How are you gentlemen. All your base are belong to us.
So first, a quick apology. Sorry I haven't sent a whole lot about what's happening out here in Africa. I have been answering a lot of emails and stuff, which I'm very thankful for, but nonetheless, I felt like I needed time to sit down and send something to all of you.
I looked up an old missionarry's blog (elderpalmer.blogspot.com) and my friend's blog (elderschmid.blogspot.com) and discovered that my blog emails need some serious improvement. And so this week, I'll go through each day of the week and talk about what I did that day and stuff.
Monday was P day. We made a district (apartment) rule to ensure that all of our shopping is going to be done on P day. It's really awesome sharing everything with another companionship. I really like the other two Elders in my Apartment (Elder Hansen and ElderGraham) and it's nice being able to work together nicely as a district.
Tuesday we saw a less active member who is currently working in a bar. Her husband went super inactive years ago and she ended up seperating from him (but not divorcing him). She was worried about how the church would feel about that, and so she just hasn't come back. She wants to come back now, but her work schedule just isn't matching up with church. We also saw an older investigator named Sampson (not his real name) who knows the Book of Mormon is true, and now is searching for every possible way to claim that the Church of Jesus Christ wasn't an organization and that it isn't our church, despite the fact he knows the Book of Mormon (which is exclusive to our church) is true. It's kind of frustrating sometimes. He can't seem to let himself connect the dots and understand that this church is true! He just isn't willing to give up what he has now to get salvation (which is a serious bummer). Nonetheless, I'm sure he will come back one day. I may not be the missionarry to see it, but I really think he will come back one day. I just hope he doesn't have to be super humbled for it to happen.
Wednesday we saw Frank (not his real name) who I baptized a month ago (see pictures from last email). He is doing awesome. I warned him after his baptism that Satan was going to do everything possible to make his life hard, and he is. Most importantly though, Frank is totally taking it all really well. His wife is all like "I'm catholic and you were catholic and catholocism is the only way; you're destroying our family, blarg blah blah." Then the mother of his kids took his kids and expects him to pay to see his kids. I was floored on how tough things are for him now, but he is still reading the Book of Mormon and he is still hanging strong. I'm so impressed with the faith that these people have.
Here's another example of incredible faith that happened on Saturday:
We met an anglophone from Baminda, who heard that our church offers a lot of Humanitarian aid, particularly in Africa (true. Look it up at www.lds.org). He has two kids and was a moto taxi man, got in a nasty accident and now his right hip is completely destroyed. He literally has no hip at all there. It's excrutiatingly painful. He is signed up as a disabled person through Cameroon and everything. This guy was in serious need of medical assistance, but due to lack of funds that is so rampant out here, he can't get what he needs. Us as missionarries are obligated to not give money (it's in our rulebook; "The Missionarry Handbook of Instruction" I think is the official name). I felt awful having to tell him that. When most people pester us for money, they always follow it up with a comment like "Oh, the whites can't share any money with us blacks who suffer" or something like that. This guy though, he just looked us in the eye and said "It's all right. I know that your prayers will do so much more than any sum of money."
Like I said, the faith of people here in Africa is really impressive. I even thought to myself "Man, this guy needs some serious cash that I can't give and he just doesn't have." This man totally showed his faith by responding and having such an attitude like that towards prayer.
So that's some goings ons here. I hope you all are having a wonderful winter, of which I don't have to deal with (hooray for tropical climates!). Alors, j'espère que vous auriez une bonne semaine cette semaine.
Bonne soirée!
- Elder LaFleur
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