Wow, what a crazy week this has been! We left our house Monday morning, July 29, about 7:30 and arrived in Antananarivo, Madagascar on Wednesday afternoon about 2:30. It was a pretty LONG trip through Chicago, London, and Johannesburg. We had a 10 hour layover in London, but found some pretty comfortable places to hang out in the airport (the lounges that we could get into weren’t anywhere close to our terminal). Our final 3 hours in London we found some pretty cool couches where we could lay down before we got on our 11 hour flight to Johannesburg. I think it saved everyone on our flight from having to endure me standing up and screaming, “I HAVE to go horizontal!”
President
and Sister Adams, the APs, and Marcellin (President Adam’s driver) picked us up
at the airport. We were all glad that
they brought two vehicles, we had warned them that we had lots of luggage. They brought us to our apartment so we could
unpack a little and just relax. They
came back and picked us up about 5:00, we went to the office and met everyone
there and then went upstairs to the Mission Home and had dinner. They brought us back early so we could
collapse – so we did!
Thursday
morning Marcellin picked us up and took us up to the office, it’s UP the hill
about 4 blocks from our apartment. Dad
went right in and Elder Shupe started showing him all of the financial
‘stuff’. Sister Adams and Sister Shupe
took me and we went shopping. We had to
buy everything to furnish two new apartments for the missionaries. Shopping is pretty limited, they have Jumbo’s
which is kind of a Walmart, and Leader Price which doesn’t have everything that
Jumbo’s has but is less expensive. There
is also a Shop Rite down at the bottom of our hill and is apparently a good
little grocery store really close, just haven’t been there yet. The rest of Thursday we tried to figure out
what we are supposed to be doing. We had
dinner at the Adams’ again with all of the senior missionaries: Shupes
(medical), Richards (humanitarian, us and Adams and the Aps. Elder West (one of the Aps) had cut his hand
pretty bad a few hours before, so they went to get it sewn up. They came up to dinner after they got back,
Elder Rasmussen had a pretty good video on his phone to show. We drove the car home for the first time!!!
Friday we went to the office thinking that we were going to
spend the day getting the office figured out.
Sister Adams, Sister Shupe, Sister Richards and I all went out shopping
again. Had a few more things to get for
the apartments, Sister Adams needed food for this next week as they were going
to be gone for the weekend; and they helped me shop for some food for our
apartment. Sure glad I had tutors for
the shopping as some of what we got I wouldn’t have known what it really
was. Baking powder is in little tiny
paper packets, there is a girl who has to weigh your veggies and price them
before you check out, also got the low down on what kind of meat to buy and
what not to get. Dad went off to see
some apartments and other adventures.
Saturday morning at 7am we left with the Shupes and went
down to Ambustra, it’s about 4 ½ hours south of Antananarivo. We have two missionaries down there and we
had some things to take to them. This
town is known for wood carvings, and pictures with inlaid woods. They had a gorgeous chest that was all carved
beautifully. Sister Shupe had taken down
some Temple pictures and had them made with the inlaid woo. They turned out beautiful. It was an interesting place, we even saw a
tour bus down there! Elder Seifert (from
Provo, we met his Mother over at Dave and Becky Mullin’s a few weeks ago) is in
this city. We left a package for him
with the owner of a little restraunt, so we had lunch there, choice was
chicken, pork or zebu, it was good.
Elder Seifert goes home next week.
His mother had said that he had had diahrrea for two years, sometimes
more and sometimes less. I also heard
that he ate on the streets a lot. We are
NOT going to be doing any ‘street eating’.
In the afternoon we headed back north to Anserebe, where the
Todd’s are. We had some missionary
things to leave with them also, mostly packages for missionaries. We got there about 5:30 and took them out to
dinner with us. It was really fun to
visit with them and see where they live.
They live down a little, very bumpy dirt road; there yard is amazing
with a garden and everything – they also have a part-time gardener that they
have hired to help out. We stayed at a
hotel down there and came home to Tana today.
We didn’t get here in time to go to our ward so we went to church with
the Shupes. Shupes live across the
street from us and apparently it is the dividing line between wards. Our Ward meets a 10 am so we will try that
next week.
Church was pretty interesting there were over 100 people there,
some kids said the opening and closing prayers in sacrament meeting and it was
amazing to me how well they did. Elder
Jensen sat behind us and the Shupes and translated for us or we wouldn’t have
understood a word. It was fast and
testimony meeting and we had 45 minutes for testimonies and they didn’t waste
any time getting up there. A lot of the
time we could tell by the spirit what was going on even without the words. These people are amazing. This cute little (she was a teeny tiny short
woman) lady bore her testimony of how blessed her family was even when they
didn’t have any $ in their hands, and how much God loved them and she wasn’t as
worried now about how Much money they had each day, she didn’t feel the panic
in her heart as much since they had found the Church and now knew that God
loved them. She was just baptized a
couple of weeks ago. She was pretty
amazing. The babies and little kids
are sooo cute with their great big dark eyes and big smiles.
After church we went for a ride with Shupes with Dad
driving. We drove over to Jumbo’s and
marked it on our GPS so that we can at least get there and back. The traffic wasn’t quite as heavy today so it
was a good day for him to practice. We
had a standard transmission and the whole city is built on LOTS of little
hills, everything is either up or down a hill.
There are lots of people walking in the roads and little carts that they
push around, and lots of poose-poose (kind of like small rick shaws). They sell EVERYTHING on the sides of the
street and there are thousands of people milling around buying, selling and
looking. Never seen anything quite like
it!
Well, we took a bunch of fun pictures this weekend – on a
full card! Don’t have any, guess we will
have to go back!!!
We Love you All, hope everyone is doing well! We are doing well, adjusting, but doing well.
Love you, Mom and Dad
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