Another Week in Mahazoarivo!!

Letter from Feb 3, 2014

Another Week come and gone. It was a pretty fast week!

If you want to be jealous, go visit elderchancefox.blogspot.com. He is currently working in Fort Dauphin, and is in my group, just look at those pictures. We here, are all so jealous of them working down there. Not saying that Antsirabe is not pretty, but it aint no Fort D.

Yesterday was a wonderful day at church. In Tana there is this one member who is deaf, he came down yesterday to visit, and so I ended up translating for him in Teny Jules. He name is Jules and he made up the sign language, which is at some times a little similar to ASL, but not really at all. It was a lot of fun, but it was really hard to do. He is such a cool guy!! He is just absolutely amazing. I hope to have a chance to see him and chat with him some more before the end of my mission. We shall see. 

This week, I also met an american!! It was way cool. We were at the bank getting money out, and there was this girl waiting in line, and I was judging if she was french or american. I figured she might be american so I decided to chat with her to see. Normally I dont talk to white people in this country. She was american!! Not only American, but is here with the Peace Corps. She is from OHIO!! She is from Cinci, but went to school at Ohio State. She got a degree in International relations. She also said her sister lived in Dublin for a while, and she asked if I knew where Flanagans Dublin was. I was like, yeah, about 3 minutes from my house. So that was cool. She is here teaching English for two years.

Besides that, it was a good week of teaching investigators and helping people increase their faith. We had 20 investigators at church yesterday, and hopefully have like 10 baptisms coming up in March, so the work is still progressing. 

A cool story. We have some investigators that have been investigating for 5 years now. They have been having a huge problem getting a divorce and then married. This has been a problem for them for a long time, but it looks as if we should be getting close to having that all solved and they should be able to be baptized. They are practically members, they know everything, are way diligent, the problem has just been the soratra problems. 

Members here are absolutely wonderful, and I love working with them. My branch has a goal for 180 people at church by the end of June, and yesterday we had 163, which is a lot more than we normally have. We are really looking forward to watching this branch grow and eventually split, and then eventually split again, and so forth. The work is going, sometimes we feel it should be going faster than it is, but when you take a step back and look in the terms of growth over years, it is booming. If I am not mistaking, the first branch was organized in 2004. or sometime around there. Now in 2014 we have 8 branches that are part of the Antsirabe district, and they have submitted paperwork to become a stake. So looking at it like that, the work is definatly progressing, we just need to make it progress it a little more. So it feels like it goes slow, but thats because we only see such a small part, over such a small time frame, so its hard to see it in the fullness. But all things need time, and this branch is hitting its stride. This branch runs like the way it should, and so its just time before it really just takes off and hits a whole new level of awesome!!

Life is great! Life is wonderful! The work is great! The Lord is Great!

Elder Weber 

Photos from Jan 27th Letter

 Photos from recent baptisms

Below:  The member helper that Elder Weber talked about in his Jan 27 letter.

The end of January

January 27th Letter

It is hard to think that the end of January is already here. By next week it will Feburary.

If my record keeps going as it currently is, in about 6 weeks I will be transferred. So far I have not stayed more than 2 transfers in any area, and we will see if that changes. Its the Lord's plan, so ifc he needs me to work a lot of different areas, that is great, but if he wants me to stay here more, that is great as well. We shall see what happens. 

So this week was a good week. It started a little slow,but with Elder Connault leaving that is what was expected. We had some goodbye soirees for him, and sent him on his way bright and early Thursday morning. But I would like to give you guys a little insight into the way of traveling between provinces.

When you go to different provinces we take what are called "Taxi-brusses" They are for traveling longer distances. What happens normally, is you show up to the station. As you show up, people start attacking you. The reason why is each driver has to fight when people show up to try and get them to go into their brusse. So when we showed up on Thursday morning, people were yelling and trying to get us to go with them. The price is normally all the same, but the catch is, they have to stay there and wait until the whole brusse is full in order to leave, so you try and get one that is already partially full. But also if you want, you can request a certain seat, so if you get on one that is almost completely full, then you get a middle seat, which does not look like much fun. They pack all of the luggage on top of the bus, and then when it is all ready to go, then they leave. So depending on situations it can be a little long when trying to get a bus. 

Also this week one of our member helps left. He left to go to Tana for a little while to go to school and prepare for his mission. We had an awesome day together before he left. He was helping us, but it was raining, so we all ended up completely soaked. The paths were terrible and slippery so we were going everywhere with the bikes, almost falling so many different times. It was a lot of fun. He then left on Saturday to go up to Tana. 

This week at church we had 14 investigators come to church, and we really need to start figuring out the problems for a lot of investigators. A lot of them come sometimes, but sometimes isn't enough, it would be nice if they showed they would continue down the path after their baptisms. 

Also at church, I was asked to teach Elders Quorom about Home Teaching. I used President Monson's talk from last conference during the priesthood session. The problem with using that talk is that I had to translate the parts I wanted, because we still haven't received the Liahonas (foreign form of the Ensign magazine) from last conference. Hopefully we should get them before we get to the next conference. 

Attached are some pictures from the baptisms a few weeks ago. In other email will be some other great pictures, member help, and any others I find.

Until February,

Elder Weber

Story and Photos from Jan 13 letter

TODAY!!  (Monday January 13th, 2014)

Today has been a great day. We started this morning with an activity for the leaders of the branch, all of the auxillary presidencies, and then also the missionaries. We had about an 1.5 hours of lessons, and then we went to this cool lake in my area, near a members house. Big lake and there are tons of pictures from it today. And then we ate some lunch there as well. Here is a story of the pictures. (For help, I will try to number the pictures in the story)

So the story goes like this:

We started this morning with an activity, with Branch President Emile leading the activity (9336). 

Afterwards we had a Vatsim-panahy (spiritual thought) by yours truly (9337). 

When finished with the program, most of the younger people in attendence went out to a nearby lake called Andraikiba. (9345) 

It is a nice large beautiful lake. Lots of cool people where there like picture 9351. 

Our DMB even did some back flips (9353) 

There was this cool flower that i took a cool picture with (9356) 

and also with my nametag (9358) 

There even was a house that was alive (9362 sy 9363) 

And then we had a fun time being scared to death on this big tall scary made, not very sturdy platform in the lake. (9373). It was a beautiful day at the lake. 

I tried to use my story telling voice, so Im not sure how well it turned out. But we had a blast this morning it was so great!

Until next week!

Elder Weber