February 29, 2016

First off Emma and Will look great, and it's great to see Grandpa Dale. This cyber is very hot and there is a screaming child so I don't really want to email. I just want to get outside, but I love you all very much so I want to be able to talk, so I will use my patience - haha. I'm actually working on that this week, so maybe this is a blessing. This week went well. Exciting news, my companion had a minor operation to remove his ingrown toe nails because they were infected. He's doing much better now and he's much happier, but we've been taking things easy. We weren't able to work for two days this week but now he's feeling much better so we can focus again on work. President Foote and Elder Hamilton of the Seventy are coming down this week. I'm very excited to see them. We are having a zone conference and I'm looking forward to it. 

Last week I got a haircut and while my hair was being cut I started talking to my barber. He was a really nice guy. Anyway, I asked him to tell me a crazy story, and I told him if it was good that I would send it to America (the story that is). Well, it was a good story, so now I have to tell you. He was over at a friends house way in the middle of nowhere, (in Ambanivolo) with three other friends. It was night, and so they had to leave to go home. They started out heading along the path in the middle of the night. Mind you this path is just a cow path. As they're walking, they come to a river and prepared to forge it, when further along the bank they see a group of daholo (bandits) doing they're fomba daholo (bandit rituals), sacrifices etc. Well, these bandits are from a very different tribe and so my barber and his friends didn't understand them, but they were seen by the bandits. The daholo started after them to kill them, rob them, and sacrifice them to their bush god so that they would have success in their pillaging. My friend and his friends took off running as fast as they could, jumping through rice patties and under brush trying to hide their path. Unbeknownst to them, a little bit further along the path, was a massive funeral service. The daholo thought that my friend was part of the funeral. Fahoriana started firing at the funeral service, at which point the funeral service fired back at them. As they ran away a gunfight broke out and they were in the middle of it. They escaped, but all the gunfire alerted the gendarme, and my friend ran into them along the main path. The gendarme thought that my friend and his friends were part of the daholo and lined them up in front of a firing squad. Before they started to shoot, however, the tompo ny fahoriana (leader of the funeral party) burst out of the brush and cleared my friend the barber by telling the gendarme he was not part of the daholo (because his dialect wasn't bara, that of the daholo). They were all let free, the gendarme forced back the daholo, and they finishead the night off at the funeral.

I thought it was a pretty good story. It's even better when you imagine people running through the malagasy bush (ambanivolo) so that's my story, Have a great week, I love you all very much. The Church is true!

Elder Ahlstrom