I had a great christmas here, It still is really hot but I am loving it more and more.
The malagasy Christmas party goes a little bit like this. First you need to go church and celebrate Jesus Christ. When church is over you then need a lot of beer and you get hammered drunk. All day on Christmas the people were way drunk right after they went to church, and then at night the people got crazy. The people hit the streets and went absolutely crazy. This morning you still have some people who are stragglers still drunk, but most of the people are way hungover.
At church we had a great sacrament meeting, we had a family come for the first time, which is a huge step because we have a full family at church. The father, the mother and the kids. I am way excited to see how this area turns out to be. We have a lot of progressing investigators and great members. I am really starting to understand this mission and the people. I love this place and the people in it. Sorry this letter is pretty short. The last thing is enjoy christmas, and spend time with your families this week. Know that God loves you, and knows you personally.
Sincerely,
Elder Wolfgramm
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It feels like I have lived the longest summer of my life, and the humidity has made it feel like it went from hot to hotter. I am used to the humidity, because I am not sweating as much as I was when I first got here. But it still is Mafana Be....
This week was another great week with many more miracles. On Tuesday we went and visited a family that lives in the far part of our area, we went pretty late like 7:30 to their house I caught the father (named Tsiresy) walking away with his friends, he saw me and said oh sorry Elder Wolfgramm I forgot that we had a Lesson today. I need to run really quick to the cyber real quick but I will be back in 5 minutes, so me and Elder Tainter waited for him, and he came running back. He had ditched his friends and wanted to learn. We taught them the gospel, and he had a ton of great questions about it. At the end I invited them to church and they said yeah maybe we will come if we have time. I didn’t think much about it, they had never come to church so far and we had been teaching them for a while so I thought next week maybe we will get them. Ok so Sunday comes here and I am standing outside the church and I see Tsiresy with his wife and their kid on his motorcycle all dressed in white, it caught me off guard way hard. I was so happy to see them at church. One of the happiest I have been on mission so far.
Ok the second story, Elder Tainter and I were walking around trying to find this family that we just tracked into last week, but I could not find them to save my life. I swear that we walked down every path in the area where I thought that they lived. we could not find them anywhere. Finally I saw this kid who looked super familiar so I asked him "hey do you know where a Jackie, and Sivian live around here" he said no but I know where a Jackie lives around here. So I told him yeah lets go to their house. He takes us to this house and I know that it is not their house but I am kind of frustrated so we knock on the door, this lady comes to the door and she is super nervous. I say hey sorry to interrupt you but we are missionary’s and we are looking for Jackie. She looks at me and is like he is asleep. So then I say I just want to talk to him really quick, will you wake him up? She then says he is actually drunk. I still say sorry I just want to talk to him real quick. I don’t know why I said that because I had never met this guy and his neighbor just told me he was drunk. But she says yeah whatever you guys can come into the yard, so we walk in and she takes us around these houses to where there are like 10 Malagasy’s all drinking and she calls for Jackie. Jackie comes and we start talking, but the drunken Malagasy’s are yelling at me and trying to hand me drinks so I ask if we can go in his house. He leads us into his house and we sit down. I start explaining the situation to him, and I can see he is not drunk and hasn’t been drinking. I say yeah we are looking for this other family whose name is Jackie and he has a wife named Sitrika, they live around here. he says yeah my wife’s name is not Sitrika and I say yeah I know it’s not you guys sorry for bothering you guys........ but then I say that the reason we are here is because I believe that you are looking for something and maybe we have what you are looking for...... he sat there for a moment looking at the ground and then said, yeah I actually am. I am a member of your church but I haven’t gone since 2009 and I have been thinking about it a lot and then you guys showed up here. I knew we were supposed to get lost to meet this guy. We talked and set up a time to come back and teach him again this week.
I know that god directs our live if we let him. He can lead us where we are supposed to go and have people put into our lives when we need them.
Please trust in God and enjoy this wonderful time of the year.
Madagascar is great and I am enjoying it all.
Elder Wolfgramm
December 11th, 2016
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| December 7th, 2016 |
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| December 6th, 2016 |
This week was a blur, I had my last night with Elder Lingani on Monday night. We were able to go teach Lucio that night and we caught him with one of his girl friend. After talking to him we taught him the law of chastity and hopefully he will be able to follow that law. My new companion is Elder Tainter, he is sweet and we are getting along really well. He is from Las Vegas, and is pretty funny.
This week we taught a lot of lessons, and we are starting to find more and more people to teach. Also this week we were trying to give out baptism commitments to people who are progressing really well. We taught this family that me and Elder Lingani found a while ago, and taught them specifically about the priesthood, and got them understanding our beliefs clearly. They had a ton of great questions that we were able to answer. We committed them to be baptized on February 4th if they are ready.
I am starting to get more and more mahay at Malagasy and so this week I got into kind of a bible bash with a guy. Not really a bible bash but I could understand his concerns about religion and I could answer them through the scriptures, way motivating to see how far I have come with the language. I am seeing the gift of tongues, everyday. We tracked into a family and taught them the first discussion. The father asked me a question about apostles and I could understand the question before he finished asking it. Way way cool. There are so many other experiences that had happened this week. I say this all the time, but I Know that Madagascar is the best place on earth. I love it here!!! I love the people, the culture, the language, the country, and the work.
Please continue to pray to God, he wants to hear your prayers, he is waiting to help you. I know that is true.
Love Elder Wolfgramm
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| Dec 5th, 2016 |
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Dec 5th, 2016
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Dec 5th, 2016
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Dec 5th, 2016
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Dec 5th, 2016
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Well this week sums up my last 12 weeks in Madagascar. I have finished training, and Elder Lingani will be leaving Tamatave. I will be getting a new companion named Elder Tainter, I am way stoked because I will be able to learn so much from him and hopefully we can both be uplifted in the process.
This week was overall a good week, we had great lessons with awesome investigators, we had prepared 3 people for baptism and they all showed up ready for their baptisms. I messed up one of the people’s names like 3 times during the baptism, it was pretty funny. We baptized Douphin, Maramoza, and "Befotsy DeDoannie Bernard Roland." I think you know which one I had trouble with remembering. We did the conformation on Sunday. We got up Sunday morning and it was raining hard, we went to church, got their soaking wet and there was no one there besides the security guard and the branch president. Church usually starts at 8 and we have anywhere from 100-140 people at church. At 8 when church started there were 15 people. The people who were supposed to get the Holy Ghost weren’t there either. They showed up at about 8:20 as well as about 5 other investigators. It rained hard all day. Allot of flooding here in Madagascar that day. The total church attendance was 53 that day.
Besides the baptisms, this week we found a ton of families that were PLACED into our hands. Great families that understood the message, and accepted to be baptized on the first lesson. They didn’t come to church but I can’t blame them, most members didn’t come.
All is good here in Madagascar it is still hot, the people are still hard to understand, but I love every minute of it and there is no place I would rather be.
Elder Wolfgramm
