He bit me!

This was an awesome week! We had a lot of cool experiences and a lot of cool people that we are working with. We met an awesome family that is from Kinshasa. He spoke Kikongo so it was fun to speak Kikongo with him for a little bit. But their entire family is really interested in the church. They were a referral from someone that just got baptized on Saturday. They are all faithful people but hadn’t been able to decide on a church yet. So we basically said “We can help you with that!” haha Anyway we also got another referral for a girl named Flore. Her husband just died in December. But she met the missionaries for the first time three years ago but wasn’t really stable where she was living so it didn’t ever really progress. But her mom and brother are both members. So we went and saw her and she has already read the entire Book of Mormon, has a strong testimony of the Restoration, has studied all the missionary brochures, reads every Liahona, and wants to be baptized. I was at a loss of words. That was pretty incredible.

Anyway, we also had a lesson with Nana who has been progressing really well. He owns a bar but had agreed to live the Word of Wisdom and came to the decision that he needed to change his work. However, this week we taught the Law of Chastity. He was asking a lot of questions about polygamy and their situation before God. Then he said, “Let me tell you how I became a polygamist…” Yep. It turns out he was married legally to his first wife, then she just left him. So he went and remarried culturally. Then his first wife came back. So he just kept both of them. So that makes it difficult if he wants to be baptized. I guess we’ll see how that goes.

Sunday we had an awesome day at church. It has been incredible to see the progression of our sector. Our first week we had 5 investigators at church. This Sunday, we had 18 investigators at church! It was so cool! The second counselor in the district presidency came up to us afterwards and said congratulations because their branch had never been like that before. Our entire zone is exploding. It has really taught me a lot about obedience. As a zone (5 companionships) we had 60 investigators at church and 43 baptismal dates are set. That is incredible. Anyway, the work here is going incredibly. We have been working hard and we have done a lot of walking, but the work is worth it. The blessings are pouring out on our zone.

Also, funny story. After church, we were talking to members and investigators when I felt a sharp pain from behind. I looked behind me, and it was a child biting me! That was kind of weird. He’s a crazy kid and has way too much energy. And our entire zone is going to their family’s house for FHE tonight because he is in the district presidency. So I’ll let you know next week how that goes haha.

As far as ebola goes, everything will be fine. This last week our mission president told us all to be aware of it. We are forbidden to eat pork, goat, anything weird, and especially NOT MONKEY as Sister Monga said haha. We might be getting a large group of missionaries from those missions so that they can flee the virus. We’ll see how that goes. And Cameroon is being very cautious about letting people in. So we’ll be ok. Here, there are a lot of people that always claim to be sick. So we never know. I have had a nagging cough for the last couple weeks but it’s going away. I think that was because of the change in climate. It’s cold here!

Shoes are very important to missionaries haha. Even my hiking boots (as I call them) are getting pretty worn. I will be taking them in to get sewed up pretty soon. But many missionaries really like Keen’s sandals. They are lightweight, comfortable, and most of all, expensive. But 1 pair could probably last your entire mission. I would still take one pair of regular shoes to wear to church and other meetings, but for proselyting, sandals would be good. Here the problem is mud and dust. I don’t know how it is there, but it will probably be fine. One of the elders told me that he has seen contact solution here, but they must have been out last time. I will continue to look. I am being very judicious with how much I use…  Yaoundé is a much richer city. I will try to get some good pictures of the city this week when we are at church, but if not you should look up pictures of the city. There are a lot of big buildings. Buildings that are bigger than back home! It’s crazy! We do a lot of walking. Depending on the day, we can take quite a few taxis too. But we mostly just walk a lot because taxis only follow the main road.

Public toilet situation huh? Well… This will be fun. So there isn’t really such thing as public toilets. At church they have normal toilets. And at our apartment. But if you have to use the bathroom in public, that gets interesting. The public at large just go on the side of the road, but as missionaries that isn’t really kosher. So you have to ask people to use their bathroom. The bathroom is usually just a hole in the ground. Usually it is really gross. So we usually try not to do that. Luckily, we have regulated our bodies to the situation so we don’t have to use the bathroom in public very often.

Anyway, the work is going really well here. There is so much to do! We have so many people to see I don’t even know if we can see everyone. And they are all incredible people.  I love this branch. And I love our investigators. 

Congrats to Braden! “The church doesn’t need great men. The church makes great men.”

Congratulations Braden! That is so cool! It was completely opposite of anything I guessed… haha But I know that is exactly what he needs. I am really happy that I will get to talk to him on Skype before he leaves. I hear that it is even hotter in Brazil than here though :p. He’s lucky though that he wasn’t there for the world cup. Missionaries there were locked in their apartment for over a week because of the stuff that happens. Hopefully the Olympics go ok haha. Wow, that is going to be an awesome experience. Especially the language thing. Don’t feel too bad though because even if you study for 4 years you understand almost nothing at the beginning of your mission. But we are definitely going to have a language filled family haha.

Anyway, I haven’t heard anything about Ebola, but Nigeria is really close and there is a lot of travel between the two countries. So I guess we’ll see what happens… But I’m sure we’ll be fine. The church is very inspired and they take very good care of their missionaries.

I’ve learned a lot of things on my mission. Studies, praying, and obedience are all essential. They sound difficult. But once you start you learn to love it and you feel a need to do it. It will make a huge impact on your lives.

This week has been a great week. It’s incredible to see how much our zone has improved this transfer. I was told that last transfer this was the most disobedient zone in the mission. And the numbers were really suffering. Since the beginning of this last transfer we have been putting an emphasis on obedience, and the blessings just started pouring out. It has been incredible. We are whitewashing a sector and we had 12 investigators at church, 23 lessons this week, and have several progressing investigators that have very high chances of reaching baptism. That has really been a testimony builder for me. Obedience is very important. Even just the little things. Sometimes we have as Elder Cook of the Seventy said “little pretties” that we hold onto that we aren’t willing to give up. We think that it isn’t a big deal. But it is and if you change it, it will change everything about your day.

We saw a ton of miracles this week. We had a lesson with Irene, whose husband died a couple months ago. Tuesday we went there, and it was incredible how much happier she had become. The Gospel truly brings joy into our lives.

 We also had a lesson with another Anglophone named Lisette. She is awesome. She came to church for the first time two Sundays ago. After that, her boyfriend told her that she had to pick between the church and him. She picked the church! The crazy thing is that she depends on him financially. So she was concerned about how she was going to live, but knew that she had to be faithful at church. So we talked to her about fasting because it happened to be fast Sunday, so we all fasted together for her. We’ll see how that goes. But it was incredible to see how much faith she already has. We hadn’t even taught the second lesson at this point! Then later in the week, we invited her to be baptized and she accepted. Her only fear was being in water haha. But I am really excited for her. The best part is it is a huge testimony to me about contacting. We had had an appointment fall through our first day, so we walked and just decided to go knock on some doors in a little parcel across the street. So we knocked on a couple without success so we were going to move on, then I was impressed to talk to the girl sitting down on the other side. It was Lisette. When she gets baptized, that will be the first convert that I have found from knocking on doors.

We also had a lesson with an old less-active man that used to live in America. But while he was there he was hit by a car and lost his memory. So they sent him back here and he just walks around all day trying to get his memories back. But his condition has been really improving lately. It was really fun to talk to him. He is an incredible guy.

Anyway, we had a lot of really cool experiences this week. There are so many crazy, incredible things that happen that I can’t even write them all down. I just wanted to add a quote from someone at church yesterday. He said, “The church doesn’t need great men. The church makes great men.” Just remember that. It is through the Gospel that we become great. It’s not about what we do that matters to the Lord. We can be great in the eyes of men, but we want to be great in the eyes of God.

Anyway, I am really happy about everything that has happened back home this week. I am really excited for Braden. The house is going to be pretty empty soon! Anyway, have a great week!

Pictures from Pointe Noire

Louzolo Family

Branch Presidency and me

Branch Missionaries

Padma, her son, and me

Hardships. "They'll put hair on your chest."

By the way. Just a bit of information I learned this week. So they have these things called hardship missions. Which are missions that are very stressful and have a lot of hardships. In those missions, senior couples only serve for 18 months, and mission presidents serve for 2 years. There are only 2 hardship missions in the world. DRC Lumumbashi, and yep, our mission! Well, the DRC Kinshasa mission. I don't know if it carried over when it split. But now you know that I was called to one of the 2 hardship missions in the world. And guess what, sometimes, there are actually a lot of hardships. But hardships are a good thing. They put hair on your chest, as Elder Brockbank would say haha. 

T

Back left to right: Elder Brockbank, Elder Niyonkuru, Elder Wright, Me, Elder Beutler, Elder Simmons, Elder Ntambwe, Elder Nzema, Elder Leavitt. Front: Elder Dimond, Sister Dimond, Sister Monga, Elder Tucker, President Monga.

Be Diligent, Bring others unto Christ

It’s really awesome to hear about Kenai! I definitely miss doing
things like that. Everyone here likes to hear stories about that
though. We are really blessed to have the opportunity to live in
Alaska. All the missionaries and senior couples have all said that
they want to come visit Alaska haha.
 I’m really proud of Conner and Aubrey. They have awesome testimonies. That will help them so much
throughout the rest of their lives. I’m glad you had the opportunity
to read that talk. I also was studying that talk this week. It is
incredible. It gives perspective for everything that we do. The
Atonement is central and everything else that we do is just an
appendage to that. I especially liked the last section. Missionary
work is not easy because Salvation is not a cheap experience. We can’t
say that we are followers of Christ if we don’t take up our cross and
walk at least a couple steps in his shoes. The Atonement wasn’t easy,
so why should our salvation be easy? It is hard to keep up with our
responsabilities and share the gospel and do everything that we are
commanded to do. But by doing these things we are becoming true
followers of Christ.
 I would like to share something that
I have found really interesting on my mission. In Africa, we have a
lot of baptisms. But it isn’t because every person we meet wants to be
baptized. I have learned that the percentage of people that we contact
and baptize is actually pretty similar to those of the United States.
That means that it’s not just cause we’re in Africa that we are
getting a lot of baptisms. But the difference between here and home is
that the people here are so willing to invite others to come to church
and meet the missionaries. Almost every baptism that I’ve had has been
from referrals. All of that to say, just because you are in America
doesn’t mean that you can’t have baptisms. There are still many
people that are searching for the truth. They are your friends. But
they don’t know where to find it.
 When we first got to this zone, there were a couple little obedience problems.
This city that used to be like a gold mine had fell in a rut. We
talked about it and made the resolution to be more obedient. This last
week we had incredible numbers as a zone and so many progressing
investigators. Between our 5 companionships, we had about 60
investigators at church! We went from 9 lessons in one week to 20. We
have found so many awesome people that were prepared by the Lord. So
remember to stay diligent in all that you do. Sometimes it’s hard.
Sometimes you say I can’t walk up one more hill or knock on one more
door. But if you do, you receive so many blessings.
Anyway, this week has been an incredible week. On Monday we went to
our branch president’s house and he also showed us a couple inactive
families. So we ended up having 3 lessons on a Pday! That was really
cool. Throughout the week we had a lot of help from members that were
showing us to where investigators live and to their friends that want
to meet us. We have been working a lot with the Obame Family. Yes, it
is pronounced Obama. So now I can say that I met the Obamas in Africa
haha.
Another funny story: So we were walking in the sector one day when we
received a text. It said something about if God shuts a door quit
banging on it and move on. It was a name that was registered in the
phone. It sounded really harsh like they were telling us to not come
back. But we didn’t know who it was. So what did we do? That night we
called and set an appointment for the next day! The other missionaries
just laughed at us. But we met with her and she is awesome and came to
church, and it turns out she is the branch president’s goddaughter! So
that was really cool.
Friday we got to meet our new mission president President Monga. He is
so cool. It will be really fun to work with him. However he can only
come every other transfer. Which means I will probably only see him 5
more times unless I go to Brazzaville haha. But they called Elder
Dimond, the senior couple elder, to be the first counselor in the
mission presidency. So now we won’t have to worry so much about the
problem of having our mission president so far away. Anyway, we had an
awesome zone conference. It was kind of weird for us to be conducting
the conference. It was really cool though. We set a lot of goals and
learned a lot. The Mongas are really fun too. They are really happy
people and I’m really excited to work with them.
So anyway this whole week was a really good week. We ended up with 8
investigators at church! And we were fed twice this week. African food
is really good. But it’s scary sometimes because they put weird things
in sometimes. For example, we had one meal that was really good, but
they cook it with pig skin. Luckily this was higher quality skin and
not the really hard thick hairy stuff hahaha. Anyway, I’ve really been
enjoying it. We had plantain foufou one time. That was really good
too. I’m loving it here in Yaounde. The people are so nice. It’s the
perfect temperature too. It isn’t even rainy either. The hills are a
little tiring, but that’s ok. I’m going to try to send some pictures
later, but next week I’ll have some more pictures of Yaounde. I mostly
just have pictures from goodbyes in Congo. But it is beautiful here. I
would suggest you look up pictures of the city. There are beautiful
HUGE buildings! It almost doesn’t feel like Africa sometimes. They
even have paved roads!

White Washed in Yaounde

So it's official! I'm in Yaoundé Cameroon. I am co-zone leader with Elder Brockbank. It's been a crazy week! We are whitewashing our sector, and the missionaries before us never wrote in the area book and didn't really have any investigators. So needless to say we have been doing a LOT of contacting. This week we spent hours doing door to door contacting. We only take numbers if it's legitimately a potential investigator but we managed to take 28 numbers! We only had 9 lessons. So it was a little rough this week. We did a lot of walking. And it just so happens that Yaounde has a TON of hills. And they are steep. So I will probably start losing a little bit of the weight that I've put on haha. But needless to say this week has been an incredible learning experience for me. Missionaries in our mission are kind of afraid to do contacting because it is hard work and we already have a lot of people to teach. This week I learned a lot about that. And we have seen a lot of miracles. Neither of us have ever even been in this city but we are already starting to figure out our sector. But we don't have the luxury of having addresses. It has been a really incredible experience. Exhausting, but incredible. If all of our appointments that we have planned for this next week go through we will have 21! And today we are going to FHE with the branch president, President Zang. So he is going to coordinate the efforts with the branch to help us out. The branch here is incredible. It works like a branch should. They really understand how this stuff works. I'm really excited to work here.

So I didn't send an email on monday because I was in an airplane going to Douala and taking a bus to Yaounde. So I didn't get a chance to write home. I sent one on Saturday, but apparently it didn't send. But because we got here on monday we had a whole week of being lost before we could coordinate effectively with the branch. But I think now things are going to work a lot better. 

The temperature here is really nice. It's cold season. It is really nice here. There are a lot of nice buildings here and nice stores. Including an American store, which apparently is supposed to have contact solution. So I'm going to check that out and see if I can get some. That would make things a lot easier. The apartment is really nice too. But it is on the third floor. So we walk up and down hills and stairs everyday haha. But it's all good. It will get me back into shape. 

Funny story by the way. You were talking about the chocolate game and that reminded me of something Elder Ralison told me. In Madagascar they play the same game! I was amazed! It was so funny! But they will use anything, even things like brownies and stuff haha. 

Well I'm really glad that everyone hasn't forgotten about me haha. It feels like I have been here for so long! 

Sorry I forgot my camera this week, but next week I will send pictures. I got a lot of goodbye pictures in Pointe Noire with recent converts and investigators. Unfortunately, because I left on Monday, I didn't really get to say goodbye to as many people as I would have liked to. 

Yeah the 4th of July was really fun. They were real hotdogs. It was 2 dollars for a package of 10. You'd be surprised the kinds of things you can find here. 

So this last week we had a lot of really cool experiences. We met a lot of incredible people, and we really saw the hand of the Lord in everything we were doing. 

This Friday President Monga is coming to do a zone conference. That will be really cool to meet him. We've already talked to him on the phone a couple times, but it'll be fun to meet him in person. We went to send in our numbers for the zone yesterday but because it's a new mission we didn't have the AP's number. So we had to call President and ask him haha. But this next week should be a really good week. There are a lot new missionaries here. The city needs a little bit of a kickstart. The missionaries kinda fell into a rut the last couple transfers but now we are going to dig it back out and bring it up to it's potential. It'll be a really good experience.

As far as things I need. I wouldn't mind if when you sent packages you slipped in some real deodorant or a white shirt or something like that. The deodorant here doesn't work very well. And my shirts are starting to get a little colorful haha. Other than that I think I'm ok. 

Anyway, this has been a crazy week! Sounds like things are staying nice and busy for you guys too. I'm glad to hear that everything is going good though. Have a great week!

Going to Yaounde!

So... I know this is a little abnormal, but we received information that everyone that is going to Cameroon this transfer is leaving Monday morning. So, that means I will be leaving Monday morning.. haha So we probably won't get a chance to write home on Monday because we will be traveling. So it's officially official. I am going to Yaounde, Cameroon. I will be serving as a zone leader working with Elder Brockbank. We will be whitewashing. Which means that we are both new to the sector. So we'll see how that goes haha. It should be a good experience though. It will be fun to see Elder Brockbank again. Luckily I knew in advance that I was leaving so I was able to say goodbye to just about everyone. And we are going to attend a marriage this afternoon, so I'll get to take pictures with everyone before I leave. I am sad to leave Pointe Noire. I am leaving my sector in very good condition. There are 11 people that are scheduled to be baptized next month. I just hope that the elders that were serving in my next sector kept a good area book haha. 

To say goodbye and celebrate a little bit we all celebrated the 4th of July at our apartment yesterday night. That was really fun. We had hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, and apple pie. So it was nice and American. It was lots of fun. It will be hard to say goodbye to everyone. Especially because I know almost no one in Cameroon. But it will be nice to have an English speaking companion for the first time in 4 1/2 months! haha And Elder Brockbank and I know each other really well already. But to make everything even better. This week they are also getting a new senior couple. So we are going to have 2 zone leaders and a senior couple (who usually lead things like that) that have no idea where anything is haha. But it will be a good experience. This last transfer we accomplished a lot of really good things. Elder Ralison is going to email to let me know when our investigators get baptized so that we can add them to the list. By the way, my next sector is called Ekounou C. It will be a little different than what I'm used to because they have a district there already! That will be really cool. Anyway, I don't have a lot of time to write today... So have a great week!

Apple Pie

Elder Gardner and Elder VanAusdal cooking for 4th of July

Home made hot dog buns! Impressive Elder VanAusdal!

Elder Garland cooking hamburgers. Elder VanAusdal making the caramel sauce for his apple pie.

Time to Eat!