Our Journey Begins
We left for our location on the 15th of April and arrived in the capital the next day.Our two hosts fetched us at the airport and we stayed one night in the capital. The next morning we took the seven hour bus ride to Toamasina in the east of Madagascar. Here we had four days of cultural orientation with Mercy Ministries. Two 2015 CPx graduates, Nanty and Soamiary thought us on the Malagasy culture and prepared us well for the months.Our end destination was a village to north of Mananara in Northern Madagascar. As we were waiting for a boat to the nearest town of Mananara, we got the news that the scheduled boat trip was cancelled as a result of a cyclone alert. So we decided to stay a few more days in Toamasina. We served with Mercy Ministries in two surrounding villages and shared the gospel as a part of our orientation preparation. We had to travel by boat to these villages. The people in the first village was very open and hospitable. Apollos and Benjamin got a chance to share a Jesus Story and their testimony with them.Joined by two guys from this village we headed to the second village. After a hour of sailing, our boat suddenly stopped, in the middle of the river. At first we did not know what caused the engine to die and thought that the engine was broken. We tried to fix it but with no success. Eventually we decided to head back to the village we came from and our two companions jumped into the river. With the one pulling and the other pushing, we headed back to the village where we left a couple of hours ago.The next day we headed back to Toamasina helped by one of the guys from the village, which used his boat to pull our boat.