Mission to Madagascar!: 12/8/14 - Suits, Magic Tricks, & Eating Bugs

What's up Tompko!!?

Haha. Mada missionary joke. In fact, I'll use it for the word of the week. So "tompko" (two-mp-ku) means, "my lord". Not Lord meaning The Savior, but Lord like the British meaning. It's a very respectful thing to call adult Malagasies. So when you pass someone in the street you can say, "Salama tompko". Then they will say it back. You wouldn't say this to kids and teenagers. You would say "ela" or "indry" (ey-lah, in-gee). Ela for the boys and indry for the girls. It just means like dude or dudette. Salama ela. Salama indry.

Soo this week, twas awesome!! But sucked... haha nah nah it was a great week! We are just dealing with so much branch stuff and we are preparing for an open house that we are havng this weekend. We made a ton of invitations to give out to people to come and check out our church. We are hoping for some good success with it. We are thinking we will have a good turn out. It is this Thursday and Friday all day. Those will be busy days. Oh and Saturday too because Saturday is Zone Conference! Me, Elders Lehr, Coleman, and Kono found a lady who makes custom made suits. We should have our suits in time for zone conference. I'm so excited for them. We bought our own fabrics then gave it to this lady who's an investigator. They are supposed to be done on Wednesday. I'll take a picture at zone conference with all of us in it then send it next week. Last Saturday we had a baptism and Elder Glazier got his first baptism! So cool! He baptized a super tall Malagasy. He's like 6' 5". Elder Glazier had a little trouble fitting him in the font. haha But we got to play basketball with him this morning. He's soo dang good! He and his girfriend play in tournaments here. So cool!

Me and Elder Lehr have 2 people planning to be baptized on December 20. Everyone else we had to push back because they are not coming to church. But yah, we are excited for them. Please pray for them. Wilson and Mada are doing awesome. They are both 12 and they have been soo mazoto(diligent). We got a new family this past week and they are awesome. So much fun to talk with them and they are already "vita soratra" (legally married). Last week when we went over to their house they had a deck of cards. I showed them some magic tricks my dad taught me and BLEW THEIR MINDS! haha. But we taught great spiritual lessons to them. It took a little convincing to get them to accept a Book of Mormon because they are Catholic and they love their church but they took one and we are hoping that they will read it and know the truth of this beautiful gospel.

I love Malagasys. Love their Culture. Love Everything. It's an amazing place here. That's it for this week. Have an amazing week y'all! Peace Out Tompko! :p

-Elder Mack

This is a little email conversation we had this morning.

Mom: I was reading Elder Snell and Elder Evans blogs last week. They talked about how the bubonic plague is in Tana and Tomatave. You have probably been given some counsel on how to protect yourself. Snell and Evans said that their Doxy malaria pill is effective against the bacteria that causes the plague. Just making sure you're taking your Doxy pill everyday...
Elder Mack: Yes, mom. We are taking the pills too. You don't have to worry.
Mom: I'm glad to know you are protected from the plague. Kind of scary. Do the pills make you feel yucky?
Elder Mack: Nah, the pills are fine.

Mom: What are your plans for Pday today? A hike?
Elder Mack: We played basketball. Super fun. I haven't played since the MTC so I feel so out of shape. The court was not great. The ground wasn't flat and there was no back board. Then we had to stay home for a little while someone came to fix our sink. That was good though because we had to clean the house. We'll have house inspections when President comes.

Mom: Is President Adams coming for Zone Conference?
Elder Mack: Yes. And the APs. (Assistants to the President) I'm really excited about that.
Mom: House inspections. You need to do some deep cleaning?
Elder Mack: Oh yah. We deep clean! You'd be so proud of me mom! We're almost ready to go and teach for the rest of the day.

Mom: Did you guys by chance get to watch The First Presidency Christmas Devotional last night?
Elder Mack: No, we didn't but we are going to download it then watch it when we have time.
Mom: How do you download it? Do you have a laptop?
Elder Mack: We just download it onto a flashdrive from lds.org and then watch it on a video player that every companionship has. It is so nice having it. We've watched the Joseph Smith Story, John Tanner Story, and some of our favorite General Conference talks.

Mom: Any crazy weather this week for you?
Elder Mack: Yes. Oh my gosh. It hailed yesterday. It hailed hard. Pretty insane. It was so cool because we saw this wall of rain coming towards us and when it hard it hit HARD!!
Mom: What?! Isn't it the hot season there now? It's actually warmer than usual here in Utah for this time of year. It's been 50's all week and no snow. Weird.

This is the bug that I ate! It's called tsonzolly or something like that. They are fried but I had to pick the legs off myself :p

One of Elder Elder Connault's investigators is a scout! Scouts is called Boys Scouts of Madagascar. In Malagasy it is pronounced 'scoot' like when a dog scoots across the floor.

This is Stella on my right. She is my favorite little Malagasy.

Pella's cow had a baby. It was so clean!

This guy was so drunk. He crashed in the middle of one of our lessons and then he fell over on top of me. Freaked me out. He didn't move on the floor and I thought he was dead. Then he got up. Haha.