Monday, October 17, 2011

Hey everyone!!!

Inona vaovao(What's new)? I know you've already told me what's new, but here in madagascar you can ask that about 5 times a minute and it's normal in a conversation haha! There's not too much vaovao for me, but here's what I do have:

I found out this week, even though I knew before, but it was reaffirmed, that I have an expert chef as a roommate in my house. His name's Elder Raoilson, he's a malagasy too, and he cooked french toast for me this week and this most amazingly delicious breaded chicken and pomme satte for us. He's such a good chef, I love it!!! He actually worked at the nicest hotel in Antananarivo before his mission as a chef! He's pretty great! Also, I think I'm finally gonna have to handwash my clothes for the first time since I've been here, or hire the lady that does our landlords clothes everyday ha, because we haven't had our washing machine hooked up for the last 3 weeks. And I think everyone's getting tired of my stinky socks/feet because I've already worn pair of socks twice and they already stunk after the first time. And I think they're getting tired of my expert mala"gasy" ha! But I think I am too because I'm starting little by little to become less and less gassy and become just, better at malagasy, the language. I'm ok with that, and I think they are too haha! Also, we're teaching this new really cool family! There's the parents, 1 girl named tolotra(leg), and a guy named Hadja(who lost one leg, up to his knee, a few months ago). They're amazing! He has to lean on this big long wooden cane about his height as he walks from his house about hills and down and then 4 floors in the building where our church is just to get to the chapel for our meetings. And yet, he came the first Sunday after we taught him, early, which the early part doesn't happen very often here in fianarantsoa because everyone has to walk so far, and then he came both days for conference on Saturday and Sunday, and so did his family besides his dad. We actually went and taught them Saturday night after the Priesthood session and taught them The Plan of Salvation. The lesson went great and at the end we were able to give the girl a blessing because she was sick, and we blessed her that she'd be able to come the next morning for conference, and........ she came, and her mom and brother did too! :) Also, we're teaching another deaf person, except, I think this time, the lady is all the way deaf! We didn't know this before we went. She's been coming to church for the last 4 Sundays and she's the daughter of a member and so we finally went to teach her. And when we got there, we didn't realize it at first, but it didn't take too long after that and we realized that she's deaf. The lesson was pretty interesting. My companion knew one phrase in malagasy sign languange, "it's nice to see you" haha! And then the rest of the lesson I tried to speak as loud as I could in case she was able to hear it, if she didn't, that's ok though, because maybe some of her neighbors will want to take the lessons now because they heard it because we taught the lesson outside and me and my companion were yelling the lesson the whole time in case she could hear it, along with lots of made up on the spot hand motions. It was pretty entertaining watching us try to teach her, I wish it could've been videod ha. Also, we had 28 investigators come conference this weekend, and conference was great! Just a little bit hard to understand everything since it was in malagasy ha. But, I'll watch it in English soon. We haven't found the new church building yet. And yes, there are still lots of fleas in the new house, and I have the battle wounds to prove it haha! 

Your week sounded great! I really enjoyed your talk mom, thanks for sending it! I wrote those 5 petals down in my little notepad that I carry around with me everywhere. And dad, I understand why mom may be too much of a distraction for you to have up on the stage with you every week. But I may have to disagree with your "smelling better than your counselors part", I've sat up there before with you and your counselors and you have some pretty good smelling counselors haha jk(joke). Mom is great huh?! I like her lot too! And you're pretty great yourself! I've been blessed with some awesome parents, that's for sure! And mom, and everyone, I found a pretty cool talk in an old ensign that was around the house from Elder Russel M. Nelson who's gonna be here on Saturday entitled "Now is the Time to Prepare" it was given in the April 2005 conference session. It was really good, so you all should read it! I think you'll like it, I did.

And I'm really sorry, but it looks like were all gonna have to wait till next week for phase 2, and 3 because I do not have any time left.

But I love you all very much!

Love for eternity,

Elder Waters

God be with you till we meet again

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Hello family and friends!
This was a very very interesting week, with some stories that I'll probably share for the rest of my life, moving, unpacking, cleaning, seeing beautiful scenary, walking a marathon through the mountains, being the first white person that many people have seen in their lives, almost getting attacked by a dog, long taxibe rides with over 15 people stuff in one little old truck driving over lots and lots of potholes, lots of learning about life and what's really important, realizing that I can actually speak malagasy with the Lord's help and with confidence, decisions on my future career, uno, visits from the AP's(assistants to the president), and sharing the Gospel(ny tsara indrindra-the best). And it sounds like you all had a very interesting/great week too! Thanks for the email with all the updates from your lives. I really enjoyed it! :)
First, you may be wondering why I am emailing on tuesday instead of monday. Well I will explain...
it all started yesterday morning; we woke up at the normal time and immediately got to cleaning the house, we cleaned it from top to bottom because landlord who lived there before, it didn't look like, had ever cleaned the house before and so it was super dirty. Then, we had breakfast, eggs, mouf balls(bread balls), bananas, and yogurt, scrumptious! Then, we had to go do the activity that Elder ----- had chosen to do for his day, because we started this program last week as a district where each week is one of the elders in the districts week. Last week was mine, and we climbed a mountain to try to watch the sunrise from there, I'll send you the pictures from that next week, but yesterday was Elder ----- day and he wanted to go to village in amban'ny voatra(that means, basically, in the middle of nowhere) and receive a kopia, which is needed to get married here, for one of their investigators so they could first get married and then get baptized. You have to receive the kopia from the commune in the town where the person's born. So Elder ------ chose to make that our districts activity for the day, so directly after breakfast we left to go to the area called, "fandrandavo", but the bus that would take us closest to that, only went to "sambavy". So went to the bus stop and found a bus heading to sambavy, and we found one and got on, and there just happened to be an american peace corps girl that we all sat next to on the bus and talked to the whole time and we found out that she actually has cousins that our members of the church and one of her cousins is serving a mission right now too. And then we finally arrived in sambavy about an hour and 15 minutes later. And we all went to lunch together because by that time it was 12:30. After lunch, we were supposed to go with her to commune because she lived right next to the one in sambavy, but when she started to lead us to the commune next to her house we realized that the commune that we needed to go to was in the opposite direction, so we split ways and said thanks for all of your help, and, this is the important part, she said, "the last bus leaves at 4, if you get stuck here, you can just stay at our house." And we were just like, "Oh yeah, thanks,(thinking that in no way that would have to happen)", because by that time, it was still only 1o'clock. So we started on our path not really knowing exactly where we were going or how far away it was but we started on the way. So, there's three phases that I'll break this story into, 1st, the path to the lake hotel and taking lots of pictures, 2nd, from meeting the lady that was heading to the commune too, and to the commune, and 3rd the trip back and the answer to, why this email is being written on tuesday.
Phase 1: We start on the path towards the lake hotel because that's the place that we'd turn at to get on the next path to our destination, fandrandavo. But the first important thing about this first phase, is that I didn't know that that was where we were heading to first. So as we're walking on the path I see this guy and lady pushing a cart thing that malagasy's use to transport things on if they don't have cars. They were pushing a cart that had bags filled with sod. So I decided since we were all going on the same path, I could just help push the cart with them as we walked. So, I started doing that. And since we were putting all our might haha, and getting dirty because one of the bags of sod fell off the back and landed right all over my jeans and shoes and I got all muddy, and I stepped in cow paddies cause I didn't see what I was walking into, but we got way ahead of my companion and the other two elders. (don't be scared that I wasn't within sight of my companion, madagascar safe, and I was just helping push a cart haha). But finally my companion caught up to me after running to catch up and tells me that I passed the spot we were supposed to turn at, but not by much, only like on minute past. Where he stopped me at though, just happened to be a beautiful little property on the lake with mountains behind the lake(that was my reward for serving haha, we found that spot), so we decided to take some pictures. And as we began to take pictures, the other elders came to take pictures too. Well after we were done there, we started back our journey. And by about this time, it was 2:30ish.
And phase 2 is next, but I have to share that next week because I don't have anymore time. But that's a lot of exciting and cool news that you shared with me about back home. Thanks for sharing.
About Fianarantsoa: we haven't found the new building yet, we found some new great investigators, we watch conference this saturday and sunday in malagasy, I've killed over 15 fleas over the last 4 days, and I've decided that I want to be a professional flea killer, not with pesticides, but with my bare hands because I enjoy killing those nasty little things so much myself haha, so that's my new career choice ha, viewer discretion is advised for this next joke; I've realized that I've reached my highest level at speaking malagasy this week, because I'm finnally incorporating the gassy part majorly in my life, there's something about the food here that gives the language the name mala"gasy" ha. Sorry if that joke was too extreme for you mom, but I think it's appropriate for dad since that was the first joke he made when I got my call haha! The package hasn't come yet but that is the right address, and I won't know till I get to antananarivo on october 23rd because they don't actually ship the packages directly to our area, just to the mission home and then when we go to the mission home we can get them. But I'll go to tana on October 23rd-25th because the apostle, Elder Russell M. Nelson, and four other general authorities are coming to madagascar to do a stake conference for the malagasys, to do a conference for the missionaries, and to find the land for a temple in madagascar. I'm super excited to get to see them and to get my package! :)
But that's all I have time for this week. I hope you enjoyed phase 1 of my story and the rest of my letter.
I love you all and pray for you always,
Love for eternity,
Elder Waters

God be with you till we meet again

September 26, 2011

September 19, 2011

 So this week for me though. This week was different than normal. Most of our lessons were just making sure that everyone was ready for their baptism interviews this saturday. Which went well. But there were a few different problems. We had one who her parents are polygamist and that's a new rule here now that they have to do additional paperwork now for because that's a pretty big problem here. We had one girls mom, say that she couldn't be baptized because she's been baptized before, and people have a belief here(because this is what they're preachers tell them all of their lives) that if you're baptized twice than you're damned. But that just means that we have to explain the restoration to the mom again and than she can be baptized too(twice haha). But the only problem with that, would be that she's a polygamist too. Oh and the girl that had the blind and half deaf dad and the mom who wouldn't let her get baptized...well we finally got her to allow her to be baptized, and now her sister and the only living brother that escaped an attack that happened on him and his brothers are taking the lessons and want to be baptized. We've had lots of cool experiences with people this week praying to know if the things that we've taught them were true and they received their answers that they were. It's awesome seeing people's lives change for the better. The work is hard, but as we continue to work hard and with the Lord's help, we see the results:
    This week we had 43 investigators at church. We had extra chairs put up all the way to the stairs entrance and the bathroom. There were 195 at church! I don't know how many baptisms we'll have this Saturday, but all 40 baptism dates are getting spread out between this saturday, october 1st, and october, 15th because of different problems that each of them have, like marriage, and just preparing them more. 

September 12, 2011

 The guys did come to church that we taught the day that we fasted. And we taught them last night about the Book of Mormon and invited them to be baptized on October 1st when they receive their answer to the prayer about if the things that we taught them are true or not(but I already know they're true so that'll be no problem haha). I've had 6 baptisms so far, but we have a lot more coming up soon. Right now we have 41 investigators with a baptism date either for September 24th or October 1st. It's pretty exciting! But there are some problems that we'll have to see if they can be resolved or not before their dates like vita soratra(getting married before baptism because they live together like husband and wife just not with it official), Word of Wisdom, and just seeing overall if they're commited enough to becoming members of the church. The work is great here though. We just have different problems than other missions with our investigators. They probably won't be building a building for our branch yet because we don't have enough men with the Melchezideck Priesthood yet, because the church just started in Fianarantsoa a 2-3 years ago, but that's why our new emphasis as a mission is on Father led Families so we can get the priesthood in the church. I am getting more used to the food though. It's getting better and a lot better ha! They have most of the same fruits, but in America we receive lots of fruits that aren't actually grown there, but here, we only have the fruits grown here but they're usually freshly picked the morning that you buy them so the really good and fresh! Their's one fruit here that we don't in america that I like a lot. I don't really know the name though. I've only called it a ju fruit since I've been here for some reason haha. And I haven't seen any lemurs or crocs yet, but in a couple weeks my companion and I and another companionship plan on going to a lemur reserve within our district, which is huge. I want to send pics each week, but I just haven't been having lots of time, sorry. My physical health is good, I think my leg muscles are gonna be twice as big by the time I get back though because of how big the hills are here and how far we have to ride our bikes.
Funny story from the week: We were supposed to move today to our new apartment, but we received a call from our financial/housing director for the mission yesterday, who's american and like a really really high up lawyer from New York City, but he's super frugal, telling us that we couldn't move in anymore because he received draft plans from us the day before and he said the house was way to big for missionary standards and that he thought we'd destroy it. And he said that we'd have to go tell the landlord that we weren't going to move in anymore tomorrow because it was way to big for church standards. And the thing was was that the landlord had already signed the contract, gave us all of his bank account information, rushed to finish his house so that he could move out before we had to move in there(because he was living where we were supposed to be moving into before), had set up for a truck and men to be ready to move all of our stuff the next day, and at the beginning of us even negotiating to move in there, the landlords thought mormons were crazy, and that we prayed naked, so we had to explain to them that we were actually normal haha. Sooo, my companion, who's malagasy, and doesn't understand computers, contracts, and what the reason for us not moving was, and I, who doesn't really know how to speak malagasy talk, that's not gospel language, very well, were going to have to explain to this guy who had gone through all the trouble of getting this whole move set up and ready for us, why we wouldn't be moving anymore. So last night we called the landlord and told him that we weren't going to be able to move today, but that we'd come and talk to him today some time, because we didn't want to just tell him over the phone. So today, we woke up and went and got some food and then went back to the house and did some intense cleaning on our house for 7 hours. And then after we were finished and I had taken a shower and my companion and I were talking about why we weren't moving and how we were going to explain it to the landlord, we figured out that the draft plans that the mission financial advisor had received were actually of the house that were in right now that we are moving out of because it's too big. And we had sent him those on Saturday because the landlord of the house that we're staying in right now made a list of all the stuff that was damaged in the house and sent it to us with the draft plans to forward to the financial advisor elder, and so we did that. And the financial advisor elder thought it was the draft plans for our next house. So now, we've called him and explained the situation to him, and so for now, the whole moving situations on hold and we get to stay in beautifully clean house for now because we spent 7 house cleaning it today haha!
That's my story and I hope you  enjoyed it as much as we did!
But I need to go. I love you lots dadio.
Love for eternity,
Elder Waters( Ranoralava)
God be with you till we meet again

September 5, 2011

Hey madre and padre and fianakaviako,

it's good to hear from you as always! So I don't have much time, but I'll try to get as much in as I can.

This week was great! It was hard, but good. Here's some random facts from this week:

We had 33 investigators at church this week, 36 investigators with baptism dates for the 24 of September, 17 new investigators from this week, and 48 progressing investigators, so we are full of work. Also my goal that I made for this week was writing in my journal at 9:45 every night. Two pairs of pants have ripped and torn from my bike,  most of my shirts already have stains, and my shoes are permantely dirty but now I just blend in a little bit more with the style for here haha! I love it though! I had a banana split today, and that was definitely the best thing that my mouth has tasted since the mtc!! We move next monday, I'm not too excited for that because there's a lot to move without vehicles or other things help, but I guess I've been pretty well prepared in my life for moving after all the times we've moved before. We had 180 people at church yesterday, and we only had 136 the week before so that was a big jump. Our church isn't a ward building, so it's nothing like back home, but it's 1 floor out of huge building. It has 4 average size classrooms and that's including the branch presidents office, and it has a chapel that's just a little bit bigger than our foyer at our winter haven church. And we usually have about 20 that have to sit out in the hallway each week cause the chapels so full. But I think they're supposed to split the branch pretty soon! I don't know if that will be hard or good or both, but I'm pretty excited to see! Yesterday, I fasted, and that was one of the hardest fasts of my life because we rode our bikes to a few of farthest areas that have lots of hills and its summer time here and I had my suit on and many times I felt like I couldn't make it up the hill without a drink of water, but each time I just set my mind to it and looked to the top of the hill and kept pedalling and I made it each time somehow. Even though, at the time it was so hard to continue my fast, by the end of the day me and my  companion saw the fruits of the fast. We met a family last week of an old father and four of his boys, each in their 20s and older, playing dominos and we taught them all the first lesson last sunday, which went pretty well and they seemed pretty interested, but they didn't come to church. But when we went this time, we reviewed the first lesson again and some of the guys families were there and they asked probably 20 super difficult(especially when you can barely understand the questions and respond with what you actually want to say in their language) questions, but I feel like becuase we had pushed through our fast that day, we were able to answer every question clearly and convince them to really want to know the truth. And becuase of that even at the end when I committed them to come to church next week they kind of huddled together and said, "do we want to do this?" And the, kind of leader of the boys, piped up and said, "If we want to know the truth then we have to." And then they all turned to their dad and asked, "Do you want to go?" And about a second after they asked, he said, "yup, let's go." It was a pretty amazing experience because if these people actually do their part and ask God if this is true and go to church, which they're going to do now, then they're gonna be some amazing members of the church because their faith will be firm because they literally asked every little and big question they could think of to try to prove the first lesson wrong and right just to see if it was true, and we proved every one of their questions with the scriptures and with common sense and analogies, because, we had the spirit with us so strongly, which I believe was because of pushing through the fast.

So everythings great! I don't have any time left, so I'll try to email pictures next week!

Love for eternity,

Elder Waters

God be with you till we meet again

August 28, 2011

Hey madre,

This week was great! Thanks for setting up the blog for me. And thanks for being awesome. Oh and for being a genius. ;) You know how every boy tries to find a girl like his mom. Well I don't know how I'm going to be able to find one that measures up to you. Dad got lucky! And don't worry, I'm not actually thinking about finding that  girl that's like you right now, I am focusing on my mission haha.

   So this week, we met lots of new investigators and I met lots of new little buddies called fleas, lots of fun. And no I haven't seen any hissing cock roaches yet, but I have seen lots of fleas ha. We had 38 investigators at church yesterday and we have 26 baptisms set up up for September 24. Very exciting! And yes, I can actually fit in my apartment at least. My appartments huge. The newspaper article was very cool. Thanks for sending it.

   It sounds like you had lots of fun this last week. Tell everyone hey. And let em know I love them.

What's ____s email address? And could you send me that birthday list when you get a chance haha. Oh and how close has Brock gotten to my mathblaster score so far?

Anyways, I love you lots and it was great hearing from you. Sorry that this letters so short. I don't have much time. But I love you!
Love for eternity, Elder Waters

God be with you till we meet again

 

Oh and my goal from this week, came from a poem on faith, but I don't have it with me. But my goal from it is: singing when something hard comes up or when I feel down, and I sing because I have faith that the Savior can lift me through any trial I receive. I'll send you the poem next week.

Love, Elder Waters