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