirsty. Elder Webb didn't even wait for me as I was grabbing my water, he just went straight to the room, ended his fast, and got some water.

We are doing well, Elder Webb is just great. He is an awesome person and missionary who is super smart works hard. He often keeps us entertained by tell stories of adventures with previous companions I can't wait for some of those to happen to me, having stories are the best.

Its weird and I never thought it would happen but I am improving in my ability to understand and speak this language. It is just a basic concept of what is being talked about and sometimes it still sounds like gibberish but in lessons I can for the most part know what is being talked about even if I don't understand every work.

I think that is about it, thank you mom for sending the pictures of things going on, it makes it a lot more enjoyable to have a reference of what you write about and it's good to see my brothers.

Hope you all are doing well, have an enjoyable and safe week,

-Elder Nelson