February 24

Hello again!

We had another awesome week of course.  You can't go wrong when you
start off going to the beach.  We had a nice picknick with the Baileys
and played in the sand and had a grand old time and even made a
pyramid of missionaries in the Congo, what the.....

On Tuesday we met up with a guy that a member took under his wing
because he didn't have a home anymore and wanted to learn more about
computers (the member is a technician).  He had come to church and
said it was "perfect" and that he wanted to be baptized NEXT SATURDAY.
 So...we're working hard with him and we're really excited to have
such an awesome guy as a part of our branch.  He told us he knew the
church was true because he started doing things that he never used to
do - read scriptures, pray, go to church, answer questions at church,
etc.  We explained how that's called conversion, and he was really
excited.  We're all excited.  Africa.

We tried looking for a less-active member and got lost...I wonder why
he's less-active...and ended up at another member's house an hour and
a half later to teach her daughter, who wasn't there but was on her
way to the house.  So we waited for probably 30 minutes as Les
Misérables was playing on the TV.  We finally had to get up to leave,
but the mom was really hoping we would have stayed for dinner, but we
really had to go.  As we left, about 100 yards from the house we ran
into the daughter.  Dang it!  It's ok because they were all at church
anyway :)

In one of our taxi rides the driver was dancing so hard to the music
playing, it was hilarious.  Well, it was all fun and games until the
old mamma in the front seat just suddenly takes off her shirt!  It
brought a whole new meaning to the song, "It's getting hot in here..."
 The driver literally danced her shirt off.  I didn't think it was
possible.  He turns to the mamma and goes, wide eyed, "HEY!" and she
just looks at him and ties this thing on her head and puts her shirt
back on.  Thank goodness we were in the back seat and didn't have a
full stomach to throw up all over the floor.

I got a call that night from William Tignyemb from Douala, the dad of
the family I taught with Elder Zurcher.  It was so nice to hear from
him, but I had to call back to talk with the other 6 members of the
family.  I miss them a ton, but it was great talking with them eacha
little bit.

Oh and we met a girl named "Give" who didn't like her name so she
changed it to "Michael."  Welcome to Congo.

We had an awesome district meeting on Wednesday with the Baileys, who
brought us oatmeal cake that melted in my mouth, and then Elder
Baker's lesson on gratitude which melted my brain.  We went on splits,
Baker and I, and I got to teach the Luzolo family again, which was
great.  We walked off to see Padma, another saint of a woman who can't
be baptized because she lives with her polygamist boyfriend.  We were
just chatting and somehow music came up and she said, "I have a
guitar! I haven't played it in like 5 years so I'll just give it to
you."  Well my heart about sank when I saw that it was an acoustic
bass, but I was still overjoyed that it had all the strings.  I wasn't
about to walk home with it though, so we asked her to bring it to
church with her.  Then she fed us chicken and safou and it was
delicious.  I went to other apartment so we could do splits across the
zone and didn't really sleep because it's been forever since I had to
sleep somewhere without air conditioning.  Even with the fan I just
laid there and enjoyed the car horns and loud music and yelling
people.

Thursday was really eventful.  I went with Elder Gélinas, the Canadian
who is very excited about having taken the gold in hockey even though
I swore that Patrick Kane would lead America to victory.  We worked
with a member who speaks great English, who taught me a lot of kikongo
as we were walking around.  As we were walking, a plane flew right
over the top of our heads.  It was so cool.  No wonder the name of the
sector is "aéroport"...

We were stopped by several drunkards attempting to speak English with
us, which was funny already because we were only speaking French, and
one of them explained that if we wanted to see God, all we had to do
was lock ourselves in the house without food for a week.  He didn't
get around to explaining his second system though, which is too bad.
I was curious.  We sat down with this one woman who they'd seen
already a week ago, but this time she says to us, "You know, Elder
Gelinas, a few months ago I had a dream where all these people were
welcoming me down this street and telling me to go forward, to just
keep going.  Eventually I got to a building that was a church, and the
door opened and I met you, which is why the first time I saw you a
week ago I was so surprised!  But anyway I know the Church is true."
WE WERE FLOORED.  These things happen every week! It's crazy!  The
Church IS true!!!

Well then we were on this spiritual high until we went to visit this
member and we almost went the whole lesson without her breast feeding
her child when - oh, too bad, the kid starts screaming and they don't
have binkeys so they just breast feed to keep them quiet.  So
distracting.

It was nice to be back home with my real companion Elder Hatch, who's
personailty is "wildly unforgettable" to quote himself haha.  I love
the kid, though he's a foot taller than me and makes me look like a
chump.  He's nice about it though.  I guess when he was on splits with
Elder Morin these two investigators were asking them about America and
saying stuff like, "when it rains...does it come up to your waste and
do frogs fall from the sky?  I heard that in America people can
just...levitate.  I saw it on TV.  Yeah it was called Cris Angel."
That's when they just busted up laughing, which is normal. These
people believe that everything they see on TV is real life.  The
questions I've gotten about America are ridiculous.  They love to tell
us how America is, as if they've already been there.

Anyway, we got to make cookie dough with a less active member on
Friday and meet some more cool people, so that was fun.  With one of
our investigators we talked about forgiveness, and how if you want God
to forgive you, YOU have to forgive others!  She then told us about
this one guy who she just hates for no reason, so we told her that she
needs to be nice to him and start saying hi to him.  At first she was
convinced that there was no way she could do that (this is a teenage
girl, by the way.  If that explains anything.) but eventually we got
her to agree to say hi to him, and when I called her the next day she
said she even asked him how he was doing!  Baby steps, haha.  One of
our recent converts sat us down to tell us how we should come back to
Congo and start a business, and as he explained he gave us this large
bottle of frozen ginger drink, which I'm actually starting to
like...Elder Hatch let me have the whole thing to myself, he's so
nice.

Saturday was great, too.  We went out to meet the friend of our ward
mission leader, who bought a new guitar which only has 3 good strings
on it, but it was enough to play a couple songs and have so much fun
and want to steal the guitar for myself.  He walked us to our next
rendez-vous an hour away, but I got to play the guitar the whole time.
 Little kids got a kick out of that.  Heck, even old people were
stunned.  It's not every day they see a guitar, and sure not every day
they see a white guy walking around playing one!  The reactions alone
were worth it.  When we eventually got to our appointment the person
wasn't even there, so we walked down the street to see another older
investigator who we hadn't seen in a while, and he happened to be
sitting in his front...yard...(?) reading a school book, so we got to
sit down with him instead.  He told us that for the last 6 days he'd
been praying about the Book of Mormon and the Church and every time
he'd had a sort of out-of-body experience, which at first he didn't
understand, but then he decided afer the 4th time that it means that
the church is true!  We were stoked.  Baptism is imminent.

On the taxi-ride home, I specified that we wanted it for 100 francs a
piece, which he was ok with.  Well, on arrival at our stop, he
demanded another 100 francs, which we argued until eventually Elder
Hatch got out, and then the driver reached over and shut the door and
locked it, thus attempting to kidnap me.  Thankfully, it was just to
argue some more, and he was being absolutely ridiculous, but
eventually I had to pull the, "I'm a man of God, I'm just being
honest" and he let me go.  So.  Racism.

The best part of the day was when we went over to this house we've
contacted a couple times and got a couple different people every time
and got to meet, this time, the dad, who welcomed us as his own
children and told us his house was our house (and it's a nice
house...) and was so excited to sit down with us.  It was great.  We
are crossing everything that can physically be crossed that they will
join the church!

Then Sunday we had 11 people at church just for our team, and then we
went walking around after church to find people and found them and
preached them the restored gospel and this is every day of my life.
The people are always very receptive and always ready to pray to know
if it's true.  That is our invitation to everyone!  Pray!  We can
force you to believe, but we believe God can convince you, so just ask
Him if what we say is true and He'll tell you!  It's awesome.  People
love it.  I love it.  I love you.  You are my Monday morning hope!  I
love hearing all your stories and your adventures and your success.  I
know you're having difficulties and problems and trials, but that's
all part of the game.  Thankfully, God is on YOUR team, so don't worry
about it! All will end exactly according to His will, but if you align
your will with His, then you will come away victorious! :)

All my love,

Elder Garland