Woah! What a week of
news! Holy cow! First off, keep guiding Kaleb mom - and let him know that
Julius thinks a car would be better than a girl. haha. Everyone grows up way
too fast, who am I going to hang out with my first summer home if y'all are
gone? Well at least I'll get to speak with Maya in French and go hard-core on
call of duty with Ferious. :)
I have to thank you a
bunch mom and Robert for working to pay for the mission. I appreciate it a lot!
I’m glad you are seeing the blessings come already. But you should know that I'll
be paying you back for the money you spent. Yup! It's already decided; I’m
working and paying back the money when I get back. I didn’t properly save for
my mission before, so I can at least fix that mistake later.
Life seems to be
moving at an extremely fast pace for you over there. Can’t wait to jump back
into family life. Make sure Nani and Opa know that I love them and wish them
the best.
This week was pretty
slow but good. We started off by teaching good lessons and having a good time -
until Elder Okon got sick. Why are my companions always the sick ones!! So far I have been super healthy out here, but
that doesn’t seem to be the case with my companions. So Okon got sick at the
end of Tuesday and all of Wednesday. Which
means I got to play house wife. haha. I decided that if I couldn’t go out into
the sector those days, I would at least make good use of my time at home. So I
made "to do lists". Here are the things I did:
Sweep the house
Do all my laundry
Read the Book of
Mormon
Cook dinner
Clean the Kitchen
Organize our bookshelf
(which is loaded with all the brochures and books we give out to people so it
gets crazy disorganized)
Work out
Give myself a haircut
Looks like a small
list but that took all day believe it or not. I definitely gained appreciation
for all the things our moms do for us when we’re at home. And I'll be super
thankful to a wife that will do those things in the future.
Well after the sick
day we went back to work, and after being stuck in the house as a missionary
that first day back is a glorious one. We taught some awesome Amis (investigators)
and had more weird rendezvous. We spent two days back to back teaching in the Marche
(shopping center). It's always crazy and never gets old. There are always those
people who know you already and have been reading the brochures more or less
and have questions. Then everyone who doesn’t know you but wants to know you,
so you're just handing out brochures like crazy!
Some of our
investigators are kinda strange in all honesty. Maybe it's just like that
everywhere but we get some odd balls. Like trying to contact an old grandma and
then having her go nuts on us shouting that she is Jesus and we are Jesus and
that God is man. Don’t worry, if you are confused by what I just wrote - so
were we haha. Now I have a super funny story to tell you, but it'll have to be
when I get home. Probably not a classy story to email home. Basically we tried
teaching chastity to our Ami Daniel and it just went downhill and out into left
field! So remind me when I get home about Daniel's story!
This week we did that
service again at church. Scrubbing the cement driveway. Usually while we do
that we just talk about BYU and life on the other side. There was a nice
baptism as well, a Ghanaian. Super nice guy!
And after all that we
ended with church on Sunday! Fun news,
we will be watching conference this weekend! Woohooo! Super pumped and the leaders of the branch
tried getting everyone pumped as well. Apparently only 5 people came last time
to conference: / Yeah remember all that progress I said the branch was making?
Well, we backslid.....so upsetting. I started a new initiative called
"getting-people-to-do-their-home-teaching-because-it-is-really-important".
Or the gptdthtbiiri initiative! No just kidding I didn’t name it that haha. But
we are working on that. Basically we picked two home teaching teams and helped
them on Sunday meet and set up rendezvous with the families they need to teach.
SO FRUSTRATING! I know it sounds simple but it wasn’t. One person ducked out of
church right after the closing prayer even though I told him an hour before
that we needed to talk. His companion was running away from me - so there goes
Elder Johnson chasing Brother Olivia around the building! And another had the guts to tell me he didn’t
know who he had to teach while we stood 2 feet from the board with assignments
pinned on it! But by the end we got it
figured out - success.
Yesterday all that was
so frustrating, but as I am writing it I can’t help but smile. I love my job!
Often I have to remind myself that working on a mission just means doing your
best. Obviously we push ourselves to be better and better, but we are never
perfect. So we do all that we can and then keep moving. This week I’m pumped to
go out and work hard (like all weeks). Being on a mission is definitely
teaching me where I need to improve and it's been an incredible experience.
Hold on, yeah - Kaleb forget about a girl or a car, go on a mission bro. It's
the best thing ever!
Well I love all you
guys and wish you the best this week. Thanks for being such amazing family and
working hard and being a good example for me. For the siblings - you all better
be there when I get off that plane, cuz if not, my hugs for you are going to
random strangers in the airport.
ps - Maya, for the
last 6 months of my mission (Starting in November) I’m going all French mode. So
I'll stop speaking English with others. So you'll probably need to be my
translator when I get back. Also, I
suggest swimming as a new sport for you, Gabbie. That doesn’t use the knee,
right? Or weight lifting! 2020 Olympics here you come!
So this week there was
a crazy migration of bats! Literally hundreds (possibly thousands) of bats!
Every night at around sunset these insane flocks/herds/gaggles/gangs of bats
are everywhere. The first night i was super confused at what they were, until
we saw some low flying ones. I dont think i can do it justice in describing it!
We sat and watched them for maybe 10 minutes and they still kept coming. In the
pictures, if you see blurry black dots, its not cuz its a bad picture but
rather bats! Also if you want to know what it sounds like, have someone quitely
whistle in a high pitch next to you while you flip through the photos.
