Well......................WOW!!!
This week has been a week of miracles, and it sounds like that for both of us! First off, Happy Birthday Big Papa, throw your hands in the air and wave them everywhere, and second Happy Valentines Day, and third, I have a new companion, I'm training! And not just the normal kind of training, teaching a english speaking elder from america on the language, about the country, about how to teach lessons, but I'm training a malagasy. That means I don't have to train him at the language, well at least the language we'll be teaching in. He knows close to no english, which is just find with me because that means I get to practice my malagasy nonstop all day, and get headaches sometimes.
Elder ----- is still working here as well. But he has a kid as well now who is from fiji, he speaks pretty good english and is hilarious. He's 24 and recent convert of 2 years. My companion is also 24 but has been a member for 8 years. He's great, and I've already seen the reason that he was sent here to mahabibo(that means almond), mahajanga to work with me. We've already had lots of cool exeriences together. He's about half my height haha. But he's a really good guy and ready to work hard and be a really good missionary. I have also been happily surprised that my malagasy has magically picked up since the time I got him as my companion. I can now explain basically anything I want, in a roundabout way at times, in malagasy. I know that that is a blessing from God.
The area that I'm working in, is kind of far away from our house, it's about a 30 minute walk. And it's kind of like I'm whitewashing it. Whitewashing is when a companionship goes into an area that neither of them were trained on. I'm only kind of whitewashing it though because ---- did show me a little bit of the area and the investigators while we together, but most of the time was spent in his area on his investigators. The reason it wasn't his area before was because the elder that I replaced, worked it with a mini for two months, but when I came, he wasn't able to train me on it, but ----- and I worked there a few times while we together. He has a great area with a lot of great investigators, but so do I, I just get to do lots of tracting for the first time during my mission haha. Its not too bad at all though. Works picking up quickly. We only had 7 investigators from my area at church yesterday, but we look forward to seeing that number grow each week. The branch is also growing a lot. I believe when I first came here, attendance was 114, but the count for this week was 132. This branch is awesome, and its nice to actually be able to talk to people now and understand them haha.
In response to your questions, I'm feeling better now, my stomachs calmed down a little bit ha. Also, about the debit card, I don't know if a mastercard will work here, but I'll check it out throughout the week and email you about it next week. I ending up doing just fine last month on money, and I actually leftover, and this month I'm doing just fine as well, but the extra money would be good if I want to get souvenirs while I'm here. We haven't moved into a new apartment yet because we haven't found one, but we are still looking. And in response to the young women's question about the fish eyes staring at me as I ate the head, the eyes were plucked out before I ate the head. And by the way, I'm sorry that you two feel like you've eaten one too many fish heads. I can feel your pain there! ;)
I also, like the idea about the white speedo dad. I think that would be no problem(or maybe just a lot ha). I'm glad that dad's talk went well though. I can definitely see myself 27 years down the road too, giving a talk about the restoration and remembering the times during my mission when I would teach about it. That's great that you guy's had such a great, and busy weekend. And that so many great things are happening for you guys. Keep working hard like I know you're doing, and I know that God will keep blessing you. And thanks for that story mom, I got goosebumps when I heard it as well. Nice Christlike work! :)
So like I said, I've seen lots of miracles this week, and a lot of them came after hard work, perseverence, and prayer. One experience, was on the bus ride to tana over wednesday night. I was able to give the Book of Mormon to one man, a pamphlet to another, and share a scripture from the Book of Mormon with everyone on the bus. And then on the way back on friday morning, our bus looked nice on the outside but was ratsy be(very bad) on the inside, motor area. The bus broke down constantly throughout the ride, which gave us plenty of time to share the gospel with others on the bus we waited for it to be fixed while we were in the middle of nowhere, and also throughout the 16 hour bus ride(from 8 in the morning- to 12 at night). And the next experience was saturday afternoon, when my companion and I went to teach our very lesson together and his very first lesson of his mission. We were sitting in the house of family of half members and and half nonmembers and when my companion introduced himself, they said, there's another "ramafadrahona" who lives right next door, let me go get him. Well, come to find out, it was his brother who he had met before in his life and didn't even know of. And his brother's about 40, he has a family, and one of his daughters is already a member, and now he wants to learn about the church as well. That is a miracle right there! That one experience shows the reason he was called to serve, first, here in madagascar, and second in mahabibo, mahajanga. Amazingly crazingly amazing. And then to cap that saturday off, we went to a soiree of one members family. And in that family, the oldest girl is very active, and the seminary teacher, and in the leadership for the young womens, the other girl is very active in the church and very knowledgeble at the gospel, a younger boy who reminds me of me at his age, and he has big ears, so I called him dumbo and explained to him that that was my nickname when I was a kid, there's another boy, a cousin of the family that lives with them, 16 or so, who was baptized about 2 months ago, a little girl, and the father, who was a very active member at one point in his life and very intelligent, he works for the red cross, but at that point, he had not attended church for a very long time. Well we taught them a lesson on commandments, the reason they exist, and why we should keep them. Well, the next day was church, and guess what, he came!!! It was very nice to see and his family was very happy to have him there with them. The next miracle, happened(I'm running out of time by the way haha, theres just so many miracles that have happened in just the last 4 days) was we able to first, catch, and second, teach a father of a recent convert who the missionary's couldn't really ever catch and when they did he didn't really care about the message. But my companion and I sat with him out on his porch and just talked to him and had a heart to heart, and he accepted to come to church this next sunday and to read the pamphlet we gave him and to apply it's teaching in the back about praying about the message in that pamphlet. It was really good, because after we left him, we went across the grass to his fathers house who's already a member to teach him, and as we were teaching him, I could see out the door, the man that we had taught before, cracked open the pamphlet and started reading it and read it throughout the time that we were at his fathers house. The next experience, was our next time we went to. We went to the house of an eternigator, someone who learns for forever but takes for forever to get baptized. She hadn't been baptized yet because she wasn't married legally to her husband, and her husband was never home, meaning 3 months out of the year. But he's here this month and we were able to get them committed to married and getting all of their papers prepared for their wedding. The woman was able to call her family that still lives in her hometown during that time on my phone, and get them to get her copia(remember my story of traveling far in the mountains back in fianarantsoa to get a copia) and send it to her over bus. This was important because there are no missionaries that work up there that could get the copia, which you have to have to get married, for her. But the family said they will take care of it this tuesday and send it to her. And when she's married, she can finally get baptized. And now, the final story, We also gave a blessing to a daughter of a less-active member's daughter yesterday. The daughter had had typhoid fever for the past month and had been very sick and not able to walk around because she would get dizzy when she stood up. The mother had not attended church for the last month until yesterday morning in order to ask us to give her daughter a blessing. The daughter had learned from the missionaries before but was never baptized. As we walked in the daughter was laying on the bed. And as we sat down and spoke with the mom and the daughter before the blessing, we explained a little bit about the Priesthood, and about how we felt as though there was a purpose for her daughter's sickness, and that if they showed their faith the girl would be healed. We also shared with the daughter and mother that through these hard times they can have peace through the Gospel. After we finished giving her the blessing, set up a return appointment, and the daughter said the closing prayer, we got up to walk out, and the daughter was actually able to walk us out of the house and down to the end of the street, which her mother was saying before the lesson, that that was very difficult for her to do. I felt like there was a purpose to her sickness, it helped her mother return to church and the daughter begin to want to learn from the missionaries. And I saw the miracle of the blessing and of my obedience over the past few weeks.
Those our all of my stories from my past wonderful week. I'm loving my mission and loving hearing that things are going well for you all as well. Happy Birthday again dad! Love you lots!
I love you all for eternity,
Elder Waters, Mahabibo, Mahajanga
God be with you till we meet again
