Hi. I hope everyone is well. Things are about as normal as they ever are here in Madagascar. A bunch of missionaries had stomach flu this week, myself included. Now we are all better. One of the hard things about living in Mada is that you pretty much always feel a little sick. I find that if you eat through it you will feel better. I made a stew this week, which was good and tasted like home. I was so excited because I found a crock pot in our house. It's nice to have something different from rice. In response to your question about our house, it's nothing too special. It's hard to keep clean because sand blows into it all the time. It's all tile because nothing is carpeted in Mada. We have a little kitchen, three bedrooms, and two couches. As missionaries, I don't know what more we could ask for.

We're teaching a lot of great families. It's interesting to consider the problems that come up with teaching in Mada. I assume they're very different from other missions. We have some really unique issues that we get to address. The four main groups that we run into here - Muslims, Catholics, Protestants, and some unusual churches. There are also a lot of Jehovah's Witnesses here. One thing that is interesting about Mada is the over abundance of prophets. People here readily accept prophets, but the idea that there would only be one seems weird to them. The prophets here do "miracles", which essentially means magic shows. I assume this is very unique. New churches start up randomly all the time. Every once in a while you run into some really sketchy stuff, not dangerous, just unusual. Right now we have a bunch of people getting ready for baptism. The hard thing is that most don't have their vita soratra (legal marriage). They just do the cultural fomba marriage and stop at that. It's expensive to get married here and issues often come up. We're working with one family of members that have two kids living with them that aren't members. They just got baptized and they're super cool. They have some kids that are members that are really nice. They have a son named Rico who is my age. It's cool because he speaks about as much English as I speak Malagasy, so not a lot, but we're usually able to have functional conversations.

You asked about the weather. The weather is starting to get really hot and humid. It's pretty ridiculous. Pretty much any movement will cause you to sweat. It's also been raining on and off. The rain is weird here because the drops are small. The rain drops are tiny and there are tons of them. Thankfully my rain jacket is awesome and keeps me very nice and dry.

In English class I got to explain what political asylum means. I'm not always sure where they get their questions! And we went to a soiree yesterday, which was a new experience and very fun. Malagasies like to tell riddles, so now I know a bunch of new riddles:

A family had three sons. The parents asked, "which one of you will bury us when we die?" One said that he would be buried with them. Another said that he would go with them to the graveside. And the last said that he would stay home because he was afraid of graves. What are the three sons? A bowl of rice! The rice goes with you, the spoon goes to the graveside, and the bowl just sits there and does nothing! Funny right? Okay, maybe not, but Malagasies love riddles and I thought that one was pretty clever.

Well, I have to run. Have a wonderful week!
Elder Ahlstrom