mada . . .

Ok,

So I don't really know where to start. It's crazy here. So so so so third world. Ok so to respond to some basic questions...  I am serving in Antananarivo, the capital, specifically the Betongolo sector. For the first time I am serving in a ward and even bigger than that a stake! I am in the Ivandry stake, and there are two total in Tana.

My companion is Sr Johnson. She is originally from Haiti but was adopted when she was 11 and has grown up in Boise, Idaho ever since. This is her last transfer so she only has 6 weeks left and she speaks Malagasy VERY well. Thank goodness! Because the language is very difficult. Mostly it is just the vocabulary because the words are 14 letters long! Mainly filled with f, p and a. For instance the word for gospel is filazantsara (try saying that 10 times fast) and the word for family is fianakaviana. So it is coming along slowly and I need to have more patience. It's awkward though when people come up to me to ask me if I am "gasy" (from Mada) and I just stare at them not sure if I should nod yes or no and look to sister johnson. Once I nodded yes to something I didn't know and accidently told someone I was already married...whoops!

The food...I avoid eating because basically everything here will make you sick. Well will make me sick because I'm new and not used to it. Elder Hamilton (of the 70) when he was touring here called Madagascar the Mexico of the 80s... So picture that. Hopefully I will be able to send pictures soon but I'm having problems with my camera and am terrified of corrupting the rest of my pictures with a virus from one of these sketchy cybers. Oh and yes I have already gotten sick, even though I have avoided the food and anything not prepared by me and only drink filtered water. Go figure. But hopefully I will be many pounds lighter when I come home! (lots of missionaries will lose around 30 pounds)

So I got here on Wednesday. Which means I havent' yet been here a week. I'll admit, this week has been pretty rough. Mostly it's hard not being able to understand anyone and being separated from the missionaries on Reunion (Sr Gardiner) oh and the food. So how is the work different? Well there are no cars for the missionaries here. We take these 15 passenger vans called "taxi be" and walk everywhere. We typically leave at 11 in the morning and don't get home till 8 or 9 at night, which means we bring everything we need for the day with us in our bags. Luckily after this monday I have food to pack so I won't need to subsist off of crackers and snacks haha. We mostly walk up and down this one street built on a hill and then work in the alleyways that branch off of it. It is fairly hot but a little less than La Reunion so I'm happy about that. It is about to be the rainy season though and I got my first taste of that the other day. During our Sunday meetings all of a sudden we heard the rain start falling - hard. Then it seemed to start raining even harder when we went outside. And I mean so hard! I kept reading about people in South America and how they could get soaked in a matter of seconds and I didn't understand but now I do. My sperry's got soaked all the way through and the parts of my skirt that stuck out of my coat were dripping when we got home. I can't emphasize enough how hard the rain was falling and how much of it there was. And then the streets started to turn into rivers and we had to step into them with our drenched shoes. Luckily we were going home and didn't have any apointments to go to because here they work in that rain!

As for the package address, I will get that to you next week, but the mailing address for letters and things is the very first one I got that goes to Mada. The one that we put on my little missionary cards.

Well I love you all! And I am extra praying for you because family is one of the few words I know in this crazy language! Pray for me extra too please, because this is definitely going to be one of the most difficult parts of my mission.

Love,

Sr Stewart

P.S. I almost got bit by a dog and nearly get hit about 5 times a day by some sort of automobile, be it bus or car. But I am still safe! Thank goodness I have the Lord's protection around me.