MADAGASCAR!!!

Well here I am... Still Elder Weber, but now reporting from Madagascar!!

My time is short today so let me make this brief but good.

No pictures, sorry, no time. The flights to Madagascar were really really long, but not that bad. The airplane food pretty much stunk. I got to Madagascar, and met President Adams. He is way cool. We piled into vans and went all the way to the mission home which was great. Saw kinda the scenery. We went, did a bunch of paperwork, etc, and then we ate with the President and his wife. Great food, miss it already... We slept that night at a bunch of different apartments with Elders. Thursday we had a bunch of meetings about not getting sick, etc. and then we got to open our calls. In some ways this call was almost more exciting than the original mission call, because this is much more specific. I was near the end to go so I had narrowed my trainer down to two. And sure enough I am serving in the

Ankadindramamy area. We have a branch here who is really friendly, but they need some work on functioning a bit better. They always end church way late, and they need to work with the missionaries better. My trainer is Elder Onyeabor Onyeabor (no that is not a typo, his first and last names are the same). At home he goes by Onye so its not as bad. He is great, has been out here a while. More than a year in country, and by the time I finish my training he will have served in this area for 7 months. It looks like I am going to be staying here, he is confident that he will get transferred. Time is really really short so here is some basics, sorry for this.

Lots of dirt.

Lots of random pathways that are really narrow and made of dirt.

Lots of houses all on top of each other. Some are really small. (Think living room, not family room, is slightly larger than some of the houses here.)

The difference between the poor and the rich is gigantic here.

We live in a really nice apartment, large spacious, about one million ariary rent a month. Which is like 500 bucks. But it is way nice. They take care of us.

Food is interesting. I need to talk more about food, but no time.

We get 15000 ariary a day which is a lot of money. To put that into perspective its 7.50 dollars a day, but it feeds us so well. They give us that much so we don't have to eat off the streets. More on that next week.

The reason time is short today is that we were asked this morning by a lady if we would go to a funeral with her today, She is a member from Salt Lake who flew out for her fathers funeral. So we went with her, and that took a lot of time out of our day, so we haven't been shopping yet, and our p-day is almost over. We are 7 hours ahead of eastern time I believe, I cannot keep track.

I Love you all. I got the DearElder letter. Supposedly recently packages have been much more reliable than mail. Elders say they don't get a lot of their mail, but all of their packages have been showing up. If you send letters through the pouch system, they are more reliable.

Emails are wonderful too.

Loves.

Elder Weber

Ankadindramamy Area. hahahah so fun to say. good luck trying. :)

Mom note: I sent the "Free" DearElder pouch letter on  June 19th, and he had it by the time he wrote on July 1st, so less than 2 weeks.