Monday, August 20, 2012


The faith of Ra Be

On the blog post of July 29, 2012 I talked about a little branch about 4 hours south of Antananarivo. In that branch are many humble, faithful members, none more so than Ra Be. He works 80km (50 miles) from that village of Manadona and walks home all day each Saturday so that he can attend church on Sunday.
After church he turns around and walks back. Today I received a letter from Elder Prochnow who is serving as the branch president. The following is a part of that letter:

There were two really big accomplishments this last week though. The first was the Mormon Helping Hands activity that took place Saturday. My counsellors and I went and talked to the president of the fokontany (the equivalant of a mayor) and came away with the idea of helping fix up the local school. We swept the insides and painted the outer walls of four buildings at the school, repaired multiple desks and other various broken items, and did a real good job cleaning the actual school grounds. In total, we had about 30 members and six investigators that stayed for the duration of the activity. I'm not sure if you remember Ra Be or not. He is the male member that walks 80km one way to church. Last Sunday he apologized and said that he was really sorry that he couldn't make it because of the distance. I told him that it was ok and that we all understood the situation. That's when another miracle took place down here in the Dona. Elder Maua'i, my first counsellor, secretary, and myself were the first to show up at the school Saturday morning at just after 0800. Then to our surprise, good old Ra Be was the first members besides ourselves to show up as he walked in five minutes behind us. He told us that he felt guilty that he wasn't going to help serve along side other members. He left early Friday morning, hoping that someone would help feed him either Saturday or Sunday because his money wasn't going to be enough for the weekend after not working the full week. Just thought that you may want to know about that man and his amazing faith.

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