Dear friends,

We are half way through our three month language course in Antsirabe which is in the beautiful, cool and rainy highlands of Madagascar. This seemed a good time to give you a brief report – though we won’t tell you what our teacher, Mamia, makes of us!

Mamia has told us to our surprise that she has now taught us 90% of the grammar we need. This comes as a relief because we’re not sure we could have coped with more actives, passives, relatives, imperatives, passive imperatives….. At times our brains have felt in overload with the volume and complexity of Malagasy grammar and vocabulary. For example, the subject comes at the end of the sentence and by the time we have worked out the rest of the sentence we have often forgotten to add it!

Thankfully, we are now concentrating on listening and speaking. Slowly we’re gaining confidence in communicating in this strange tongue. Malagasy is a fascinating and beautiful language with many fun words.   So a butterfly is a “lulu” and words are often doubled but in a different way to English: so “fotsy” is white,   while “fotsifotsy ” is off white.    

We know that we have a long way to go and the weeks ahead will continue to stretch us but the prize of both being able to share more deeply in the lives of the delightful Malagasy people and to share God’s love in Christ is a great spur. Thank you for your prayers. Please continue to pray for God’s gift of grace.

The peace of the Lord,

Derek and Jane