Happy Thanksgiving

Letter from 11/25/2013

Happy thanksgiving everyone!!

This past week was a good week, capping it off with two baptisms. My companion and I each did one of the baptisms and it went really well. We are looking forward to hopefully about 7 baptisms here in December, and a few more in January.

Coming up on the 3nd of December, we have a zone conference with Elder Renlund of the 70, who is also the Area President. It should be really good, more on that in two weeks.

This last week we had a zone meeting in which our zone leader recapped the meetings with Elder Cook of the 70 when he was here a few weeks ago. In that recap, we found that Elder Cook would like the missionaries working in a 30 minute radius of the church buildings. Yes that is a walking radius, not a driving. This is so that members live closer and can more easily travel to church each Sunday. They are also starting to work on reorganizing boundaries and stakes to make it more convenient for that 30 minute radius. They are also looking for more buildings to rent and lease in order to accomplish that goal. I believe in the next year they would like to get that all accomplished to better help the work progress.

On that front, we are not currently working in a 30 minute radius. Everyone was counseled to change their programs if they needed in order to accomplish that. We have since talked to the APs, because our entire ward lives more than 30 minutes away. So we are going to continue to teach where our members live, and then let the church buildings and ward boundaries come to us. My ward right now is leading this stake in full tithe paying Melchizedek priesthood holders. My ward is planning on splitting here in the next year, which will help grow the church. My honest belief is that before the end of my mission Mada will have 4 stakes. Three in Tana, and 1 in Antsirabe. Right now we only have two here in Tana.*

We have a lot of investigators right now and the work here is doing really well. We are hoping to have a great week coming up.

So yesterday was our ward primary program, which went really well. The only thing was naturally they asked me on Saturday night to play for them. It went well was really easy, but it was a little bit of a pain. We are also preparing for a concert in December, a combined concert between our two wards that share our building. We are excited for that upcoming concert. It should be a lot of fun!

Well the rainy season has kinda started here, and will continue until April. We have quite a bit of random rains now happening. It rains sometimes in the afternoon, or sometimes in the evenings, sometimes it hails, but I am still trying to figure out how to predict when it all happens. I have some pics of the hail, but I forgot my camera today and so I cant send any of the pics that I wanted to send.

Life is going really well, and I am really really excited for the upcoming holiday season! I love Christmas and I have already well started listening to the Christmas music in my apartment. I am so excited for what the future holds in store.

Until Next week!!

Elder Weber

Middle of November

Letter from November 18

Here has come the middle of November, and life is moving along smoothly and wonderfully. I am so excited for the Christmas season that is coming up, and for all that is involved with that. Speaking of the Christmas season, I have been asked to play for the ward Christmas concert. IT is actually a combined choir between two wards, and it includes about 20 songs of which they have asked me to play for about 15 of. It is a little crazy, and I have already told them that there is a transfer in December and there are no guarantee. But they are persistent in asking.

This week was a wonderful week, we taught more times then we ever had before, and we did a bunch of member splits. We did splits several different days in order to teach a large number of lessons we have planned. We have been able to work really hard. 

We had 4 baptisms scheduled for this Saturday, but now we will only probably have 2 or 3. The interviews were yesterday, and one of the investigators didnt show up to church, which makes it hard to do the interview that was scheduled. And one of the other people didnt pass the interview, some things came to light, and she was not prepared to be baptized. Therefore we have rescheduled her for January and will continue to teach her and help her prepare better for the interview. 

We have been doing some reactivation work trying to help church attendance. And this week we saw a tender mercy of the Lord. This past Wednesday, we did a member split in two areas far apart in order to teach many times. I was working in Soavimasoandro, and Elder Bowler was working in Ivandry. We had a plan to meet back together at 9PM, and so we each had that much time to fill no matter what happened. While working some of my plans fell through and so I had some free time. So I turn to my member help and say, "Take me to a less-active member near here". We go and find this lady that has been somewhat less active. I also found out that her son is less active, but is a Melchizedek Priesthood holder. Elder Bowler, while also working had some free time and turned to his companion and said the same thing. And he found two sets of less actives including one that is a large family with several priesthood holders. So that day alone we found a bunch of new members that we had not known about and we are working with them to help them return to church. This week our church attendance was 130, the highest I have seen while working here, and we had 12 investigators attend. The Lord is blessing this area. The ward has also been working hard to help where they can. Yesterday I go to share a spiritual thought with a less active we have been working with that did not attend yesterday, and I show up to find the entire bishopric and executive secretary visiting, and sharing spiritual thoughts. It was a blessing to see the Lord working through many different ways to bring a message to her. 

The work is progressing, because the work is true. If it was not true, it would not progress so well. Our DMP had a talk in church yesterday and asked the question, "why do we all come so far to this church? There are a lot of churches that are a lot closer to where we live, and most of us walk to church because we dont have the money for the bus, so why do we come this far?" And the answer is clear, it is because this church is the true church and so it is worth the sacrifice that it takes. Whether it be walking an hour to church, or whether it be saving money each week to pay for the bus. The sacrifice is worth the reward that will come after this life. 

Mom Note: I can't remember if I mentioned this before, but DMP stands for Directeur des Missionaires de Paroisse (very loosely translated as Ward Mission Leader).  DMB (pronounced "day m bay") is for a Branch or branche in French. They seem to use a lot of French for the church terminology.

This week has been a wonderful week, and I am always looking forward to upcoming weeks.

With all the best until next week.

Elder Weber

Photos from 11/11

 Elder Weber and his mission district

 Above and below: some members of the church in his area

 Next three pictures below are scenery shots of Mada (Madagascar)

 Above and below: A banana tree in a member's home

Random kids who like posing for pictures

The week you hit half a year

Letter from 11/11/2013

It is weird to think that this week I hit half a year on a mission. That means that I am this week 1/4 of the way through my mission. I must admit at the beginning of the mission I felt like two years was going to feel like forever, and I wasnt sure how I was going to make it that long. But now it is obvious. I am 1/4 done, and it feels like time has flown. Missionaries all say, that the first year goes by really slow, and then the second flies by. I am worried because if this is slow, I am afraid to see what fast feels like. I have been working with Elder Bowler now for I think 7 weeks, and its crazy to think about, because we feel like it has just started.

Transfers are coming up on the 11th of December, which I think is far away, but it is actually really really close. It will not be too long at all before that transfer. When you are busy, time flies. This week we taught an incredible 35 times, including doing some splits. We have been doing splits with members. One of which is Ando! He is way cool and loves to help us always. His dad told him, that he has to do something productive when he is not going to school. His dad siad, "You cant go wandering, you should be preaching the gospel." So he tries to help us a lot when he is not t school. Also today we are going to his house and he is going to teach us how to make some great delicious bread. I am really excited. He is way cool!!

This week we had 11 investigators come to church, which is incredible! We also have 16 bap dates between now through Jan 25. This area is looking really well, and we are hoping that this ward will explode here very soon.

So a quick story from this week:

We started teaching these great people who are excited about the church. They have family that are members down in Antsirabe, and they ran into the missionaries in a different part of Tana. We got the info from them and started teaching them, and they even came to church this Sunday!! We are really excited for their family and they are way excited to  learn fona.

Have a great week!

Elder Weber

HELLO NOVEMBER!!

Welcome to the beautiful November. It is hot here, and every day I sweat. The rainy season has kinda started, but right now is just some rain in the evenings occasionally. Soon it should be starting to downpour and rain each afternoon for like three hours. I am not sure exactly when that is going to happen, malagasies are not very accurate on their predictions.

Something crazy happened this week.... We got a referral from church headquarters. This does not normally happen so it was something new. It came from a recent convert for her family that lives in our area. We were really excited, but leads a little into the problem we are currently facing. Right now our problem is that we have too many people to teach. Right now we have a very full schedule, and we have a bunch of contacts that we need to schedule times with. This is a very good problem to have, but it is still a problem. We have started to go on splits with ward missionaries from time to time, but now we are going to need to start doing that several times a week in order to teach all of the times that are planned and the ones that are not planned yet.
 Mom note:  Elder Weber uses the term "times" as shorthand for appointments to teach lessons.

Also right now, we are working hard with the ward to get things rolling in the correct direction. Right now the stake and mission have declared that Ward and branch councils need to be happening every week in order to help organize the church and to get things going. When Pres. Adams came into country, he said that the meetings were never happening. Now, the meetings in a lot of the wards are happening the way they are supposed to. My ward recently has been struggling a little. The first Sunday in this ward, we had ward council, and it went great!! There were a few too many people there (some auxiliaries had brought counselors and secretaries), but it was a pretty good meeting. Then we had a dry spell until yesterday. We had another "ward council", and it was interesting. The only people who showed up were the bishop and his counselors, the Young Women president, the Ward Mission Leader, and the missionaries. We were missing over half of the council which was a little weird. But the meeting happened, which is progress.


We are also trying to help them catch the vision. Right now, we are teaching about 25-30 investigators. We are working extremely hard to build this ward. We are working to help them start to develop a Ward mission Plan, because right now there is not one, and so there is no direction to the work. We are working to figure out who the ward missionaries are, and this Saturday we hopefully have a meeting with them to help teach them about their responsibilities. Most of our Ward missionaries were probably called to be ward missionaries, but never had the calling explained to them of what the are supposed to do. We want this ward to look forward to getting split, which if they work hard, should happen no later than 1.5 years, I think.

So in our teaching pool right now, we have a lot of people. Today I'll share a small story about one of them. Ok I cant decide which one, so I will do 4 really short ones.

1) Faneva. The definition of his name is Flag or Banner, very common name here in Mada. He is a 10 year boy who is the son of a less active mother, who has been returning to activity. He will be baptiazed here on November 23 with a few other of our investigators. He is way quick to pick up the doctrine, and he has such a great spirit about him.

2) Tiana. This is a great story from this week. Two weeks ago, "the guy who works at the cyber", as we called him before, asked us if we had this book, and on his phone was a text reading, Ny Bokin'ny Mormon. We said, "of course, we will drop one off later, when can we teach you?" He scheduled an appointment with us for yesterday morning before church. He told us at the lesson that he ha been trying to read the book, but it was hard because he didnt know any of the people in the book. So we sat down and explained the Book of Mormon, and then taught him about the restoration. Following that, he said, in English(forgot to mention he speaks some english, he learns it while he works at the cyber, he listens online to people talking and he learns) , anyways, he said, "I think I want to give this book to my mom." And we were excited, but his mom lives far away. She may live in an area where there are no missionaries or a church, but we will see. He volunteered to go with us to visit his mom even. Anyways he looks really promising, and we set some more times with him for this week. He works the cyber though from 7 am to 9 PM. He asked us when we could teach, and we told him that we work everyday from morning to evening, and he said, how about 6AM on Tuesday and Thursday? We both thought, "man thats early in the morning," but responded with an enthusiastic YES. So we have that to look forward to tomorrow morning.

3) Ok two was enough for this week. hahaha that was longer than I was thinking.
Election update - they are still counting the votes, but the results seem somewhat conclusive right now. There will probably be a run-off election in December between two candidates. One, being supported by the current president, and the other being supported by the old President. AKA possibly an election style of the coup in 2009. Also I learned that Madagascar is not currently recognized by the United States as a legitimate government, and has not been since 2009. But Madagascar was praised for holding the elections, and taking a good step in the right direction.

Well this ended up pretty long and I have to write President still and go shopping.

LOTS OF LOVE,
Elder Scott Weber

Where oh where is the time going??

Where oh where is the time going?? OH where oh where can it be?

It is almost the end of October and it is extremely hard to believe. Transfers are this week and nothing changed with me, which was expected. One of the elders in my house goes home this week, and his replacement is one of the elders from my last house, Elder Midgley!! I am really excited to have him move back in. He is in my group and way awesome!! Also my MTC companion is getting transferred to Office Elder!!

But in other news this week, the elections happened this last Friday here in Madagascar! They actually happened peacefully. There were a total of 33 candidates that ran. They are still totaling the tallies, but should have a total by the end of the week. In order to be the winner, the top person needs over 50 percent. Since that will most likely not happen, there will be another election in December, December 20, between the top two people from this election. Right now, from what I have heard, the run off will probably be between these two candidates. The one supported by the current president, and the other supported by the old president, who the coup threw out. If this ends up the case, the election in December could possibly be a political version of the coup again. We will see... But all is calm right now.

This week my companion and I worked really hard, and we managed to meet our goal, which was 31 times. We were extremely happy about that, because with the training program, our time for working each day is limited. We are hoping to hit possibly 35 this week. This is a lot, but very possible for the area that we are in. We are hoping that this next week we can work harder and achieve even more. The work is going extremely well, the biggest problem we are facing is getting our investigators to church. This is a common problem, but we are working on it. Each week we have like 15 promises, but like 7 or 8 show up. The problem is consistency. Its not the same 7 or 8 each week, and that is part of the problem. We need all of the investigators coming always. 

Mom Note: "Times" is shorthand for the number of times they taught lessons.

On the other hand, we are doing really well. We have a great way of finding new investigators. So we are so busy teaching, that we really dont have much time to find new investigators, but this is the way our area is going. During the week while we are going to all the lessons we have people stop us and ask to learn, this last week it was 3 different people that asked us. It is really convenient to not have to worry about knocking doors. My companion and I have not knocked a single door since we have been in this area. We have been too busy to, which I am ok with.

Feel free to ask questions, because I sometimes run out of things to say.

OH I almost forgot a story. This last week we were supposed to have a convert baptism, a young girl, 14, whose grandmother is a member, but no body else is. I have never met her mom, but her dad agreed to let her be baptized, signed the papers and everything. The district leader held the interview and she passed with flying colors. Then on Thursday morning our bishop gets a call from the mom, we still have no idea how she got the number, saying that she is Apokolispy and does not accept the baptism of her daughter. So that night we visit, and the dad and the grandmother did not know that she called the bishop, and they were very upset that we told them that the girl could not be baptized if the mother did not accept. They told us in malagasy culture, the father is the patriarch and also has the final saying on any decisions in the family. They wanted to continue on with the baptism. The bishop informed us that that is the culture, but malagasy law now states that it has to be both parents approval. So long story short, she cant get baptized right now and we dont know if we can get the mothers approval.

No pictures today, nothing is working.

LOTS O LOVE!!

Elder Weber