Selman

Well everybody, another week has come and gone, and I am still here doing the exact same thing. Teaching the gospel!! I wouldn't have it any other way. Things are still going great here in Mada. We are looking forward to having one baptism on Saturday. It's a kid named Selman and he is great. He is 20 years old and about to finish high school. Here you stay in high school until you can pass this huge test called the Bac. There are people who take it at 15 and people who take it at 25, it's all just about how hard you work. Anyways Selman is about the hardest person on the planet to understand. He speaks only the hardest dialect of malagasy (it is basically a whole new language) with a lot of slang mixed in and a really thick accent. On top of that, he likes french so he mixes in a lot of that too. The first time I met him I didn't catch a word he said, but it has gotten a lot better. We tell him he doesn't speak teny gasy, but teny Selman (selman's language). Anyways he's great, already comes to institute every week and things like that. He really really wants to serve a mission and is planning on leaving next year at some point. Actually his whole family is planning on getting baptized but his parents aren't officially married yet so we're still waiting on that. His sisters decided to wait and get baptized with their parents next month. I figure hopefully Selman will have the Aaronic priesthood by then and he will be able to baptize them. Mahala and Alvine have hit a small road block and we had to push back the baptism until May, and hopefully they will get baptized with Selman's family. Other than that, things are going great here. It is just so great seeing people change their lives. Last week we taught a family about the Sabath day, and the wife got mad at me because I just don't understand. Things are diferent here and so they have to work on sundays or they won't have enough money. She said that we aren't the same, and that things are harder here. So we had a very very spiritual talk about how she's right, we're not the same. But we are all God's children and this is a commandment from him for all of us. It went way great. This week we went back to teach about the word of wisdom and I was a little nervous that she would get all defensive again. She accepted it right away though, she's going to quit coffee and even quit selling it! So things are going great here. Love you all!

Elder Jensen