Monday, November 30, 2015

Thanksgiving Dinner and a Dark Malagasy Road




Hey everybody!!

Sorry I know I'm a little later than usual this week but the power has been out all morning (again). This whole week has felt like one huge rollercoaster ride. You go up and you go down and up and down and it flips you over and turns you inside out and then spits you out at the end and you sit there like "holy crap it's already over." That was my week this week. It was transfer week so of course it was a little bit strange but I feel like this one was above and beyond. First off, Elder Koplin had to go back to Tana for a couple of days for a Zone Leader training thing. Then, since he was gone, I worked with Elder Ralaivo for a couple of days which actually scared me a lot at first. You see Elder Ralaivo is from madagascar, and while he is really good at English compared to most Malagasy’s it was still a mostly Malagasy couple of days. It turned out to be a ton of fun and Elder Ralaivo is a really great guy and a great missionary. He's actually almost done he only has 2 transfers left and he's spending them as the new Branch President out in Manadona. Any who, after that was Thanksgiving which kind a sucked without turkey. We actually got invited to have turkey dinner at this nice vazaha restaurant but we turned them down. Quick backstory vazaha basically means white dude. See there are a lot of really creepy french dudes that come here for vacation or some even live here because the drinks are cheap and the girls are cheaper. Creepy yes. Gross I know. That is the meaning of vazaha. The problem is that Malagasies don't really distinguish between us and them so we go walking down the street and kids will yell at us "Bonjour Vazaha Bonjour Vazaha." That gets annoying really fast. Anyway, this vazaha restaurant invited us to thanksgiving dinner but they said we couldn't wear prostelyting clothes so we turned them down. We still ate good but, it wasn't America. That was a really confusing bit of letter but hopefully y'all can make sense of it. I got really sick on Friday and didn't go out. Major stomach aches, diarrhea, you don't want to know trust me. Saturday we went to district conference and then to dinner with some members but I still felt like poop so that was it. It really sucks being sick away from home. I'm starting to feel better now though!! In other news I just realized that I don't think I've told you about Yartis and Onja yet! They were a referral from this really baller family here that feeds us dinner once or twice a week. Any who, they are basically gold Koplin says he's never seen anything like them. They keep every commitment and come to church every week since the very first day. In fact Onja has been coming since before we even taught her. They have 3 kids that are all just little but they are the cutest little family. They are hopefully getting baptized December 19th. The only problem is that they aren't legally married yet and his birth certificate is in this podunk little town. 5 hours away. By car. They don't have a car. But we're in luck!! The APs are driving through that town literally as I am typing this. I got everything needed from them while Koplin was in Tana. That's right I got it myself. Freaking fahaizana. Not really this language is hard. Any who, hopefully we will have that birth certificate tomorrow, and if not Elder Koplin has to visit a town about halfway between here and there in a couple of weeks so they will be married and baptized. I wish you all could have seen the look on their faces when I told them we could get the birth certificate for them. So much joy in one place. Church is true everybody
Love,
Elder Jensen

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