Saturday, September 20, 2014

Basic Truths

Bonjour!                                                                                                                   09/20/2014

This past week has been pretty good, but super busy like usual. Unfortunately we weren’t able to get much done in our area till the end of the week, as at the beginning we were very busy with some problems that came up. 
On Tuesday we had the arrival of a big group of missionaries. Along with that it was the biggest group of Americans we’ve got in over a year and a half. It was really cool to see all of them, and was kind of a flashback to how it was when I first got here as well. There are so many things that just seem normal now, that before were the craziest thing ever, but you just get used to it. We didn’t get to spend too much time with them though as President had us running around helping with some other things that came up. Later that night we went and dropped some of the missionaries off as well, which is always fun too. As the road between the airport and the mission home is probably the nicest and prettiest area in the whole mission, they get here thinking it kind of a nice tropical vacation place. Then you start driving them to their area and they realize its not exactly what they thought, Ha-ha. They all seem to be adjusting well though as now they start out in the Ghana MTC, so some of the shock is taken away from that. 
The next day we spent a lot of time taking the rest of the new missionaries out into their apartments so that took up most the day. We were originally planning on going to Togo that day, but luckily President Blaise came over here to Benin, so when returning to Togo was able to take some missionaries with him. Letting us have time later on to go teach some lessons. We weren’t able to get too many lessons taught this week, but the ones we did were good which was nice. 
One in particular was a contact of a girl that we found as she works at this good food place not far from our apartment. Elder Izekor is never too fond of going there, but I convinced him that as we were able to start getting the contacts of the workers, it was basically mission work Ha-ha, but when we got to her place her whole family was there, so we had the chance to talk with all of them. The best part is her Mom was there as well, and it’s always easy to get the Mom's interest when you share that our message is centered on families. When we were teaching them most everything we focused on was about the family, and she loved it. She’s been in many many different churches, and has enjoyed it, but said that she has never seen one where there is this much focus on the family. We talked a lot about he basic truths that are found in the "Proclamation to the World" for example, and you could see that it was stuff they probably hadn’t heard much before, but when they did it just made complete sense to them. It was a great lesson, so we're excited to start teaching that family a lot more. 
Another bright spot of the week was that our recent convert Sarah just got back from the Temple trip, so we got to hear all about that. I remember back home, we would go to the Temple just whenever, or just for mutual, and it didn’t seem huge. But here when there is a Temple trip its a whole different story, especially those who make the big sacrifices to go, and when they come back you can see it is something they will never forget at all. Along with that with just her going to the Temple it was a big motivation for the rest of her family to push towards that as well. The happiest part was when we found out that she saved up all the money herself to be able to go to the Temple, it made me think a lot about the sacrifices I need to make to be better, and to go to the Temple more often when I get home. 
All is going great here though, today we have a big activity for the Branch in preparation for the Branch Conference tomorrow, so we have to leave soon to get ready for that. I hope all is great back there though, thanks for all the love and support.
              Elder Oliverson

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