Pictures 8-25-14

8-25-14

Felt like a short week this week. Made some super sweet brownies. Made some chocolate chip cookies but I ended up guessing on the margarine since I didn't have the conversions so they ended up kinda weird. Saw a crazy drunk guy who had killed this dog and was draggin it around and throwing it around. The dog had chunks of fur missing and was bleeding and what not. And the guy was like wailing. Took an 8 hour bus ride to Antsirabe for our zone conference. Super long cramped ride on a sucky road. My favorite! :) Elder Hamilton from the 70 i think was there. Hes a general authority. Talked with us and answered questions and stuff. Got some letters from the AP's since they drove up from the mission home. So didn't quite get one in time for my birthday. And unfortunately I have not seen any hippos here. Went to a "real" store in Antsirabe and got some supplies for back in Fianarantsoa. Drove 8 hours back the next day. Annnnnnnd our water is not working. So going on 4 or 5 days without showering or shaving. And not sure if Ill be do laundry for awhile. Or dishes. And I got a cold from riding the dumb taxibruse since I had to sit next to this Italian lady that had a cold. I think I caught it from her. Made a mini Malagasy hymnbook by having a guy photocopy and shrink all the pages and then a guy bind it. Its sooooo cool. He made the pages pink again for some reason even though I had wanted no color.... Then had a mini dance session with two branch missionaries yesterday. Fun. Even with being gone so much still taught a lot and its really cool to see the investigators change and continue to progress. Hopefully the water is fixed soon.
Elder Miller

Pictures 8-18-14

8-18-14

So last Monday we did some nice errands really fast. Got a few other Nba hats. Unfortunately its hard to find ice cream in this city and when I went to buy some ice cream to make milkshakes they were out. I tried drawing a map of the US from scratch and it turned out not tooo terrible. We had splits on Tuesday. I had to lead in my area with the district leader. Of course a lot our times fell through so I had to come up with things to do and other people to visit which is hard since a lot of things are really far away from each other in my area. So my companion was doing baptism interviews for the other branch and they were all taking like at least an hour and a half so I had a lot of time to wait for him. And this other elder in my house made some crosswords using quotes from movies as clues. He did a MIB (Men in Black) one for me and I aced through it sooooo fast. Then that got me on the mind so I went through and wrote down 13 pages of MIB quotes from the movie and you can follow the whole movie from the quotes. Probably  not the best thing to do but I got way bored sitting there for around 6 hours waiting for him to finish right after our 4 hours of study in the morning. Set a lot of baptism dates with our investigators this week which is awesome. Some of them are progressing really well. So I'm working on making a mini Malagasy hymnbook. I had a guy shrink all the pages for me and I gave it to the guy in the other branch to bind for me. No I'm not getting the pages colored this time though. Our YSA had a fundraiser selling croissants so I bought a bunch. Pretty good. Our DMB also sang the Malagasy anthem for us. We had some dogs try and attack us this week. I was just about to kick one in the face but a Malagasy woman started beating it with a broom instead. Yeah saw a mouse. Outside though. Okay it's so hard to remember all the crazy things that happened during the week. But until next week.
Elder Miller

Fun Fact

Ny Fiangonan'i Jesoa Kristy Ho An'ny Olomasin'ny Andro Farany is how you write The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Malagasy.

Elder Miller says it literally translates to the Church Jesus Christ for holy people last days
haha : )

cool trees! 

His pink scriptures 

The name is handwritten! 

His delicious milkshake

Elder Miller and Elder Lehr with some branch missionaries and an investigator 

His new camera!

Elder Miller with some member kids : )

8-11-14

So this week was really good! It was my birthday on Monday and we had a great time- we played basketball with some members and I got a new camera too- one with a rechargeable battery and a really sick camera too. SONY Cyber shot 16mpg. So we were shooting with some of the members and then I played three on three with some other guys there. In basketball I had only about 20 blocks and could score literally at will! :) It was fun haha. We went to a suarway thing which is like a FHE. But it was in a fairly small room and there was a huge table in the middle with some snacks and drinks. Somehow they had a little over 40 people in this room! We got there a little late and crammed in and it was sooo hot though! I almost died. We had subway hamburgers for dinner too!

This week weve had some problems with our water too. Some mornings it had not been on. So Wednesday and Thursday some of us had to go showerless which always kinda stinks since we also cant shave or anything either. Our zone leaders came Wednesday morning. Wednesday morning I also made oreo milkshakes and they were literally the best things ever. I don't know if I've ever had anything better haha. I bought some Rayban sunglasses from some part member investigators that we have for 3000 AR, yeah so a little over a dollar.

Ooh yes. So Thursday morning Nanova who binds books and things called and said he had finished with my books. We had asked to get like zippered covered and the pages colored green. He said he might not have green so he would do red if he didnt have green. So he gives them to me thursday morning, and they are just like hard covered bound. The pages are all colored pink and he put in pink bookmarks too. WOW. It was sorta lame haha. And to make it even a little more girly is that there is a girl in our ward that has the same pink pages and bookmarks. ... But anyway its pretty good. I'll live. We went to clean this new investigators house on Thursday. It was small but we were still there for 3 hours! Everything was coated in dirt and there was some nasty stuff in there. But we managed to survive and it was fun to do as well. There was a house on the hill blasting music so loud that we could hear it across town back by our apartment and we were teaching a recent convert family that live like right next to them and haha I could not hear anything. We saw a guy sculpting a chicken out of cement too. We were also teaching a lesson in someones fairly small house and there were like 15 baby chickens that came in and were chirping so loud. For like 50 minutes-chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp. Ayaiah. Two 8 year old kids got baptized on saturday-they have a little pool they fill up outside to do them in. ALso something else really funny is the english songs people have here. For some reason just about every youth in our ward and that I've met have the song Pink-Give Me a Reason and they play it allll the time. Its insane how much I've heard that song already..

Ooh and Sunday night we walked one of the branch missionaries back home. It was dark already and so we are talking to her aunt and cousins and what not since they all live like right next to each other. And you have to climb up a little dirt hill on a path made from tires and junk to get there, But they tell us not to walk back by this church- because apparently someone has been killing people around there at 7 pm. So I look at my watch and oh- guess what 7 pm. So that was a little creepy to be walking home knowing.... But a good week, restocking on the milkshake supplies today.

Elder Miller

8-4-14 Pictures

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Francois sleeping 

8-4-14 Elder Miller's Birthday!!

Crazy week. Last Monday we did some cool shopping and I got this Lamba of a Map of Madagascar. Its awesome. I started getting sick last week so we slept some. Then Tuesday and Wednesday I was sick in bed and it was terrible. I also literally slept 2 days straight. But I've been getting better from my sickness and Thursday was rough but then the days following haven't been quite as bad. On Friday we went to teach an investigator but he wasn't there. His cousin was though but she couldn't learn because it was her birthday. Then I learned the Malagasy way to celebrate birthdays apparently. You get flour and eggs. Then people throw flour at you and break the eggs open on you. And what timing. Guess what today is. My birthday. I'm probably going to get egged today. We go teaching with the branch missionaries a lot(which are just the youth in our ward). They are all way cool by the way. And they sounded pretty excited to be doing this.... I also tried my first mofo akondro. Which are fried bananas. They are actually pretty good and like 100 AR each so super cheap. When we were teaching on Friday night, one of the branch missionaries that goes with us a lot, Francois, fell asleep during the Restoration Film we were showing a 12 year old investigator. His family are all members but he isn't. Anyways we got our cameras out and took some pictures of him sleeping and Elder Lehr took a video of him just sitting there sleeping and it was pretty hilarious. The family knows him well too and they thought it was hilarious.

Saturday morning our water turned off right after everyone else showered but me. And my hair is fairly long right now,(for a missionary) and so I had it sticking all up. And we had no water so I couldn't shower or fix it at all. Haha. Then that night we found out that some kids playing around had turned it off. :( Wow! Saturday at the church we finally ran into the book guy too! So I'm getting a cover for my English Scrips and my Malagasy ones! Its great. But it takes a week so I'm a little crippled scripture wise for a week. We went to a couples house to teach them but they couldn't then because he was sick. But there kids are all members and love missionaries so we played around and took some pictures with them for awhile. Its amazing how time flies when you are with kids haha.

Then Sunday night I made something really amazing. At a little shop you can buy doughnuts that are just plain doughnuts. Good but plain. All the ippisearies also sell chocolate. So I melted the chocolate and dipped the doughnuts in them and put them in the fridge. Then this morning I microwaved them a little to warm it up and OH my they were so good. Probably the best thing I've had in Madagascar ha, I cut one and gave a third of a doughnut to each of the missionaries in the house and they all agreed.

But I did something stupid and tried microwaving the chocolate first so I burnt it. Gross. And yesterday as we were walking to someones house there was a band across the way and across a little river playing songs like the Saints Go Marching In and another song. They were pretty bad and the trumpet was really blatty but I was dancing to it with some of the branch missionaries which was fun. The branch missionaries are really fun and pretty amazing. And yeah its my birthday today so we have some sweet stuff planned.
Elder Miller