2008 Mar 25--On Mission

Hi there,
Here we are again. I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to E-mail you guys yesterday but everything was closed, so they changed our P-day to today.

But things are going good. Fuga continues to be a pleasure to work with. I'll be honest, I'm starting to feel how close I am to the end and it's kinda weirding me out. The light at the end of the tunnel is so bright it's hurting my eyes. I keep getting these reminders from everyone that I'm going home and I seem to be the last one who wants to think about it. I'll see what I can do to come to terms with it this week without stressing out too much or becoming too trunky, as they say. But I'm on my last planner on which I have written the subtitle, "The Planner to End All Planners." It works out that the end of the planner is the end of my mission. I've also sold my first guitar to another elder (he wants me to sign it " ...so that when you get famous...") and I've had another guitar made. It's pretty cool. Instead of dots for the fret markers, I had them put *T - O - B - Y * running down the neck, and they've put a green clover on the head above the tuners. It's rounded-out kind of like a cello, and I had them put the f-hole cut-outs also like a cello instead of the standard circle cut-out below the strings. It's a natural wood color and I think it turned out nice. I put in an order for this guitar quite a while ago, and after a lot of visits and corrections, it's finally finished. I'm happy with it--it's not perfect and it's got a lot of the quirky Malagasy-lack-of-attention-to-detail to it, but in spite of that, I think it turned out well--in fact I kinda like the "Malagasy-defects" --they make it a unique guitar. But now that the guitar is finished, it reminds me again that this is coming to a close.

I think I'll make a list of things that I love about Madagascar this week and maybe I'll share a bit with you next week ( and I promise that the whole list won't be ironic, but I can't promise that some of it won't be ;) But really, I love this place. I didn't really get to see much of it, so I'm resolved to come back again and see some more of it. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever been confined to such a limited radius for this long in my entire life. Antananarivo definitely has character, but sometimes I look off in the distance to the hills just beyond the city and sigh just a bit. It's gonna be weird to leave.

One inside joke that's been reoccurring this week is something Sister Y ( the 70's wife) kept on saying in her talk,"when you're on mission..." Not "on your mission" Not "... on a mission" Simply "on mission" as in the British "on Holiday." Sister Y is from South Africa and has that way of speaking that is foreign to most Americans. But she said "on mission" so many times it became redundant, and I looked to see every missionary cringe every time she said it. "When my son was on mission..." "You learn so much on mission..." "when you get home from mission, remember...." Anyway, since then, all the missionaries on mission have been using the phrase where applicable and sometimes where not-so-applicable just because it's funny (or maybe it's only funny if you're on mission--I can't be sure.) But it's part of the language now, so if while giving my homecoming talk, I happen to say something like, "while I was on mission I drank lots of Kool Aid...." or something, don't judge me, cuz I've forgotten how to Speak OK! But on the bright side, this week I had 3 Malagasys thinking I was actually a Malagasy (OK--it was on the phone--but even so-- this will do me a lot of good when I get home I just know it ;)

Well, I gotta go. I love you all. I'll see you in 6 weeks (shudder, it's that close already?) OK Veloma!
Elder Draper