Another fantastic week in Mahazoarivo

Letter from January 13, 2014 (Posted Late)
It has been a great week here in Mahazoarivo.

The start to last week was a little slow, with not very many times on Monday through Wednesday. Tuesday we had to help take a sick member to the hospital. And I realized when we went just how bad the hospitals are here in Madagascar. When they admitted her, she ended up in a small room that had 3 or 4 beds, and that was it. No instruments, no heart monitors, no beeping things, just beds. It was kinda a sad thing to see. And I am sure the medications that they actually have access to, are very limited. It is really hard to see.

 Mom Note: Times is shorthand for teaching appointments.

Wednesday,we had english class, and also helped to build some shelves in the church building. But lessons wise, we came out with a loss. 

Thursday was a good day. We had a great district meeting, and then we successfully had a great day teaching 7 times. We started teaching some new investigators that are really awesome!! We had some great member help that day which was fantastic. They really helped to answer a lot of questions that were brought up in the lessons. 

Friday was another great day teaching a lot of times. We had a wonderful day.

Saturday, I did a split in Andranomanelatra, where I did a whole slew of bap interviews for them. We had some great food at the Branch President's house, and we had a lot of fun out in that area. I have gotten to know a lot of people in that area, and it is great to occasionally go out there and see them all. That was a great day!

Sunday, had a great day at church, with 28 investigators and a great day. I was then asked by the zone leaders to help do some bap interviews for the other district's district leader, because there were a lot to get done. That went well as well. Then we had a great day of teaching and had a member soiree that evening where for the first time in my life, I ate..... Rabbit. It wasnt superb, because it had the skin and fat and all. But it was definitely an experience. 

another week, another transfer finished

January 20th letter

So another week has flown by.

It was a great week, including 3 baptisms. We have a little wait until our next baptisms, Probably in March, 

But transfer news came out, and my current companion is headed to Tana. I will be getting a malagasy companion for at least this next transfer. When I worked in Ivandry, I lived with him so I already know him. He is 6 weeks behind me in country. So I will be senior companion still. So it will be lots of malagasy for me, because he is still learning english and is not that good yet. 

Other transfer news, is not much that you guys would be interested in.

This area is doing really well. Yesterday at church though, we had a drop in Attendance, both of investigators and members. It probably had to do with the rain, but who knows. The work is still progressing, and I am hoping to have at least 10 baptisms in March if all goes well. It is all about the investigators. My branch has set some really good tough goals, and they are working hard to achieve them.

I would like to take the moment to praise my branch council. My branch council is wonderful, and has been working very effectively. They are still learning, but it is a lot better than what I have seen in my other areas in the mission. They are really affective and they make assignments, and then people do the assignments. There was a goal set to reactivate 5 families by the end of march, and so they first picked the 5 families. The next week they made assignments nad schedules of when to visit them, and know they are following up. Yesterday they had a great discussion about how they are visiting these people, and they are all really happy to be visitied, but they havent returned yet. And so the assignments were made to visit them all again this week, and to also visit them on Sunday morning and bring them to church. We will see what happens. They are learning very well, and they are excited to work. 

We are really doing a lot of work here in Mahazoarivo, and we are hoping to increase the branch quite a bit over the next few months. We have a large pool of investigators, and now it is just helping them all progress to the important step of baptism. 

We have some great members that go out and work with us. There are 3 main guys, all preparing for missions, and one girl, also preparing. They are extremely active in helping and they are so excitied to continue preparing for their missions. The members in this branch are awesome, and so willing to help. Everyone is focused on the work at hand, and there are good goals to go with the goals. All it is is work, work, work. I love to work, and this area needs people who are ready to work. 

We have a bunch of investigators that are really active in learning, but have problems with Vita Soratra. We are hoping all of those problems can be solved somewhat quickly and that it wont cause to large of a problem in their progression towards baptism. 

Mom Note:  From a previous email, we learned that Vita Soratra is the government recognized marriage that requires official birth certificates. This can sometimes be a difficult and expensive situation.

Quick story about investigators. We have these two investigators, that showed up to church one week, so we started to teach them. They are blind, the guy very much so, and the wife can see.... barely. When we started teaching them, they said that someone told them that if they went to church with us they could get money. Which is false, and so we assumed when they learned that, that they would no longer want to learn. But they are still very interested in learning about the gospel. Their house is extremely humble. It is the smallest home I have taught in. There are the husband and wife, and one little child. They live in a room that is probably less than 5' by 5' and there is nothing inside, except a little mat. I wouldnt even be able to lay down inside the house comfortably. There is a door, and one small window, but no furniture, and very little possesions. But they are humble, and ready to recieve the gospel.

God Speed!

Until next week!

Elder Weber

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