Birthday Week!

For a birthday week, it was a bit busy and crazy. Meetings and all sorts of crazy things.

But I am learning how to drive stick. But learning to drive stick is probably the hardest thing I have done in my life. This city is full of hills and is full of traffic. Those are the two hardest things to deal with when learning stick, and this country is just full of it. But I am starting to get a hold on it, and I haven't hit anything yet, which is probably pretty good. We shall see what happens later.

We taught 6 lessons this week, which is pretty good for us. We are hoping to start getting that number up higher, but that will depend on meetings and all of those things. 

So we have this one investigator I would like to tell everybody about.

So the story goes like this. There was a point in time, where Elder Christiansen and Elder Fox were walking down the street. Elder Christiansen decides that he needs to spit, and turned and spit, and almost hit this guy. He started apologizing and turned to Elder Fox, and said, "Man, I can't believe I almost just spit on this guy." And the guy, named Andry, walked up and said, "You guys speak english?" And then asked, "What is your guy's mission here" And the missionaries started to explain and then all of a sudden one thing leads to the next and now he is an investigator of the church, comes to church every Sunday, loves the gospel and the teachings that we bring, and has agreed to prepare to be baptized in the church. All of this from Elder Christiansen almost spitting on him. Great guy, and it is a joy to teach him always.

So also in this ward here, there is a deaf member. He has created his own malagasy sign language, and the missionaries that work here always learn it and translate for him in church meetings. We, however, have recently decided that we are going to teach him American Sign Language, in malagasy. We want to convert all of his signs into American Sign Language for this reason: To help him be able to go to the temple. We realized that the only way to get him to the temple is if he speaks American Sign Language, because no body else in the world speaks his malagasy sign language that he made up. So some of the signs might not make total sense to him, it is what we feel is necessary to help him to progress as a member of the church. That being said, mom, dad, others that may have some ideas, what can we do? We are going to start by teaching him simple signs, and then eventually get to the more complicated things. And we feel that general conference DVDs will be a good practice tool and things to help him learn, but we dont quite know the best thing to do is to get him from simple signs, to the complexity of general conference or the Book of Mormon. 

The work is going so well here. It is great to see the Lord's hand in every aspect of the work. It has been good these last couple of days thinking about life which is a bit saddening. Going to the airport often always makes me think about when I will be going home and how that is really not that far away.

For the birthday, nothing special happened. Got some really nice calls from some friends in old areas and everything and we ate some cake for dinner. And then this morning at the mission office, they decided to hit us with some eggs and flour, which was life. They got us good, and everything. So that was this morning. The us is Elder Rice and I, because his birthday is today, and mine was yesterday. 

But other than that it was a good week. Life is speeding by. It seems like tomorrow my mission will be over at the speed it is flying right now. I only have six and a half months left, and my heart hits my stomach when I hear that. This next transfer marks chick mish, and the sisters that came with us will be going home in four weeks. And then only four transfers left in the mission. It is going by so dang fast. Christmas Skype call will be here in only a few months, or for me it will feel like seconds, and then after that such a short amount of time left.

I know that coming out here was the right decision and that there is a God in the heavens that loves us more than we can fathom. He is the God of all the earth. He is the great creator of everything and is the father of our spirits. He sent his only begotten Son, even Jesus Christ the Lord to suffer for our sins and to make it possible to return to him. I know that after the death of Jesus Christ, that the early Christian Church fell into apostasy, and changed and distorted the gospel of Jesus Christ. But, because of God's love for us, he called again a prophet to restore the gospel of Jesus Christ again here on the earth. Because of that, there is again the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, the whole, true, pure gospel. There are living prophets to guide us in our troubles and in our lives. All of this because of God's love for us. He wants us to succeed, and he gives us challenges to help us grow. Jesus Christ stands at the head of His church, named The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have seen the way this gospel changes peoples lives, and it has changed mine. There is nothing that gives me more joy than sharing this gospel. I know that this gospel can change your life, and I challenge everyone who reads this to commit to learning more. If you already know it, then good, keep learning, if its new to you, ask questions and learn. 

Have a great week!!

Elder Weber