Arabaina Tratry ny Tsingeri-toana Naterahana

Letter received on October 14th

Hello All!!

This week flew by and I had a wonderful birthday!! I am really tired of typing already because I responded to I think 24 emails today, but I have lots to share today.

So last week went really well with work. We taught a lot of times and had a really good success with helping others progress. A few stories from teaching this week:

We are currently working with a less active member who has not been coming to church for a long time. We have been meeting with her and she keeps wanting to return, but doesnt show up each week. Last night she bore testimony to us that she knows that the church is true and that she needs to come back to church more regularly. I am really happy for her, now we will see if she returns. 

We also are teaching an investigator and she is way awzesome. We are waiting for her husband to return from The Comoros and when he returns they will get vita soratra and then they will get baptised. Their oldest and youngest children are members and this week we started teaching the other two boys inbetween. We are hoping they will join the church with their parents. They are way cool guys, but like most teenage boys have different priorities.

(note from mom: I asked if vita soratra meant married and this was his response the following week:  

Vita soratra is legally married. there is what malagasies consider married, and then there is legally married according to the government, and they must be the second to be baptized in the church.

From Mom: I remember reading somewhere else that to be legally married according to the government, they need to have their official birth certificates. This can be a difficult and expensive process for them.)

This week I had two soirees. The first was on Friday night. We went to the 1st counselors house and had a soiree with his family. We played some games and ate some good food. Unfortunately it was a little rushed because of time. One of the games we played is a counting game where the numbers count up, but if you use the number 5 you are out. And if your out, you have to dance, it was fun!! We also played a game where someone is blindfolded and is spinned around and points to someone and tells them to sound like a certain animal, and after they do the animal they must guess who it was. Lots of fun. We had vary sy akoho, xhich is rice and chicken. Way good. And the other was on Satruday with some Less actives. It was a fancy meal because we had pasta for appetizer. In malagasy culture you only have pasta as an appetizer when it is something big like a holiday. They did a really nice pasta that tasted great. They took Presto (raman noodles) and put in vegetables into the noodles. It was way good. And then we had rice and meat. Way good soiree for both soirees. I cannot cook nearly as good as malagasys can.

(note from mom: A soiree is a dinner appointment. Elder Weber mentioned in a response to my question about soirees that dinner appointments are rare due to the poverty of the people.)

So Thanks so much for the packages. They were amazing!!! I have not had American candy in so long and it tastes so so good. Good to know, there are some small custom fees on my end, but they just take it out of my allotment for the month. The package from home was 11300 ariary (5.5 dollars) and the one from DearElder was 2300 ariary. So they will just take that out of my allotment for the month of November. But the packages were amazing!!! I am trying to ration the candy otherwise I will just eat it all right now. The music is good, we really like Joseph and the Technicolor dreamcoat. The primary music got put on twice and so there are doubles of all of those for some reason. 

So onto the birthday tradition. So the phrase for Happy Birthday in Madagascar is way long, look at the title. And there is a malagasy tradition to be egged and floured on your birthday. I knew it was coming and it came alright. They started with 6 eggs and a kilo of flour. I then got into the shower and when I got out they threw more flour. I got back into the shower, and when I got out, they had found another egg in the house and they did that and more flour, so then I got back into the shower AGAIN. It was good and a lot of fun, and then they had to clean the entire house from the eggs and flour everywhere. 

And I had said that there werent going to be any pictures today, but my companion just emailed me some from his camera and I am sending those home. Some scenery shots, Tsikivy who is our member help most of the time, the soiree with The 1st counselor (tsikivys family) and then the birthday egging, and Stevie our newest friend in our apartment. He is so cute!! 

By the way, the rain has started, it now rains each evening, but pretty soon it will start raining in the day time. It is so true what they say, malagasys start running when the rain comes. There is so much more but time is short. Elections are next week and they havent pushed them back yet, so it might actually happen. We will see. There are 41 canadites running, but only a few big ones. 

Lots of Love,

Elder Scott Weber

A crazy week!

Letter received October 21st. 

Hello everybody! This has been a crazy week and a lot has happened.

On Tuesday we had our 3 month interviews with President Adams. He is supposed to interview each missionary every three months and our zones turn was on Tuesday. That went very well and we had a good chat. On Tuesday night we had Sister and Elder Shupe join us for the evening. Sister Shupe is the mission nurse and Elder Shupe is the jack of all trades in the Office and helps everyone out. They were a lot of fun to hang out with and it was good getting them to experience the Madagascar culture and the work of the missionaries.

Wednesday and Thursday went well. Friday morning we got a call from our DMP (ward mission leader) that his younger brother had just pased away. Our DMP had just finished his mission about a month before. His brother had been very sick and had been in and out of the hospital several times because of his sickness and the doctors had made a few mistakes which made him sicker. After battling for weeks he passed away. He was probably under 20 twenty years old. It was extremely sad, so on Friday we did a lot for them. We helped spread the word to the ward, and visted the family. We also went with the ward to the viewing and mourned with the family. I learned a lot about the malagasy culture and would like to share a little with you now:

When someone dies, things generally happen extremely quickly, because they do not embalm the bodies. Shortly after the death, the miandry faty begins which can be compared to a viewing. People can come and visit and the visits are like this:

The deceased is placed on a table in the home with white clothes. The deceased is dressed generally in white and has a mosquito net draped over them. They direct family sits in that room together, and other extended family members and special guests also sit in that room. When people come to visit they walk into the  room, face the deceased briefly and then face towards the family. After facing the family there is some malagasy fombas that are said. I have a paper at our apartment that has written out exactly what to say. The oldest in the group visiting is the spokesperson, in our case the bishop did it (not sure if he was the oldest, but since it was the ward visiting, he was presiding). There are phrases spoken by just the spokesperson and some spoken by all visiting. In the encounter, the family also has a spokesperson, generally the eldest, the grandfather or the oldest sibling of the parents. After the conclusion of the words, all shake the hands of all sitting in the room, but it is very taboo to say Im sorry or anything like that. Very interesting.

Anyways Conference on Saturday and Sunday was very good. Saturday was marvelous, Sunday was OK because I watched it in Malagasy, but I am sure it will better when I watch it in English.

I still need to write President, so I need to be going. But P-day was fun going to Ambohimangarova and seeing the lemurs.

God Speed,

Elder Weber

 

Birthday Photos from Oct 14 Letter

Elder Weber's memory card was corrupted, so he couldn't send pictures for a while. He forwarded his companion's email with photos.  When I post the letter from the 14th, you will see additional explanations about the photos.  

Here is what Elder Bowler had to say about the photos:

Some pictures of from our area, Tsikivy the member that helps us, a dinner appointment at hius house, and Elder Weber experiencing a Malagasy tradition of your birthday. 6 eggs and a kilo of flour were thrown his head. Then he showered, and we hit him again with an egg and flour, then he showered and he hit him with more flour, and then he showered and THEN we let him be :)

Arabaina Tratry ny Tsingeri-toana Naterahana (Happy Birthday)!

The last one is Stevie. He's our friend because he eats bugs! (Added by Ann Weber: Stevie is a lizard which has since become lost somewhere in their apartment.)

Photos from Oct 21 letter

A Visit to Ambohimanga with the Lemurs

narary kely izahay tamin'alahady

The title translates as we were a little sick on Sunday. And by a little sick, it was quite a bit. Both my American companion and I must have eaten some bad food on Saturday, because Saturday night and Sunday (WARNING SLIGHTLY GRAPHIC) we both were throwing up and having dirrahroea. We stayed home all day Sunday and literally slept almost the entire day. We also then slept all night. Today we are both doing better, still extremely tired, but our stomachs are feeling better.

The letter this week will be a little short, because I took a long time writting President this week.

This area is awesome. We are woking hard to apply some changes. Right now our program is filled almost completly with women and teenage girls, with very few families and very few men. In our mission we tract a stat called FLF. It stands for Father Led Families. Why do we tract that? Because families and fathers help build the church. We are looking for real growth in our mission. Real growth is people that join the church and then stay. We tract real growth through church attendence, convert retention, active melchezidek priesthood holders, and reactivation. We care about real grwoth, because that is what brings stakes, and once we have stakes we can get a temple. The goal is a temple here. I know that as soon as there is a temple here in Madagascar the work will explode. But right now, we have a lot going inactive because they havent been to the temple. Less people will go less innactive once there is a temple here. Here is the principle on looking for families and worthy melcheidek priesthood holders. If I have a branch that has 500 people attending church everyweek, but I only have 10 melchezidek preisthood holders, it cannot become a ward, because a ward needs a minimum of 16 worth priesthood holders. And then you need a certain number to have a stake, and a certain number to have a temple. This is the problem that we are facing. So when we find women that want to learn, we dont just reject them, but if they dont progress quickly, we can not afford to hold on to them and hope that they will eventually progress, we need to be finding and teaching and reactivating the families.

This last week we had a zone meeting (meeting of all the missionaries in the zone with the zone leader conducting and teaching, usually once a month, zone conference is the same, but it is run by the Assistants and President Adams, once every like 3 months and it is on Thursday this week) At the zone meeting Elder Evans brought up a very good point. If investigators are not coming to church, and do not have a bap date set as a goal, after a month of teaching them are they really progressing??? We have this part member family that we are teaching, the daughters are members but the parents are not, they have been learning since March, but the father still drinks and smokes, and the father and mother do not have a bap date, and do not come to church. We are going to stop teaching them soon, because they are not progressing and we could be using the time better.

I think this letter is making me and missionaries seem cold hearted, but this is the main principle I am trying to explain. We are not giving up on people, but our call is to help people help people come closer unto Christ by helping them recieve the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. There are a lot of people who just arent ready yet to recieve. We are not giving up hope, but we put them in the area book, and in some time with new missionaries down the road, they may be ready to recieve.

I love the work, it is going well, there is a lot we need to do to make this work go better, and that is the goal.

This is my personal belief, that before the end of 30 years, there will be a temple operating here in Madagascar. Hopefully it will be a lot sooner, but the things that will hold the temple are the following, priesthood holders (right now I think we are doing pretty well), tithing (you cant get a temple if people are not paying their tithing), and the stakes. Personal hope, I hope that before I finish my mission there will be 4 stakes and 2 districts. I dont think its an impossible goal, but hopefully at least 3 stakes and 1 district. The district in Antsirabe from what I have heard is really close to becoming a stake, hopefully within the next year. The other stake might form here in Tana. And then maybe a new district in Fort Dauphin, becuase the work is going so well down there. We will see though.

Until next week,


Elder Weber