Analamahitsy Week 2

Well, it's already that time again. I can't believe how fast everyday and every week goes. I feel like I go to sleep on tuesday night and wake up the next morning and it's already monday again! Everything is going well here! My area is doing... okay. The missionaries before didn't have much of a set program so it has kind of been up to me to talk to all of our investigators and set up solid programs with them. But it has been really good for me and I've learned a lot. Not a whole lot happened this week. But that's okay, because p-day is almost over and I'm running out of time. So I will just tell one story.

I'm going to start my story with the word of the week. Mifandihanina (mee-fon-dee-hon-nuh). It means to fast. So the end of last week and the beginning of this week Elder Te'e and I were really struggling. Nobody wanted to hear what we had to say and all of our times were blowing us off. We were coming home at the end of everyday with 1 or 2 lessons at the most. That is not acceptable. In my last area we were teaching between 5-7 lessons a day. So I didn't know what to do and I was really frustrated. I talked to my companion and we thought a lot about it and came up with a few ideas, but I didn't think that was enough. So I decided to do a little personal fast just to know what we needed to do and that the work in this area would start to pick up a little bit. And that very day we came home with 4 lessons and a bunch of less actives homes that we had found. We have decided to really focus on the less actives because there are so many in our ward. But it was incredible to see the work change just like that. And ever since that day we haven't had a day with less than 4 times. Yes, there is still a lot of work to do and we have only just begun the battle, but it's a great start! And my faith grew so much in the power of fasting. I have never really felt like fasting had ever helped me or anything, but this week I really saw that when we fast and show God that we are sincere in our desires and that we are willing to put of the natural man for something more important he will bless us. I love that. I know that we have a Father in Heaven that is mindful of us and willing to bless us if we will do His will and try to listen to the promptings of the Holy Ghost. I love you all and I'm greatful for the examples you are to me! Have a great week! 

Love, Elder Glazier 

Oh, I this is maybe a little weird shoutout, but I want to do a shoutout to a missionary here in Madagascar with me! His name is Elder Rasmussen! Yeah!!! I saw Elder Rasmussen today when we went to play soccer! It was so cool to see him for the first time here in country! He is doing great! Sadly we forgot to take a picture together, but I'm sure we'll see each other again soon and we'll take one then! 

This is a picture of where we played soccer... A little different from home. 

Oh, I this is maybe a little weird shoutout, but I want to do a shoutout to a missionary here in Madagascar with me! His name is Elder Rasmussen! Yeah!!! I saw Elder Rasmussen today when we went to play soccer! It was so cool to see him for the first time here in country! He is doing great! Sadly we forgot to take a picture together, but I'm sure we'll see each other again soon and we'll take one then! 

This is a picture of where we played soccer... A little different from home. 

 

Analamahitsy Week 1

Well... Where to start? I know! TRANSFERS!!!! We had transfers this week.

 I'm sure that is what everyone wants to know about because every single person that wrote me this week asked about them. So here we go...

 My new area is called Analamahitsy just like it says it the title. It is in Tana and one of the richer areas. There are tons of vazaha (white people) houses and there is even a french high school in our area. We do our best to avoid french people because they are mean and we can't speak to them! haha The area is struggling a little bit and the stats are pretty messed up and stuff so we have a lot of work ahead of us. Some of the past elders in this area have been really lazy and not very good at keeping track of their work. My new companion is Elder Te'e (teh-eh) and is from Tonga. No, he isn't huge. He is about my size. He didn't know any english when he started his mission, but now he is really good at it and we talk in English pretty much all day with just a little bit of malagasy mixed in. He is really cool and really easy going. I definitely am going to have to be the one to say, "hey lets get to work." But as soon as I do he will agree and we'll get to work. I think it is going to be a good transfer, but I am going to have to work really really hard to turn the area around. I think we can do it though. Tana is fine. Not as bad as a lot of the elders try to act like it is. It's a little dirty, but I'm in one of the cleaner areas. Everywhere we go we ride these things called taxi-be's which literally translated means big taxi. They are basically a small, skinny 16 passenger van that the seats were taken out and new seats were put in that are super skinny and made for really short people. They put 5 people on every row and there are about 5 rows plus the front seat. They are super squishy and yesterday I basically sat on 2 ladies laps on the way home from work.

The bus ride down here was fun...  I got the front seat on the bus ride because I get car sick. The only problem was that it was the front middle seat. My butt was squished onto this little tiny seat and I couldn't really move much because the stick shift comes out of the floor and the driver made me put it right between my legs and then his feet and the gas pedals were next to my left foot and the person's feet on the right of me were right next to my right feet. So I rode for 8 hours basically without moving, and then we finally stopped for lunch/dinner and I got out and my legs literally felt like somebody had been punching my thighs for the last 8 hours! They hurt so bad! haha But then I moved back a couple rows with the rest of the missionaries and took my chances with getting car sick. The back seat was a lot more comfortable and luckily I didn't get sick so the last 3 hours of the ride were a lot lot more enjoyable!

Other than that, nothing really happened this week. So we will move into our word of the week. The word is masoandro mody (moss-ooh-on-drew moo-dee) which literally translates to the sun is going home. But that is what they call a sunset. Here in Tana there is lot of pollution from all of the cars and just the city and everything which is really annoying, but it makes for beautiful sunsets! 

Have a great week Everyone! Love you all! 

Love, Elder Glazier

P.S. SHOUTOUT TIME!!!! This shoutout goes to my sister-in-law Kristal and my brother Devan! I just found out she is having a baby!!! That will make three new babies in my first year as a missionary! Congratulations Devan and Kristal and family!!! 

 This is a family we teach. The mom is named Monique, and all of those are her kids. She isn't married, her husband left her. But all 3 of her boys are way cool and are all going on missions some day! The oldest one is 15 and LOVES coming to church and wants to go on a mission. 

 Me with our investigator and his friend. Our investigator is the short one. His name is Ferrando and he is 17. He is one of the coolest 17 year old kids ever. He has such a desire to make his life better and he wants God in his life!

Fianarantsoa Week 23

This week has been yet another amazing week here in the greatest mission in the world! Fianarantsoa has been good to me and I have loved serving here, but my time has come. Transfers have come. I am leaving Fianarantsoa and going up to the big bad city of Antananarivo (Tana). I leave tomorrow morning bright and early and have a nice long (12 hour) bus ride ahead of me. My new companion is named Elder Te'e (Teh-eh). He is from Tonga and I don't know a whole lot about him other than the fact that he has been out about a year and is kind of good at english and likes to only speak malagasy. I am a little nervous for it, but excited too because it is really going to help my language skills! I will have a lot more information next week. But that's the most exciting thing that happened this week. Oh, and the name of my new area in Analamahitsy (a-na-la-ma-hee-tsee). I have mixed feelings about leaving. I love my area and I have been here for so long and it feels like home and I love the people here, but I am very of ready for a change. I felt like I was getting stuck in a rut. I think this is going to be a great change. 6 months is a long time to stay in one area. 

Also, this week we had zone conference which was way good! The coolest thing that happened was that we got to watch "Meet the Mormons" It was way good, but it also made us all way trunky to see America! It just reminded us of home and everything we used to do and being with our families. I had to stand up after the movie and go look out the window and remind myself that I was still in madagascar! haha

The last weird thing that happened this week was on Saturday I woke up and Elder Covey had been throwing up all night and on the toilet all night so he was unable to go out to work, so we stayed home. It was really weird to stay home all day. I just did tons of studying and had tons of time to think.It was kind of nice to get to just really hit the scriptures hard and study for hours and hours, but it was so weird to not go out and teach.

 

I want to give a shoutout to one of the cutest little girls on the planet! My neice Megan had a birthday this week and turned 8! She is getting so big and is getting ready to get baptized! She is always so happy and fun and loves to tease her uncle Brandan! Happy Birthday Megan!

 

I love you all! Have a great week!

 

Love, Elder Glazier 

Fianarantsoa Week 22

We had a pretty crazy week this week.I'll start with saturday

.We had a baptism! It was one of our recent convert's daughter. She just turned 8 and is the cutest little girl in Madagascar! 

So that was fun! But the real story of the week goes like this:

 t all started on Monday last week. We went to the Lemur park and when we got home I noticed that I was missing between 100,000 and 200,000 ariary (which is like 40 to 80 bucks and is a ton of money here) and the back door was unlocked. We go out the backdoor pretty frequently and have a fence so it was very possible that the back door had just been left unlocked by someone in a hurry. So I asked all of the Elders in my house if any  of them had touched my money that was in my envelope with my pictures and they all said no. We had been looking at pictures the night before so I had left it on the kitchen table and just came to the conclusion that one of them had taken it. (sad, but that was the best possibility). They all just thought I had miss placed it and it would show up and didn't think much of it, but I was pretty sure it was stolen because I knew where I had put it.

 Then the next couple days when we would come home the back door was unlocked and a couple times there was a light on in the bathroom. I started to get a little suspicious that someone had been coming into our house, but it was still possible that we were just leaving the back door unlocked and the light on. Then on saturday when we came home from work Elder Fisher went upstairs to get his money and came back down and said he was missing 200,000 ariary. Then Elder Covey and Elder Rigby both checked their money and found out that they were missing about 500,000 Ariary total. That was when we found out that WE HAD BEEN ROBBED!!!

 We searched the entire house to make sure nobody was still in the house, and found that all that was missing was money, but they hadn't taken all of it.They had searched every corner of 2 of the rooms and even gone through a couple of suitcases but not taken anything but money and had left another 400,000 ariary. I had 300,000 that was pretty easily visible and Elder Rigby lost 200,000 out of his wallet but there was still another 100,000 in it.

 We were very confused that they wouldn't have taken all of the money in sight, but decided the reason was because they were planning on coming back. They still hadn't searched any of my stuff or the other stuff in our room. When we searched the house we found that one of the doors was set up to break in easily and the back door was unlocked. So now we knew that they were breaking in the one door and leaving out the back. We had a few ideas of who it could be, but no real good leads so we decided that we were going to catch this person. So on sunday we did a split. Elder Fisher and I went to church and out teaching while Elder Covey and Elder Rigby stayed back at the house to catch the thief. They got all dressed in the morning and left the house with me and Elder Fisher so it looked like nobody was home, and then circled back around the back way and went inside and just sat in silence in one of the rooms all day waiting for someone to break in. Sadly, nobody ever came so we didn't catch them. Today we are going to buy all kinds of locks and stuff and totally secure every single door in the house.

 So we don't think there is any chance of finding out who broke in now. But at least we will prevent any future break-ins. Overall the thief got about a million ariary from our house (That is enough for one person to live very comfortably for a few months) and made off with it totally clean. So that was our fun experience of the week. Also my camera broke which was awesome. So this week has been a very expensive week for Elder Glazier. I lost about 150,000 ariary and got my camera broken. Luckily a guy in our branch fixes cameras and said he can get it fixed for 15,000 which isn't bad.

As far as missionary work goes, we had a pretty good week though! Our lesson count was a little lower than what we would have liked, but we taught a few GREAT lessons and feel like our investigators are starting to understand the importance of finding out if our message is true and if the Book of Mormon is true. Elder Covey and I have come to the conclusion that if an investigator doesn't understand the importance of the Book of Mormon they will not progress and will not be converted. A persons entire progression relies on the first two lessons. The Joseph Smith story, and the Book of Mormon.

The word of the week  is obviously Mpangalatra (pon-gol-uh-cha) which means thief. That's it for this week! Love you all! Have a great week!

Love, Elder Glazier

Fianarantsoa Week 21

Well this week has been yet another great week here in paradise! It has been blazing hot and humid this week which is a nice change from the rain! So this week Elder Covey and I decided to shake things up and keep ourselves entertained, so we started a picture of the day contest. We try to see who can think of the best idea for a cool or funny picture and do it. It's pretty fun! We got a few good ones! This is a couple of my winning pictures.

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​The wall that I'm pretending to pee on says "you can't pee here." haha That is not a very common thing to see because it is pretty much acceptable to pee wherever you want! haha And the other one I have my sword and shield and then my giant leaf-cup! haha 

Other than our week was pretty ordinary. The work is starting to pick up again. It is a constant process of dropping and picking up investigators. But I think we have found a few who are going to progress so I'm way excited about them! But I'm almost positive I'll be getting transfered in a couple weeks so I'm going to miss their baptisms. I got to go on a split with my zone leader on saturday and at the end he told me that I was doing great at teaching and great at Malagasy and that he was really impressed. So that was a way awesome compliment and gave me a good boost of confidence! 

This week I have really been focusing on trying to align my will with God's. I have read a few talks about serving God and especially serving Him as a missionary and it talks about how if we serve and do everything that we are supposed to and do a lot of good and change the world for the better, but the whole time we are wishing that we could be doing other things and disobeying the commandments then it does us no good in the end. We will not be changed and made better by the service we gave. So I want to completely give myself and my heart up to the Lord. Just like in D&C 4:2 "Therefore, oh ye that embark in the service of God, see that ye serve Him with all your heart, might, mind, and strength that ye may stand blameless before God at the last day." That is what I want. To stand blameless before God and know that I didn't leave anything behind... that I threw it all out on the table. It's not enough to serve Him with all of your might and strength. He asks for our heart and mind as well. This week think about your service to God. Are you serving with your heart and mind? Or are you with-holding that and only giving your might and strength? If that is all, I encourage you to jump on board with me and try to give everything to the Lord. Let's take it to the next level! 

Sorry I haven't had a malagasy word of the week for a while, but this weeks words are "Fo" (foo) sy (see) saina (sigh-na)". That means "heart and mind". 

Have a great week! I love you all!

 Love, Elder Glazier