Absolutely no one has been available this week.
It’s been a little slow teaching wise. But the up side, is that me and Kampoy
have had more time to get to know each other and we have found that we are
pretty similar in attitude. We have quickly become best friends.
I’m flipping through my planner to try and find
something that was interesting this week. So, here are some stories from the
week.
Last week I told you about Regine and Beldin.
Well this week we had a lesson on Temples and it was the best lesson I’ve ever
taught. Because they are so young we can’t
go too in depth. So I decided we would draw temples with them. We gathered
pictures, paper, and markers and went to work. I could not believe the
enthusiasm of the whole family. Regine
and Beldin's mom, holds a study group for neighborhood kids, so when we went
the whole house was excited and participated. I have never seen 16 year old Africans
get so excited (to say the least of the 8 year olds for who the lesson was
intended)! I will attach pictures in another email of their art so you can see
how fun it was. I guess it was good training for future kids that I will need
to teach.
Regine and Beldin are the two really young ones.
Kampoy and I also got stuck in the rain twice
this week!
Friday morning we had no one in our planner
scheduled to teach. We weren’t sure what
we would do. The district leader then gave us a number of someone who had asked
for the missionaries on Mormon.org. We called the guy and set up a rendez-vous.
Meeting a long way from the city and behind a gas-station - it looked like a
drug deal or something. haha But there
we were talking with Claver. Claver told us that he found a Book of Mormon
somewhere. He can’t remember where, but he read it and gained a testimony of
the book and knows it’s true. This was a year ago, and since then he has been
sharing the book with friends out in the village where he lives. For a year a
group of 20 people have been sharing 1 Book of Mormon and have been holding
unofficial study sessions. It wasn’t until he started to research the origins
of the book that he came across a Facebook page for the church and found that
there were members in Yaounde - so he requested us to come see him. Sunday he
came to church and says he will come every Sunday. Kampoy and I will go out to their group with
church materials and present the church formally to them! Pretty exciting and
crazy how the gospel can disperse on its own. I remember hearing that if the
Book of Mormon had legs we wouldn’t need missionaries - well this book doesn’t
have legs but somehow it found its way to a village and a group that was
prepared!
Friday afternoon, we were waiting at the church
for an amis (meeting), when branch leaders began to file into the building for
branch council. One of them is President Omam, 1st counselor. Omam began by
joking about the Dote (marriage money, which the church is against because it
stops marriages). Omam made the comment that started an apostate flow of ideas,
"The only reason the church is against the dote is because the leaders are
white!". Then turning to me he said, "why do you allow homosexuality
in America but say polygamy is a sin?". I quickly corrected him and explained
that, I nor the church allow the two. Omam became an absolute jerk, yelling and
attacking "white" ideas. With every phrase I got more and more upset
and my French got worse and worse. I’m not sure if it’s clear what happened,
but basically a leader yelled false doctrine in my face and undermined my
calling as a missionary, referring to me as "as child who doesn’t know anything".
In the end, I left so upset that we
stopped work for the rest of the day and emailed my mission president about the
affair. A few days later and I’m still
furious about the whole thing.
The week has been an interesting one - full of
adventure just like I wanted. I committed to President Cook to stay another 2
weeks until he comes to Yaounde so we can talk face to face. Lately, I’ve had some crazy experiences that
have made me laugh and some that had taught me some new things.
