Updates from Casey!

Jambayola everyone ?!

I could start the next 250 letters with a new way to say, “hello!” with all the different dialects that exist in Cameroon.  I’ve only heard of maybe 20 tops, and can only say a few words in each, but it’s still really fun.  The locals love when you say something to them in their dialect. 

Anyway, it’s been a great week.  We came back from writing home and took an hour and a half nap, my second one since I got here.  It turned out to be a really bad idea though, because we both laid in bed for at least that long after we needed to go to bed for real after dinner. It was really nice just to have a couple minutes with nothing to do.  I have no idea how I filled my time over the summer when I had no school.  I will suffer if I’m not constantly moving after 2 years of having every minute of every day planned out.

In our first taxi ride out into the sector, we were “randomly” pulled over to check the driver’s papers, but when he saw les blancs in the back seat, he asked us for ours too.  I’ve never even thought to carry papers on me, as we’ve never needed them and I don’t want my backpack to get jacked with my passport and visa inside.  The police officer told us that we were going to have to get out of the taxi and come with him to the immigration office where they would put us in jail until we got everything sorted out.  I wasn’t worried, and was kindof looking forward to a good story, because I knew we had the documents back at the apartment, but when we showed him our badges and explained that we’re just missionaries, he talked with his buddy and decided to let us go with a warning.  Dangit! Next time I’ll just get out of the car and ask him to cuff me. 

After we asked her how she felt about the things we were talking about, we had an investigator tell us during our second rendez-vous, “well I don’t know, I didn’t see anything, I just felt it in my heart that it’s true!” It was so cool to hear someone try to explain how they were feeling the Spirit.  I love explaining to them what they were feeling.  They always get really excited and go, yes, yes! that’s it!

I ate some ground nut soup with cocoyam fufu the other day! That was pretty good, but the fufu is always so heavy and there’s so much, so after a few bites it becomes hard to swallow.  I’ll have to learn how to prepare it so I can make it when I get back. Along with the rest of the food items I’ve been making a list of!

We met a guy from Chad, and he has this crazy accent, but he was very cool.  The next time we saw him, like two days later, he’d already read about 200 pages out of the Book of Mormon, and he was loving it! He came to church, and wants us to teach him and the rest of his family when we can.  Elder Zurcher and I are stoked.

Another mango fell from the tree as we were walking under it, so that’s pretty much all I need to say about that.

We were walking next to this “amusement park” when this young guy probably my age stopped us and asked who we were.  He followed us to the church and talked with us for the next 45 minutes, and explained how he’d never walked down that road before (neither had we!) and how he doesn’t think it was a coincidence that we met.  That kind of stuff happens all the time.  It’s just the most fascinating thing.  How could that not boost your testimony?!  For every bad thing that’s happened while I’ve been here, I’ve seen a hundred miracles.  

I tried a ginger drink.  It burns your throat and doesn’t taste very good.  Not recommended to the strong and healthy.

One of the members in the branch told us about how when she was 15 and 18 she was the women’s 100m champion of Cameroon.  She was offered several scholarships to different schools but her dad wanted her to get a real education, so she stopped running and starting playing handball, where she took second place in the Coupe de l’Afrique as their starting goalie.  What an all-star!

On Saturday we got to go to this little banana farm of hers to help pull out some of the reject trees so she could plant some more.  This is how it works: you plant a tree, and a main sprout comes out among a few smaller ones.  The more “rejetons” you have surrounding the main tree, the smaller and slower the main tree will grow.  But in order to plant another tree, you have to save one or two of the rejetons until it grows it’s own little bulb in the ground.  You should’ve seen the earth that we were tilling.  It is so so rich.  Jeanie would be so jealous! I wish I could send her a little package back of it.  She would love it.

One of the taxis we got into had Spongebob spray painted on the side.  That was cool, but the driver was kindof a sourkraut.

I found a rock in one of my cookies that I bought at a stand on the side of the street.

We had a baptism! Albert, a guy who Elder Zurcher and Elder Lafleur met on the road one day in December.  He had school and work on Sundays, so he could never come to church, and then one day he found out his older brother had a brain tumor and probably wasn’t going to survive, so he had to take care of him until he died.  It was really sad, but he stayed so strong the whole time, and we’ve been teaching him since the beginning of Februrary.  He bored his testimony after his baptism, and I was so proud of him.  It was so great.  It was just an awesome day.  He gave me the honor of confirming him the next day, and that was just merveilleux. 

After church we went to go find this family that’s been going through such a hard time for the last month.  Their neighbor (a middle-aged man) confessed his love for their daughter (who is 16), and it turned violent between him and the father, and it was just a crazy mess as they got kicked out of their house and needed to find a new place to live, etc. etc. etc.  As they were going through all this, but still asking us to come meet with them, the dad got a promotion at his work that doubled his income.  It was such a blessing.  They moved into their own little 2 room house with a bathroom, and we got to help him move in his bench, two chairs and a couple bags of clothes.  That was everything they owned.  It was another very humbling moment.  When we went to visit them last night, they weren’t there, but the family next door was, and we got to chat with Steve, Danny, Ryan, and Russell, a family of Cameroonians who love America.  It was awesome.  Out of nowhere, the neighbor of the family we’d been teaching before appears in front of us and says, “Christine (the mom of the family) is asking for you; follow me!”  She led us to the house they’d been staying at for the past month as they looked for a new home, and we got to sit down and chat with the mom and daughters about everything that had happened.  They were so happy to see us.  “Finally! Finally!” they kept saying.  We’re very excited to have them back on the map. 

That’s about everything excited that happened this week, other than the package that Elder Morin got in the mail: Easter candy! His brother had double zip-lock bagged a bunch of chocolates and other candies and put it one of those evelope packages with bubble wrap on the inside and wrapped the whole thing in scotch tape and it got here safe in sound after only 2 weeks.  So.  If you wanna send anything small like that, that would be an awesome way to do it :)

I love you all, I’m so appreciative for all your support.  I literally would not be here if it wasn’t for everyone reading this.  So, thank you, may God bless you, and may He bring me home safe and sound so I can embrace you!

Until next time!

Elder Garland