Hello Mother (and all others who feel so obliged to read this),

I am sorry I was not able to email last week. You see, usually we email in the morning, and it works out all right, but last week we tried to postpone emailing until the evening. But as the evening drew near, the prospect became more and more difficult due to traffic and other such eveningly happenstances that the point came to where the light hope of emailing grew dimmer and dimmer until it vanished entirely. Don't you worry though, as a missionary I learn new things every day, and part of learning is knowing when to take knowledge from failures. As you see, I am now emailing in the morning (or the morning here, yesterday night for all you westerners), and thus, my email is in existance once again. Thank you, thank you. I am back.

And that's why I didn't email last week! But another thing about not emailing last week is that I didn't get to email the Mission President, which isn't good. We are to do that every week, but I forgot. This is especially signifcant because he only has two weeks left now! My mission president right now is President Donnelly, a really cool man from Zimbabwe. I've really enjoyed having him as the president, for real. I'm going to miss him for sure. On July 2nd the new president will take over. President Adams from California. It'll be different, but who knows! It'll be good too, I mean, they are all called of God so you can't go wrong there. I'll miss the zimbabwe accent though, that's for sure. 

Okay, I also have a bit of news! Yes, so if you remember, my companion right now is very close to 'dying,' which is to say, he finishes his mission on Thursday! It's been a hoot of a time here with Elder Raoilson, but every mission has an end. Yes, so of course I will be getting a new companion, right? Okay, and I found out not too long ago that I will be training! My kid... yes. They will get here on Wednesday, and I will get to pick him up from the office on Thursday. I am way stoked! I will get to be this Elders first companion, so it really makes me want to just work super hard and let him have an awesome, successful first area, and first experiences here in the mission. It's way exciting! My only worry is that I am going from having a native companion who can obviously speak the language, to becoming the head speaker of the companionship. Just a bit of a concern, but I know that if I trust in the gift of tongues, it will all work out. I've got God on my side, so nothing should be a conern right? It'll be good though, I am way excited.

And I think that is the biggest bit of news this time, not too much craziness going on. Next Thursday is the biggest holiday in the country, so that'll be cool. It's their 'fourth of july' of sorts. I'm really wondering what it'll be like, haha. If there is anything you need to know about Malgasies, it's that they love rice. But the next thing would be that they love holidays. They go crazy. It's way sweet and only slightly scary.

So I attached a couple of photos, let's take a look shall we?

Photo #1 Washing Clothes

Here we see some malagasy women washing clothes in the river. They have a saying here which I forgot, but it says something about how this country wouldn't run if it weren't for the women. It's way true, they do so much work. I mean, it's the same everywhere, women are great. Yes. But here you see them carrying stuff on their heads all the time, and washing clothes in rivers. Next level kind of stuff. Then they always lay out the clothes to dry in various places. Sometimes they lay clothes out on very pokey, cactus-like plants which poke little holes in them, but they don't mind. One time I used a method they use to wash clothes to get oil out of my disney sweater when I slept on a Reeses once. It works.

Photo #2 My first companion

I have had the great pleasure of living with my MTC companion Elder Fox these past two months. Unfortunately, he will be transferred on Thursday. Thankfully, he is going to a mega sweet province called Mahajanga which is the northen most province open to missionaries, and right up on the coast. I am super stoked for him. Anyway, in this picture I just wanted to showcase one of his unique talents: Origami. He's pretty good at origami. 

Photo #3 Gino

My third companion, Elder Raoilson (aka gino), will be going home in less than a handfull of days. Here we see a picture of him yelling and scolding, just like normal. haha, just kidding, he never did that. He's a good guy. This was our sunday lunch spot for a couple of weeks there. Gino is a pretty mean cook, and he made us some sweet lunches on Sundays. We live too far from our house to go home for lunch on sundays, so we just packed it with us. Before he goes home he promised to teach me how to make a mean voanjobory loaka. It's a type of bean sauce to put on rice. Malagasies always think it's funny to hear a white vahaza say they like voanjobory, but it's way good! Voanjobory sy henakisoa for life.

Oh yeah, yesterday at church they gave all the fathers a tie for fathers day. They said missionaries count, haha. 

But yeah, that's about it. I can't think of much else to say this week. 

Rah rah roo!

Elder Mpihinan-bary