First letter from Madagascar!

It only took 4 weeks but, finally a letter!!
Dear Family,
       It's my first P-day here in Madagascar. So far I love it here. The best I could describe it is it's like a poorer version of Peru. Some people live in a house the size of Mom & Dad's walk in closet and they have 3 kids. The most severe thing I saw was a house just double the size of the last one with 8 kids. It's intensely poor here, it makes me feel bad but there isn't much I can do about it right now.
     I'm still getting use to the language, it's a bit of a challenge but, everything is going just fine. People won't stop telling me "Mahay be ny teny gasy" It's such a lie to say I'm really good, but hey whatever floats their boat.
     I've got a couple of good stories so far, first is about one of our earlier teaching appointments.
 So, we were going to teach a family whose bebe (grandma) is going to get baptized. So when we walk in, Elder Ortiz goes first since he knows what's going on. When he walks in, he immediately turns to his right and runs into the room and sticks his head out the window. I hear him yelling and I realize the husband climbed out the window to escape us! What the heck! Odd stuff going on there! The next story is just later in the house.
     So, we're about to start a lesson and an alarm starts going off. No one does anything and they told Elder Ortiz ''Oh that just goes off every once in a while for a few minutes.'' So after a couple of seconds of no one doing anything I grabbed it and flipped the switch to off and everyone was so impressed. It's like really? You didn't know how to move a switch? but, oh well.
     Well, a couple more things. First a nine year old girl reads the Book Of  Mormon. I asked her what her favorite book is and she tells me the Doctrine & Covenants. What kind of kid knows what that is? She's like the smartest 9 year old ever!
     So, that's those stories. Besides that, people tell me I'm amazing at Malagasy and they've never seen a person fresh out of the MTC talk like I do. Crazy. God just blessed me a lot. Whenever I'm teaching everything is clear and I can understand the people, but if I'm not it's a lot of hard work.
     Last funny story then I'll send the letter. So, I ate at a member's house last night. So she brings out a bowl with as least a pound if not more of rice. It's literally ridiculous, like how much rice we got in Peru the last day, or more. So  on the rice, they put something called loaka (pronounced lok with a short o). so I start eating, and about halfway through I slow down, it's really weighing me down. My spoon isn't completely clear when it comes out of my mouth. So she starts asking if the food's bad, telling me to add more loaka so it tastes good, she's freaking out because she thinks I don't like it. You could see the stress in her eyes, but I still have a bit to go. The she asks ''Tsy mazoto ny sakafo? Tsy mazoto mihinera?''  I have no idea how to translate that, but I just tell her the food's good. I'm just a slow eater.
     So, finally my last bite. I feel my body almost throw up, so I ask Elder Ortiz ''Did I eat enough?'' I'm going to throw up if I take another bite.'' And he says yeah, I pretty much finished. My stomach feels like it's going to burst, and I think the woman was depressed cause of me. Anyways, It's P-day and I'm going to email now. Enjoy the letter!
Elder Nash
I looked up what laoka is
(laoka [ˈlokə̥]). Laoka may be vegetarian or include animal proteins typically cooked in a sauce often flavored with ginger, onion, garlic, vanilla, curry powder or occasionally other spices

I have good news, I understand people here and get what they are saying now! I just miss some details here and there, but it's awesome that my head doesn't hurt all the time! 
                                                             
We are living our lives around the gospel then more gospel on top of it! it's so crazy how little we think about things in the outside world! weird huh?

So not too much has happened in the past week, it has been more of a relaxed week. we did some tracting, but only to 4 houses cause we only had a few minutes. When we went back for a return appointment there was a drunk guy who only could tell us how amazing it was that we came from america just to preach the gospel, and we left all our great american stuff to come tell people about Jesus... it was awkward and cool at the same time. I just hope he isn't drunk the next time.... cause you can't teach drunk people. He also told us he wasn't worthy to listen to us and stuff like that.

Madagascar is amazing and yes it's beautiful. if you could fly here you would love it, and it's the most humbling thing in the world to see a family of 8 to live in a room the size of a closet to us. It's so amazing! just watch out, people try to charge you double or triple cause you are a vazaha! so just that's like Peru though so it's normal.

Baptisms!

                     
 
                        

 

So we had baptisms saturday and I did my first baptisms! how exciting huh? I baptized a really old lady and an 8 year old cause his dad couldn't at the time.

Everything is going great. our biggest problem is the bishop and trying to get baptisms scheduled. We still have like 11 or 12 lined up for the next following weeks. I have asked quite a few people to follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized. It's so awesome being a missionary. The days are pretty long, and it does get tiring, but seeing people progress spiritually is so awesome! I love being out here, and so far I've enjoyed every minute of it!

There are quite a few funny things that have happened. So far chickens have walked in on the most spiritual parts of the lessons, and people breast feed EVERYWHERE!

Another thing is the other day we were walking down an alley, and so while we were doing that, I stepped out to my left over a puddle, and i slipped on the side and my foot fell into poo water! gross! so when I went to the nearest investigator/member house, while I was washing my feet the entire 4 households came out and watched the vazaha wash his feet off. it was so gross! I was wearing my grey pants and then they were black, and black water was coming out for quite some time! I never, ever, ever want to do that again!
So later that day anyways, there were kids dragging each other around on a sack for carrying like a 100 pounds of rice. So I got on the bag and told them to pull me around! It took four kids to pull me a total of 6 feet! it was so funny watching them pull me! they were trying so hard! After that I played one of their games with them and we went out with the ward missionaries.
One other thing is I was called a redneck since I've been here! I had no idea what the kid said to me... I just wrote down the word and walked off. Then later I asked a different Malagasy who spoke English and he told me. Imagine, I still can't get away from people saying redneck to Americans even here.

Well besides that there is only the taksibe. the taxi rides aren't so bad here... it works out just fine and and whatever, I'm not scared for my life, but they stuff about 35 people into a van like 3 feet shorter than our old one. It's called a taksibe like I said which literally means a lot of taxi. pretty weird, but it's cool. I go everywhere in them. it's rare that we walk home or to our proselyting area.

Akorondrando

 Adam has arrived in Madagascar and is serving in Akorondrando. Here is what he has to say:
    I've been here for almost a week but time has flown by. I am so happy doing everything here. I wrote a letter with a couple of my stories so far. one I can tell you right now that I wrote was my first time eating malagsy food. It was really good, but seriously, I don't want a thousand pounds of rice with ,my meal. it's not normal! the lady was stressing thinking I didn't like it at all! poor woman. when I was part way through it took me like a minute just to eat one bite. how depressing... but I finished... and almost threw up from eating so much.
     One thing that is amazing... I can speak malagsy just fine during lessons and understand it too! but when it comes to conversations I get so lost. I think my trainer is happy I don't say 3 things then refer back to him. I even explained why we need the authority from God to baptize, and compared it to their school system here.  I'm just so happy the spirit can work so well through me because I studied so hard in the MTC.
When I get the letter I will have more detailed stories. 

Adam called today from LA he is headed to Madagascar!! He flies from LA to London to Johannesburg and finally to Madagascar! He gets there at 2:45 on Wednesday afternoon. Thats a really long flight! It was fun to talk to him. He talked to me a little bit in Malagasy he spoke it so well....He is so excited to get there and start to teach people about the church. Here is his new address for now at least.

Elder Adam J. Nash
Madagascar Antananarivo Mission
BP 5094
101 Antananarivo
Madagascar

You can send mail thru pouch mail but, if you do do it thru Dear Elder.com these letters go out on Mondays
Just choose the Madagascar missiona and type in Adam's name.
He loves getting letters!

Adam is picking up the language very quickly. He told his sister that he can joke with his teachers in Malagasy. He wrote to me "I have been getting better at making analogies in Malagasy so I can actually teach instead of say little shorter things. It makes it a lot easier. Yesterday I had to explain the difference between the writings in the bible and book of mormon and why the scriptures aren't exactly the same." He is very excited to get to Madagascar and leaves on Feb. 1st. He has gained some weight around 5 pounds or so. I have heard that they lose about 20 pounds while they are there. Adam will come home a stick person!