January 2014

CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!! It is already 2014. And for the record.... 2014 will probably be the only year in my life, where I will be in Madagascar for the entire year!! Isnt that exciting! It will be weird when we start talking 2015, because that will mean that my mission is almost over.

This week was a relatively normal week, except for a few things.

1) It was New Year's!! Everyone asked us for candy, because they think that we are rich and full of candy, and so everyone and their dog ask us for candy for the new year. We didnt give out any....

2) We had interviews with President Adams, which went delightfully well. We had a great discussion about a lot of different things, and we are on the same page and ready to go as always!!

3) A kid tried to beat me with a rock this morning..... That probably needs some explanation. This morning we were playing basketball, and at one point Elder Christiansen (my group) was playing around with a kid (normal thing to do here) and had picked him up and brought him over to me and told me, "Hey! Heres a gift for you." The kid this whole time is acting perfectly normal, laughing having a good time. I take the kid, and he starts to freak out. So I put him down, and much to all of our surprises, he goes and picks up a large rock and starts to walk towards me to throw it. We start telling the kid to behave and to calm down, and he pretends to throw the rock to hit us (for the record, the kid never did throw any rocks, just was in throwing position). A different missionary walked up behind him and disarmed him. 10 minutes later, I am sitting down and the kid walks up and starts playing around, giving dona's and high fives and things like that. Then I do something he doesnt like, so he goes and gets his rock again. I disarmed him and then he was all happy and jolly. Then when we had finished basketball, a different missionary decides to try and pick up the kid to see what would happen, and guess what... the kid went for the rocks again. We learned this kid just pretends to throw rocks at people when they dont do what he wants.

4) I am pretty sure I have hit a personal record for investigators at church. Yesterday we hit 32 investigators at church!! 32!! That is crazy!! And of those 32 investigators, there are a bunch that we havent even started teaching yet. This area is going really well, and hopefully a lot of these different investigators will progress. It was a really good way to start off the year, and almost all of them seemed really interested in church. There was one guy that came, and he seemed awkward during the first two hours of church, but Elders Quorum perked him up. He was actively involved in the lesson and seemed to really enjoy it.

5) Last night I had a great time helping to push a car through some mud. That was fun!

6) Ward Council meeting on Sunday was really good, but really long. We have to work on the time restriction for the meeting, because 1 hour and 45minutes is way too long, when the branch council meets every week. Since they have teh councils meet every week they are supposed to be 30 minutes long max. But this branch likes to run over always. But I dont mind it too much, because they get things done. They dont waste time talking about unimportant things, but they really focus on getting the things done that need to be brought up. So I dont mind it being long, because it was a good meeting.

7) EMERGENCY TRANSFERS. But dont worry not me. Because of the severe lack of missionaries in the mission at this time, President Adams has decided to pull a few missionaries from La Reunion to come and work here. One worked here before, but had to go over there to help out for a little, and the other two have never been here to work before. So we are having a small transfer this week for the three of them, and then the main transfer will be here in two weeks. But one of them is moving into my house. He is going to be in a threesome with the other missionaries in my house, the Andranomanelatra elders. The trick is though, he knows just about the same amount of malagasy as you guys. So he gets to work really hard to try and learn malagasy. So for the next few weeks it looks like we are going to have 5 living in our house. It will be fun!!

I think that might be all for this week, I am running out of ideas. Next week I will try and tell stories about investigators.

Oh by the way, they have announced a winner for the election, but its not official and people are claiming fraud, but it seems like the majority of people could not care less anymore. People are just sick of it, and it turns out that the turnout for the election was like 3 or 4 million people out of the over 7 million registered voters of the 22 million that live in Madagascar. So it seems that people have just kinda given up on caring, or that at least is my perspective here in Antsirabe, which is a pretty relaxed city.

Elder Weber