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
No comments:
Post a Comment