Elder Jake Roush's Madagascar Adventures: January 6, 2014

January 6, 2014

Well it is that time of year again... The first of the year and all that stuff and stuff and stuff and yeah. Haha. anyways... So this week... Was super long again because we did about 8 hours of tracting, which is a lot in Madagascar haha I apologize to those where 8 hours is nothing hahah. Anyways it's been an alright week. Our New Years was... pretty crazy to say the least haha. Let's just say we made presto (madagascar equivalent of raman noodles) and elder quigley went to bed at 9 hahha. Then I followed right after at 10 after watching a lady throwup for 10 minutes straight cause she was so gosh dang drunk ahhaha. So yeah... New Years here is probably a bigger deal than Christmas because it's a good excuse for everybody to 1. not work and 2. get wasted out of their minds. As you can see from the picture i'm sending you guys hahah. For example on New Years day Elder Quigley and I were looking for a place to eat because we had no food (couldn't go shopping on p day.. no allotment yet haha) so we searched EVERYWHERE and the only place that was open was.... A THAI RESTAURANT!! So yes caleb.... I experienced your culture before you even did... get at me! haha :) But yeah then when we tried to teach that day absolutely nobody would open there door/learn because they were all having family parties... and getting drunk ahha. Thursday was kind of the same. Everyone was hungover or still with family so we tracted for like 4 hours... got 1 return time hahha. BUT! We decided to treat ourselves and knock on rich houses ahahha.. no return times. BUT! First door we knocked was a WHITE GIRL!!!! I was dumbstruck cause she might have been a bit attractive so i looked at Quigley.. all he could muster was "uh.. bonjour" and i said je ne parle prancais fas.... yeah mixed it up... then i just said... "Do you speak english?" Hahah she did! So we gave her the shpeele and she said they were actually going back to GERMANY that day... So i told her to look out for the missionaries back over there hahah. So awkward though. Anyways definitely did a lot of tracting though... But on saturday when we actually planned tracting... first door we knocked on we got in, taught a lesson and a return time. Then got another 3 contacts in an hour... planning... WHO WOULDA THOUGHT!!! Pretty sick though.. a family we tracted came yelling at us after we had walked away... they said "we need your number in case you don't come..... we can call you! We REALLY want to learn!" i was like.... uhhh. okay. Fine by me :) hahahah In other news another cool tracting experience, we had more times fall through so i thought to go to this family i had never taught but Aloi had. On the way there we ran into a guy i had contacted a month or two ago.. he thought we were coming to him.. So he let us in and is stoked to keep learning! Gotta love those little things the Lord gives you! In other news with the recent emergency transfer i have been made District King!.... i mean leader... awkward haha. But yeah it's Betongolo (me) and the ap's hahah. So yeah 4 man district and the ap's will never be at district meeting! Woo! Moving on up!! next: Mission president! What? hahaha. But we did have a good district meeting about goal making... so i attatched a picture of our district goals... we definitely put a lot of thought into them. Last thing i'm goiing to talk about is the importance of the DmP! or... ward mission leader!! We hadn't had one here in Betongolo since i've been here and we just barely got one... His name is Aina but i call him Max... don't know why! He's 19 and is going to serve a mission next year... he's one of our best member helps and he's our new dmp!! and he's sooo sick!!! Yesterday we met and he planned member helpe with us for every day and is going to show us inactives we can visit this next week! we made a goal to reactie 3 people a month and find 3 solid progressing investigators a month... I'm super stoked and we've got a sick week lined up with all the tracting we did and these inactive members... So yeah! Hopefully we get things going here in ol Betongolo before old man Quigley leaves!! Im gonna miss him hahah but it's so much fun with him. We talk about marriage... (he wants to get married... LADIES!!!) HAHAHA but it's pretty fun... In other news i got destroyed by a fridge putting my backpack on... cut my elbow, sewed my first shirt, gonna go pick up my hand stitched malambary and.... i love all of you!!! Stay classy emailers.

Mucho fitiavana,

Elder Roush