Elder David Johnson

Hello all you beautiful people!

The past week was reall to be quite honest kind of uneventful but for the most part we got a lot done! I still really enjoyed it and learned a lot of things from it. One thing I forgot to mention in my last email was that transfers happened here in Madagascar and I will be staying for 4 more weeks in mahamasina with elder keener which I really look foreward to! I love mahamasina and the people inside mahamasina. I always get a good veiw of antananarivo from the top of the hill I always walk up every day. Antananarivo is really big; it has around 2-3 million people in it and even standing on that high hill I can't see the end of the city within the horizon. I love tana and the people inside! I always learn something new everyday and it always gives me something to think about thoughout the week.

Well, here comes the weekly report!

Tuesday: On this day we went out to tract a lot to find some more people to teach. Elder keener has given the bat to me in terms of talking to people on their front door. I had to mess up a couple of times to get the hang of it, but after a few mistakes I started feeling confident about myself and I finally felt that the language was coming to me.

As a side note, I have noticed a huge change in my language skills since the MTC...when I was first in the MTC I could hardly go a few moments without forgetting what I had just learned, but that made me want to learn even more about the language. Malagasy is only spoken by 0.003% of the worlds population, and just inside this miniscule number only a small fraction of people actually learn all 18 dialects of malagasy. Some of the dialects are very similar to the dialect that I speak which is called Merina. Others, like Atandroy (pronounced Ah-Tawn-Jewy) are basically considered other languages spoken by a small population of people in the jungle of Southern Madagascar. Currently, I am getting close to the profecient line of the Merina dialect, and once I pass it I will start working on the Atandroy dialect and the Betsimitsaraka dialect (Pronounced Bet-See-mee-sawra-ka).

Continuing on this day, we visited our fasted progressing investigator: Lalaina. He is progressing super fast, and is scheduled to be baptised on the 24th of this month. He has set a great example to his family, has been coming to church ever since we have invited him which was in december, and he has always been super Mazoto (Dilligent). I am so proud of him and I can't wait to see him get baptised!

Wednesday: We went to go visit anastasia, another one of our investigators, but to our surprise we found out that she was not there when we got to her house, so we had to drop her. That was kind of sad but that's what we gotta do as missionaries when people don't follow our expectations. We spent a large portion of our day trying to find people to teach. We stopped and found a chamaeleon walking next to the road. It was the color of a pale branch. I was handed elder keeners camera, and before elder keener could smile for the camera with the lizard in his hand, the reptile hissed and attempted to bite elder keener's hand and as a result elder keener wailed and flung the chamaeleon a good 15 feet away from us into the brick wall. The natives laughed at us a lot and told us to try again by grabbing it's neck. But, no matter how hard he tried to grab it, it would always slither out of his grasp. No chamaeleon picture for him...Maybe another day.

Thursday: We had a district meeting for the first time in this transfer and this was the first district meeting without elder latola. He was really cool and was a super strong and funny guy. He got called to be a zone leader in antsirabe. So, he left the previous day and elder meldrum from my MTC group came and replaced him in mahamasina 1. I am now living with 2 of my MTC pals which is really fun! But continuing on, we had district meeting with us and the new zone leaders which was really fun. After that we had to stay in because on the past monday I got 2nd degree sunburns on my neck and down my legs and arms. It wasn't very fun.

Friday: This day I started a split with Elder Meldrum. He is a really cool elder from canada and he makes me laugh a lot. When elder keener is mean to me, he will always tell him to calm down and he will always be in my defence which is what a true friend is all about. But on this day Elder keener and I did weekly planning for the coming week and did our work for that day.

Saturday: Elder Meldrum and I went out and taught a lesson to another progressing investigator named kristina. She isn't progressing super fast but she is winning the race slow and steadily. We taught her about the book of mormon and answered a question she had about adam and eve. She got the answer to all of her questions which is really good and everything that we said was really clear to her. We also had a dinner appointment with a member that night but he had to cancel out on us for an unknown reason so we decided to start our fast early.

Sunday: This day was a little bit crazy...
Ever since the mahamasina ward has found out that I can play the piano, they have asked me to play in every sacrament meeting since, but that wasn't the craziest part. The craziest part was that there were 3 baby blessings, one was attemped. The last one didn't go through because the kid was screaming like a banshee and wanted to go home and drink some water but instead was getting a baby blessing. For those of you who don't understand, baby blessings only happen here when the kids turn 4 or 5, so that's a little bit different than that of america. But that happened and that was a little bit scary but the sacrament meeting went on and all went well in the end.

Thank you all for all of your support and prayers! It has helped me so much in the mission field both in new mexico and in Madagascar. The Joy that comes with working only comes after we make sacrifices and the sacrifices you all have made for me to go on a mission had been for the benefit of the welfare of other souls. You all will be thanked one by one in the next life for those desicions.

Thank you all, and have a great rest of your week!

Elder Johnson