Don't confuse this word with olona, because that means people. Tricky the difference that one letter can make right? So the title of this e-mail is because I don't know the malagasy word for drama, and that word describes our week. So in a nutshell....Sr Amoussouga and I were called to be Sister Training Leaders. You might not think this is new news since that was my calling before however right before the transfer President told me that the calling might change to another sister. So up until this Monday I wasn't sure if I still was or if he was going to call another sister. Unfortunately the calling/transition hasn't gone over as smooth as hoped for. Sr Amoussouga and I tried to assume our new roles and do a set of exchanges this week. After one hour the other sister came home and locked herself in her room refusing to go out again. So that led to this meeting with President and all the other sisters - all 8 of us in the mission. And that was the worst meeting of my entire life. I don't want to go into details but needless to say there was a lot of not positive commentary made about us in the new Sister Training Leader position. Then after all of this was aired out that night Sr Amoussouga and I had to go around and try and sort it all out. Which mostly consisted of apologizing to everyone for anything and everything and whatever it was that people had had a problem with. It wasn't the most fun of activities. But it is teaching us to be super humble because someone has to bite the bullet and just say "ok fine, we will take the blame for everything because we just want to work this out and for everyone to move on and work together" And that's essentially what we did. But as Sr Amoussouga said, what doesn't kill us will make us stronger. And all these experiences are just shaping us to be better. She is super cool and totally has the right attitude if you noticed.
So the best thing about this week is that we got close and unified this week because we have had to deal with all of this (and all the girls) together, with only each other. That is a huge blessing - I definitely couldn't have done it alone. Another cool thing about Sr Amoussouga is that she is quadrilingual. Her native language is French but she speaks English and Spanish fluently too and now is working on Malagasy. So we are working on developing our three languages together: French, English and Malagasy. We even fight about which days we are going to speak what language because I am always pulling for French and her for English!
Everything has been sorted at the house and it's cool. It actually is a super cool experience living among so many different cultures. We have sisters from France, Guadeloupe, Mozambique, Tahiti, Ghana and Madagascar - so you can imagine all the culture they bring! They decided a good way to celebrate Thanksgiving (well none of them celebrate it but they used it as an excuse) was to slaughter a chicken. In our apt. So we all bought a live chicken and then killed it for our Thanksgiving dinner. I did not participate but forced myself to watch because I decided I needed to know where my food came from. Of course the Africans were super mahay (muh-hi) *knowledgeable* about killing and cleaning and cooking the chicken. I contributed green beans and mashed potatoes. And then we had a Thanksgiving dinner in Madagascar last night. One day I will send pictures - when I figure out how...
In super positive news: Sylvie and Solo are progressing along really well and they all came to church again!!
Love you all!
Sister Stewart
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