"They are orange shorts and they are incredible!"

Hey everybody!

Sounds like everything is staying nice and busy over there. But that's a good thing. Things have been busy here too! We have so many people to see and not enough time to see everyone! My new companion Elder Ralison was laughing because we went a whole week without going to the same place. haha

Anyway, this last week was an awesome week. Monday after we received transfer letters we all had a ge ttogether at our apartment and made pizza. It was really fun. At the end we asked Elder Ndayizeye to bear his testimony. It was really cool. He said he learned a lot here about working hard and he's going to go back to Kinshasa and whip the other missionaries into shape haha. It was a really cool experience. He cried at the end, which I had never seen him do before. It was really sad to see him go, but he's going to do a lot of good over there, especially as a trainer. 

Elder VanAusdal and Elder Ndayizeye. The Flash surprised Elder N.

On Tuesday I worked with Elder Hatch because I didn't have a companion... The split monster came. We walked SO MUCH! For some reason, whenever you do splits, it's really hard to have appointments fall through. But we still managed to get 4 lessons in. It was still a really good day. Then in the afternoon we went to the Baileys' to go pick up my new companion. His flight was a little late, but that's pretty typical haha. You wouldn't believe some of the things people take as carryons. Yes, even a satellite dish... Anyway, then we could see my companion from far away 1 because he is a missionary, 2 because he is very light colored. He's from Madagascar where people can be white or black. He's in the middle. It's funny because when people see us they yell "Mundele chinois!" or "Mundele Heehah!" which basically means white man and chinese man! haha Sometimes it's cute and funny, when they are kids. When they are 30 year old drunk men... Not so cute haha. 

Wednesday was my first day working with Elder Ralison. He's really cool. Like my last companion, he only speaks French. At this rate, my French is going to be really good at the end of my mission haha. I am the only one that has had a French speaking companion since I've been in this zone haha. But it has helped me a lot. We had a great first day together. Our teaching really meshed right from the beginning. That was really nice. We have similar ideas about how to teach. That will make this transfer a lot easier. We also had district meeting on Wednesday. Our district is a little complicated because we have Elder Ralison that doesn't speak English, and we have Elder Tweneboah that doesn't speak French yet haha. So we kinda mix things around haha. Luckily I understand both :)

Throughout the entire week I noticed that all of our lessons were going really well. The Spirit has been really strong because we are united in our teaching. It's funny because even though he is from Madagascar and doesn't speak English, we are a lot alike. He's really fun, and he's an awesome companion. We also were able to get a lot of lessons in this week. We ended up with 21. That's not bad for a week of transfers!

On Thursday night, Elder Wright and Elder Etherington moved in. We added a companionship to our apartment. So it's a little more crowded and more mouths to feed, but it's been fun. I realized that before they came, I had gone from being in my first district of all Americans, to this district where I was the only American! haha Funny how things change!

We had a great day of church on Sunday too. Great turnout! We got 14 investigators at church! And it would have been more but we had at least 2 investigators that were legitimately sick... It was a really cool day. We also had a first contact with a new family. I love teaching families. Even if usually the parents aren't married so they can't get baptized, if their kids are baptized and they all come to church, I know that some day they will have the chance to get married and be baptized too. 

So all in all this has been a great week. By the way, I don't know if you have had the chance to transfer more money from my bank account? I took the rest out last week. I'm not desperate yet, but if I get transferred next transfer I'm going to want to buy another suitcase. 

And by the way, they are orange shorts. Not jeans haha. But they are pretty incredible.
I bought them in the market at Fond Tie-Tie. I got them for 10 dollars. If you'd have told me a year ago that I would be excited about a pair of shorts like that, I wouldn't have believed you haha. How do you like my Muslim garb? haha That was pretty awesome too haha. As far as the bread recipe,  I actually found a new one. I found a homemade hamburger bun recipe and found out that it makes reeeeeally soft good bread. So I quadrupled it and made a ton of it! I really like to make bread bowls with it and make some beef stew with it. Very good :) Most things here I have to modify a little bit. 1 because of some different seasonings, 2 because they only have highly concentrated tomato paste, and 3 because we are penny pinchers haha. We have to buy bone in chicken. Boneless is upwards of 10 dollars a pound!

Anyway, everything is going good here. Have a great week!

Love, Elder VanAusdal