Bonjour! Another great week! Just like every week way different than the one before and full of all different kinds of adventures, even though we do the same thing every day, because its Africa! Still eating stuff that I'm not really sure what it is, but hopefully Ill find out soon! Slowly I'm getting more used to the heat so that's nice! When it hits 88 it feels amazing! This past week was super tough for sure! With the work but also the living! These past few weeks I became very thankful for showers after having to have bucket showers.. but this past week we had no water and no electricity for half the week.. So I became thankful for just even having bucket showers, because we couldn't even have those! Haha, the second night with no electricity I woke up drenched in sweat, because the fan doesn't work, and could barely breath because of how hot it was! I looked for my companion and saw him out on our patio with the other missionaries sleeping.. It was an easy decision to risk sleeping outside because of how hot it was and was worth it for sure, and I didn't get malaria so we lucked out there! Living without all that is insanely tough, especially because of how hot it is and such! But its still the best! We finally have the electricity back for now so that's pretty nice! By the third day Ill be honest when I say I started to complain a little bit, but when we went out to teach lessons that day, I remembered that that is how these people live every single day, and reminded me again to be thankful even for those little things! The work is really great though no doubt! We had some amazing lessons this past week! This Saturday is my first baptism as well so that's way exciting! Its a young girl named Marlene and shes in here 20's, she is a very humble person and has a lot of challenges in here life, but she loves the Lord and the Gospel and she knows it will bless her life greatly! The spirit is always way strong when we are with here! No doubt my favorite times in lessons are when we give someone the Book of Mormon the first time, or invite them to be baptized, the spirit is unbelievable at those times and you can see it in the people no doubt! We have also have two more investigators ready to baptized in the next couple weeks named Vallessa, Cristelle, and Glarisse! I'm not sure when we'll do those though because this next Saturday the Area 70 either Elder Dickson, or Elder Legrand Curtis coming to visit and such, so we'll have to wait on the Baptisms! But its really exciting to have them come visiting! Another cool experience came this week when we gave a young man the Book of Mormon.. the lesson went great, and he asked the best questions, and we went on to explain the book of Mormon and what it was... Usually the people because they know the Bible so well are very uneasy about the Book of Mormon at first and such. But he seemed very interested, I went to hand him the book and he set it down and left the room.. I though I got rejected and was really confused.. He came back in drying off his hands and I realized he left to wash his hands before touching and reading from the book. He explained that he could feel the book was important and of God, and it was only right to show that kind of respect for a sacred book. What an amazing thing that was to watch him look through the book and really feel the power of it! It taught me a big lesson of the power and the sacredness of the Book of Mormon! These people are the best no doubt, and have really taught me I feel like a lot more than Ive taught them! We have some of the best investigators and are really understanding our message! The biggest challenges the past week came in getting people to come to church, and in helping the people read and understand the Book of Mormon.. Most everyone here speaks "Fin" and French as well.. but because Fin is the native language, many people cant read French, so that is really tough! But when the people really have the desire to follow the gospel the Lord provides a way for them to receive a testimony no doubt! Another funny thing this past week was answering peoples questions about church, after having gone for the first time.. Most were pretty disappointed there wasn't a ton of dancing and singing and saying "Hallelujah!!" like there is in the other churches, but we were able to help them understand pretty well... even then they were still a little disappointed we don't dance and have African music but they still come so its all good! The French is slowly getting better! I get corrected a lot and find that most the stuff I say is wrong after lessons from my companion! But hey that's the only way to learn! And its pretty even there because his English needs a lot of work so we love our language study together! The people are still the best here no doubt and are the happiest! They're still trying to teach me how to dance Cookooracha... some African dance, and they have a pretty fun time with that! And hey even though Ive learned I cant keep up with these people at all in that area its still fun! We were able to play basketball today for the first time on a p-day and that was pretty great! Ill say I was a little disappointed because I was planning on finding some Michael Jordan's here.... but these people are definitely not the best at that sport.. which I was a little confused by... But hey they had fun so its all good! This is the best though no doubt! When everything you do is in the service of the Lord, there is no way that you cant be happy!! Yeah the living is still way way tough, and sometimes I just have to laugh because of how tough it is but its great! Hand washing clothes is still my least favorite part, and also clearing all of the lizards out of our church house, not sure why, but every time we go in there are little lizards all over the place! Also some of the spiders we have found are really to big to even be called spiders, so that's taking some getting used to for sure! I also had my first run in with one of the guard monkeys this week so that was interesting.. Instead of having guard dogs (because the dogs are food) a few people have nasty baboon type monkeys chained in front of their house, and I'm not going to lie they are a lot more intimidating than most guard dogs! So Ive learned to stay clear of those! But overall the serving the people here and being with them definitely puts that all out! I hope all is good back in America! Good luck with everything this next week! Love and miss you all!
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