Newsletter from Madagascar Aug2023

 

GOD'S BEEN MOVING ALL THIS YEAR

Jean & Diana Alexis

Missionaries in Madagascar

Many of you know that we left Ecuador last June 2022, and it’s been one year since we came to live in northern Madagascar. For us, it’s been so quickly but, of course, this time here has been full of new experiences.

The anointing before going to the mission field

So, we want to summarize up what we have been doing here:

FIRST THINGS FIRST: LANGUAGE LEARNING

In order to approach people and start up the ministry we must learn how to speak Malagasy language. So, as soon as we stablished we begun “class”. I put this word between quotes because it hasn’t been real classes but we found what we call “a nurturer”, it means a Malagasy guy who isn’t a teacher but who guide us in this adventure called language learning. 

So, we have moved forward in this matter but with many stops in between because sometimes our nurturer is busy or, on our side, we needed to go to the capital city to do some paperwork. Anyways, here I have learnt to be flexible with time and leave aside my task-oriented lifestyle and get accustomed to ‘pays de moramora’ (slow lifestyle country) 

Jean is getting better in Malagasy language. He’s been trying hard to be fluent or at least now he’s able to ask many questions, buy things in the market on his own, command things we need, and so on. As for me, as you already know I got Malagasy language in my first two-year mission. But, just to emphasized, I needed to learn so many new words and also adapt some of my Malagasy knowledge because here in the north they don’t speak the same dialect I learnt last time. In general, we are getting better as we practice more and more. 

MINISTRY AND THE WORK HERE

After six month of adapting ourselves to our new life here, we felt we should start sharing the Gospel at least with one person. So we prayed and God showed us a guy who came to our home one day in order to clean something on our roof and then we agreed to visit him every Friday. Praised the Lord this guy was so interested in the Gospel that he received Christ as his Saviour. 

After this time, in April we needed a person who clean our house deeply because we weren’t here for one month and our house was extremely dirty. So, one day a woman came around and she was taking water out of the common well we have next to our house. I started a conversation with her and she asked me for a job. I didn’t have much to offer her but then I remembered the house was so dirty and she ended up cleaning the house. The day she came I was ready to share a Bible story with her, so I did it while she was mopping the floor. She was paying attention to every detail of the story because when I asked some inductive questions she answered them all. 

The woman who cleaned our house with her family in her bush home

From that time on, we have been visiting her neighborhood in the bush (30 minutes from our home) twice a week. We teach her and four other family members Bible stories of Jesus in order to Holy Spirit to convince them about repentance. 

Also, we just begun a Bible Sunday School for the kids in that area. We started last Sunday with 4 kids but I´m sure it will increase in number as the time passes. 

Paying attention to the Bible story

Painting the drawings of the Bible story

Here in town we started an English club with some teenagers as a strategy of making friends with them. We also want to share the Bible with these teenagers but we are still praying for them. At the same time, we have seen so much need in our neighborhood. Some of the little kids here do not have food everyday, so we have just open our home doors to serve these kids in everything we can and in some other ways God will put in front of us.  

The English club with teenagers

Sharing the Bible with the kids here in town

JEAN’S PASSPORT AND OTHER PAPERWORK

All this year, we have experienced stressful moments about paperwork but in all this we have seen God’s powerful hand. Jean must renew his passport because it expires this September 2023 and we did all the processes required in order to get his passport done. It was very difficult because Haitian Embassies are not present in all countries and this kind of processes must be done in person, that means we needed to go out of Madagascar to do this. At the end of the day, God intervened in this situation and Jean could do his passport online without travelling. Praise the Lord!! 

PRAYER REQUEST

• For wisdom in order to do what God lead us to do in every step.
• For the activities of outreaching in the different areas (town & bush)
• For body and mental health.
• For our marriage as we are still adapting in this new season of our lives.