On New Years Day we ate lunch at the Adams' house. I made Chicken Pot Pie but forgot to put the chicken in. I must be getting old. After lunch we drove up to the Queen's castle and took a tour with two tour guides who spoke English, sort of. We learned a lot about the history of the place and took lots of pictures.                                     Us in front of the queens castle.

 The first king Andrainamananina had twelve wives. He built this castle for his first wife and build smaller Castles on eleven other hills around Antananarivo and had royal trees planted on each hill. Our hill in Andrainarivo has one of those trees and that is where Richard G. Scott dedicated this land for proclaiming the gospel. His first wife had thousands of Malagasy people killed who became Christians when English missionaries came into Madagascar. She is called the wicked queen. She killed the Christians because they put Jesus Christ above her in their worshiping.

                                                A view of Antananarivo from where we were.

There were Malagasy people everywhere staring at the Fahsas, or white people. They go there because they think the ground in sacred. There is a Protestant church still used there for worshiping. The little kids followed us and listened to the English. We took a few pictures of them. There were globe spiders in most of the trees and all over the old buildings.  There are no poisonous spiders or snakes in Madagascar the guide told us and the children play with and eat the spiders. They use their silken webs for many things because they are so strong.

We had a wonderful time and afterward went back to the President's home and played Chicken Foot   and talked until 8:00. It was a fun day.

We are still teaching our English class on Saturdays and enjoy working with students who want to learn and improve themselves. Today I taught them "The best gift that you can give yourself is self improvement." I really believe that to be true and I told them that what they are doing in trying to learn English is going to benefit them in the long run. We are enjoying our association with the Malagasy people. They are very good people and are very polite and respectful.
Today at our church they are having a baptism for the daughter of a doctor. They have a large spread of food in the culture hall and they had the choir that we heard singing on Christmas Eve preforming. There is a lot of people that attended the baptism. We are missing our grandson Landon's baptism this weekend and wish we could be there for him.
We hope all of you have a wonderful year and are blessed with good health.
Love, Elder & Sister Cornelius

In addition,  This a baby cameleon that was in our kitchen. We had them born in our garden.

This is a picture of the hotel which is close to the mission office, it's called the Panarama, we will be staying there the last week of our mission. 

This is inside the origional kings home, this is where they prepared food and ate on the rock.

This is a statue of one of the queens that was near a bathing/swimming pool. This little girl was hugging her.