Fianarantsoa week 20

Hey everyone! There isn't a whole lot of vaovao (news) this week.

 The work has been going. It's not as fast and easy as I would like, but as Elder Holland says, "Salvation is not easy."  Elder Covey and I have now been together for almost 3 months and not had a single baptism. That might not seem that bad, but for this mission that isn't very good. The problem is that people here don't have a whole ton of education so they don't retain new knowledge as easily as most people and so when Elder Covey got here and was trying to get a feel for where our investigators were at we realized that none of them know very much.  So we pretty much just started everyone over on the first lesson. That's not a bad thing because we have found the people who are really committed and the ones who weren't. Because that is another big problem here. People are more than willing to say they will do something, but to actually get them to do it is the tricky part. So moral of the story is me and Elder Covey have been together for almost 3 months and had 0 baptisms. But on the bright side, once our investigators get baptized they are going to be way solid members!!! 

It has rained quite a bit this last week. It rained almost everyday, so I just took my rain coat with me no matter what the sky looked like and usually I ended up being glad I had it. When it rains here it is the craziest thing! We'll be walking along and all of a sudden you just hear this soft hum and slowly it gets louder and louder and you realize that it's the rain hitting the tin roofs. Then you look in that direction and you just see the wall of rain coming and do everything you can to find a place to hide until you can get your coat on. The problem is you are usually just in the middle of a bunch of tiny houses and there is nowhere to go so you just get soaked until you can get your jacket on. And then once it rains all of the roads are so muddy and slippery so that makes for an entertaining day. It definitely keeps you on your toes. 

The last thing I just want to mention really quickly is that this last week we hit February 20 which officially means I have been on my mission for 6 months. Pretty crazy! I can't believe it's been that long. It has been probably the hardest 6 months of my life, the fastest and funnest 6 months of my life, and I have grown and matured more in the last 6 months than I ever thought was possible! I love being a missionary and serving the Lord! I have learned what it means to give everything to Him. I am still not perfect at it, but hope to some day be able to say that I gave 100% to serving God. I want His will and His desires to become mine. That is my goal.

 

I love you all and hope everything is going well!

 Have a great week! 

Love, Elder Glazier

Fianarantsoa week 19

 

Well... I just realized that I have been in Fianarantsoa for a long time. 19 weeks! And I have loved every minute of it! It is so great here! I promised myself I wasn't going to do this, but I'm going to... this week we had February 3rd. To most people that doesn't mean anything, but that is exactly one year and 6 months from my release date. I'm not going to say anything more about that. This week nothing too exciting happened. It was transfer week so we did have a little bit of vaovao (voh-voh... that means new). Elder Johnson left and we got a new elder in our house named Elder Fisher. He is from Riverton. He has been out for almost 2 years! He goes home in 2 transfers. It's way weird to see him and live with him. Every once in a while we'll say something about things that are going to happen in a couple months and he'll just be like, "Oh, I'll be home when that happens!" Its way weird! haha But he is a good guy and a good missionary! He is incredibly good at Malagasy and way smart! I hope I can be that good and know the gospel as well as he does when I'm at that point!

The only other thing that happened this week was I had an interview with President Adams, the mission president. He came down to do interviews. It was good! He is a very smart man and a great teacher! The two things I took away from my interview was that I need to work on asking inspired questions that are going to make my investigator think, and that I need to be more bold. We have a very set purpose and there is no point in lying to my investigators and pretending like we're just bringing them a happy message and don't expect them to do anything about it. We are trying to help people change their lives and come to Christ. Our message is just words that have no point if they aren't willing to act on them and try them out.

Other than that, nothing really happened this week. The work is going great and everyday God is guiding us to people who are ready to hear our message. I love sharing the gospel and helping people change their lives and come unto Christ! Have a great week!
Love, Elder Glazier

P.S. Sorry there are no pictures this week... My camera died and I forgot to charge it so it was dead all week. There will be some next week again! 

Fianarantsoa Week 18

Well,

 we have come to the end of yet another week here in Madagascar! This week has been an awesome week with some very interesting events!

 First off, Elder Covey and I decided to really push ourselves this week and try to work way hard! It really paid off. We had a ton of people let us in to teach them while we were tracting and we missed very few of our scheduled appointments! Normally at least a couple appointments fall through everyday, but this week we caught almost everyone at home! It was great!

Second, we had a pretty crazy experience... on saturday we were walking down this little skinny path and we had to pee so we stopped and peed (which is a totally normal thing here) and when we finished I turned around to keep walking and there was a guy coming down the path. He was about 10 feet from me and he saw me and his eyes got way huge and he stopped walking! I was like, What the heck, that's weird.
 And then he like clenched his fists and backed up against the wall and then I was really wierded out. Elder Covey at this point finishes peeing and turns around and sees this dude pinned up against the wall with eyes the size of china and clenched fists so he says,  "Hi! Are you scared??"  And the guy says,  "Ya, I'm really scared!"  And he didn't dare pass us on the path so we stood there for a minute trying to pass this guy without scaring him to death and making him pee his pants or try to fight us! haha it was ridiculous!  And the reason he was scared was because we were white!!!   Me and Elder Covey were shocked! We had no idea how to respond. It was crazy!

The other crazy experience we had was yesterday morning we are all asleep at about 6:15, when the zone leaders phone starts to ring.  He jumps up thinking we slept through the alarm and sees that it is President Adams (the mission president).  A few minutes later he comes walking into the room and says that Soeur (sister) Rakotoarisoa (the couple sister) died last night. He tells us we all have to get up and that we are going to their house to help Elder Rakotoarisoa.  When we are on our way over he gets another call from President Adams. He seems very shocked by the news he is being told.  A minute later he hangs up and says that she is not dead and everything is fine. We call them and sure enough, they are both doing great!  We were really confused!  We went to church and found out that somebody (we think it was a member in the other branch that doesn't like them) sent out a text to a bunch of members and some of the missionaries that she had died durning the night. We still don't know who it was or why they did it, but we do know that lots of people thought she was dead but she was totally fine.  Then to top it off we had 27 investigators at sacrament meeting between us and the other companionship in our branch and everyone decided to bear their testimonies about thinking that Soeur Rakotoarisoa was dead and she really isn't! It was horrible! The meeting went like 45 minutes over and nobody even talked about the gospel! Luckily the sunday school teacher is really good and taught a great lesson!  All of our investigators all said that church was good and they really liked it so hopefully they will give it another try next week!

One investigator in particular I hope will not judge too harshly about the meeting. His name is Gerard (sounds like how you think it should with a j sound at the beginning). We have been teaching him and his wife now for a couple of weeks and at first they seemed kind of interested but said they weren't going to get baptized. We kept going back though because they were keeping the commitments we were giving them.  When we went at the beginning of this week and asked them where they were in the Book of Mormon he said he was in Mosiah!  We were shocked!  He had read like a hundred pages in less than a week!!!  And this week we were teaching them and he said they knew the Book of Mormon and our teachings are true and that they want to get baptized.  We told them they needed to get legally married because they are what we call Fomba gasy (foom-ba gas). That is what many malagasy people do. They just live together and have kids and say they are married, but they never get legally married because it is a lot of work and people think they have to have a party which costs a lot of money. But we told them they needed to get legally married and when they came to church they said they are working on getting their birth certificates so that they can get married! We were way excited! It has been amazing to watch the change in their lives the last couple of weeks! They are incredible people!

And the last thing that happened this week was last night we got transfer news!  Guess where Elder Glazier is going... that's right, nowhere! I  will be staying in Fianarantsoa for another transfer!  At the end of this transfer I will have been in Fianarantsoa for a fourth of my mission.  It is gorgeous here and I love it, but 6 months is a long time to spend in one area!

 

Thanks for all of the emails and support! Have a great week! 

Love, Elder Glazier