Hey mom!

Guess what I had for Easter Dinner!

Chocolate pancakes! I just threw whatever I could together so I could have food since I hadn't been shopping in 2 weeks.... but oh well at least I am alive, the pancakes were actually really good! I really enjoyed them a lot and the only thing was they stuck to the pan because the first one burned a little... oh well! I think I will be okay.

So yesterday was a holiday for all of Madagascar! They celebrate the day after easter so we got absolutely no missionary work done at all, and we have to use part of our day to email now since everything was closed.... pretty much everything. It was like Christmas in America. No one worked with the exception of an epicerie here and there. But, I survived.

Yeah the candy made me homesick but I was so freaking happy when I got it I was ready to cry! I loved it so much! It sucks that it costs so much to do anything with me here... send packages, call on the phone, everything. I wish it weren't so much...

So I did do a lot of exciting things this week, sort of! we had a really weird experience earlier this week and so I guess I should just start typing the stories than random jibberish.

First, a kid from the cameroon is now in the mission and lives in my house! I speak in french to him since he doesn't know english at all, so that is pretty cool!

More things..

We saw and had to bless a kid with small pox. That was weird! He literally looked like his head was going to explode. the best anyone could describe it was a lot of blisters with open wounds on his head, and his forhead, well it looked like he was an alien from startrek because he had a lot of puss and blisters inside of his forhead. It was really really gross.The reason we ran into him was we were walking down an alley and some people told us their kid's head was sick (that's how you say something is wrong or hurting). So since we couldn't see from the light from the lightening or from the cell phone's barely visible orange light, we took him to an open area. When we did that we saw the aformentioned sickness... It was really really really really really gross. You have no idea... We were really confused as what it could have been since it wasn't all over the place, just on his head. So being confused missionaries we called Sister Lehnhardt because she might know what to do... and she really could only tell us to wash our hands as soon as possible... which was already our plan since we didn't want to get sick... How exciting.... It was tough telling the malagasies what to do since they could only think of money and the like, even though we kept telling them the kid needed to go to the hospital and shouldn't touch other kids... and about seven seconds later he was holding his sister's hand... which was not a good sign of their understanding.... So that was my encounter with small pox.

Okay so before that, I was actually at a member's house and we ate dinner (we only eat dinner at member's houses like 2 or 3 times a week so it sucks... we usually buy most everything, but that's fine since the people here are really poor.) and we gave the dad a blessing! I got to do it, so it was a really neat experience giving a blessing in a different language. I thought it was pretty cool.

So continuing on with the week, on Friday we did splits so I went out with Elder Lefrant, who is a new missionary here... like 3 weeks into his stay in madagascar. We had a really good time together and we did get a bit done. I made hime teach as much as possible so he could get better. But here are some things that happened...

First we went to our first time, which was cancelled. So we had to go tracting. I really enjoyed it because I joked around with the people a lot. A person's name was vola, or money in english. So I asked her if she was rich because of that... she said no and I said she should be if she is named that! Other people I just joked around with and pretended to misunderstand things and ask people if they had 8 hour long church.


Also later in the day I had to teach a lesson but there was no guy in the house so I couldn't go in.. so I just told one kid standing around, "hey you, you need to learn go in the house!" he ended up staying for most of the lesson but by then a different guy was in there so it was okay.It was really really really funny!

So a couple more things... then just answering people's questions.

When I was with Elder Cryer there was one person who had to clean up before they could learn... so me and Elder Cryer helped... which that involved catching chickens! We chased down the first 6 no problem! after that though... there were the last 2, the tricky ones. We had them cornered and they would half fly down a hill and run and barely escape out the other side. So we had to lunge and almost dive at them. The last one took me jumping in the  way and eldercryer grabbing it by it's wings.It was quite an adventure! Everyone around us was laughing, but we got the job done! that is all that matters

That was our week. Now the little synopsis on my area:

The area is goingalright, a lot better than all the other areas in Tana.We are keeping up on our goal to get 60 baptisms for the year. We have 18 to date, and maybe 3 more depending on what happens this week. I am going to go on splits this Friday and work in Mahamasina, which is the first time I will work out of my area. That should be coo! I haven't been able to do that yet, and I am getting tired of working in the same area... We had a sweet activity and build a referal tree for the members... and hopefully that gets more people interested in doing missionary work! You never know though... we'll have to wait and see.

Tell everyone to keep sending me emails and stuff and I will just respond in a huge ginormous letter. We'll see what happens here... and I'll try to get better at sending bigger emails like this one!

Love,
Elder Nash