OBEDIENCE

Bonjour! 03/10/2014

This past week has gone by pretty good! The work is still going along really well and our Amis are progressing good. I was worried if we would still be able to have as many Amis to teach with all of the baptisms, but thanks to the members we still have a constant flow of Amis coming in, so that’s been really nice! Lome also had one of their Temple trips over to Ghana this past week, so that was good as always for the Ward. Along with that two of the young men getting ready for their missions were able to get their endowments, so that was awesome to see as well. We have some great Amis right now, and its really fun to see them progressing. One of the biggest things I’ve seen with that is how much they progress right after baptism as well, getting started in the church and stuff. That’s been one of the best parts is seeing them get callings right away, getting the priesthood, and getting into institute and such. The ward here is still awesome and I’m really happy to be working here!

Last week Michelle was asking me to send her some miracle stories, and I was thinking and its really hard to pick them out, because if you are looking you really see the blessings the Lord gives each day. For example a couple weeks ago we were walking back at night again, and as our secteur is a 45 minute walk from the apartment, we were tired as it was the end of the day, so I was a bright one and thought about taking a short cut. By taking that I was taking a little dark back ally back to the apartment. Maybe because I was tired or something I didn’t think much of it, but as we got started on our way down, some guys came running behind us. They were coming to us to warn us to not take the road. I then remembered that a big white guy carrying a big bag walking down a dark long ally on the edge of Be Kpota late in the evening probably wasn’t the best idea. Later on though really thinking about it I really realized that those men were being nice, but at the same time the Lord was really watching out for us. You see a lot of things like that that don’t just happen by chance at all. Things are all going well with the work though.

I’ve been studying a lot this past week about avoiding sin, as a problem in the Ward has been with the youth, and problems such as chastity and such, thinking they can just repent later on. A verse that I love in the Book of Mormon relating to that in a way was from Alma 59, where he is talking about how they worked hard to build up a city that was about to be attacked by the enemies, because it is better to prepare, rather than have to repair. That made me think a lot about that principle in that it is better to resist, rather than to have to repent. No doubt it’s always easy to rationalize a little, and plan on repenting later, but not till we start taking steps away, do we forget what we're doing. I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately since Elder Vinson came, and gave the lesson on the importance of perfect obedience. Its very true the second we start letting small things slide, we start to slide ourselves toward sin. Thanks to those studies, I was ready once again when I got called on to give a talk on Sunday with no warning in advance... Ha-ha the mission is doing good as well.

Elder Barton and me were looking last week at Mormon.org and the profiles, and were able to see there is a group of 5 or 6 Americans coming in a couple weeks. That will be good, and something new for sure, as in the past 9 months or so we’ve only had 2 more Americans come into the mission!

The health is still all well, even though it seems like just about everyone here gets sick all the time. We had a nice rainstorm this past week and it got me pretty excited for the rainy season soon to come! At the same time though it was a little scary, as the night after it rains here, I don’t know how, or why, but all of these little wasp looking butterflies come out of no where, and they come in swarms. When I walked out our front door that night, a swarm came out of no where and filled part of our house, the weird thing though is they only live for a couple hours, so then they all started dying. Which was cool and all, but then we had to sweep them all out, which was a pain.

Things are going good though, I hope all is going well there, I love and miss you all a ton! Thanks for everything!

Elder Oliverson