January 13

Salut everyone!

What a crazy week and no time to write about it.

On Tuesday we ran into a guy who was convinced that God created white
people and Satan created black people, so that was depressing.  We
tried to tell him God created everyone but he was pretty convinced.
And off his rocker, turns out.  We tried to get away as innocently as
possible, so as soon as he turned to yell at someone else we ran away.
 Welcome to my life.

Wednesday was like the longest day of our life.  We walked probably
259 miles.  I love walking.  So much.

I've been asked to recommend all of you to look up the Kimbonghis
(sp?!) Orchestra from Kinshasa specifically.  Apparently they're
really great.

I'm still learning munikituba so that's awesome.

The 9th, Thursday, was my one year in the mission mark.  A.k.a. the
fastest year that has ever passed in my life.  We got a visit from a
stake president from Brazzaville who happened to meet Elder
Brockbank's dad in Temple Square during General Conference, so that
really coincidental. I went over to the other apartment so Elder Hatch
and I could celebrate together, as we came out at the same time.  We
ate carbanara and had a bowl of ice cream that we doused in Coke.  It
was, needless to say, delicious.  Unfortunately, they don't have air
conditioning, so I didn't sleep super well.  Plus the bed was made of
ceramic tiles I think.

On Friday I got to walk around with Elder Lundberg all day, which was
really fun.  We hadn't worked together since I left him to go to
Bonabéri back in Cameroun...5 months ago.  Time flies when you live in
the Congo.  Our first rendez-vous was awesome, and the guy bought us
both Cokes and was watching Fighting Temptations, a movie with a bunch
of gospel singing.  So we thought it was ok to watch the singing...and
it gave me the chills.  I turned to tell Lundberg that I had
"boosegumps," so we had a good laugh about that.  Then we decided that
we both want to be heavily involved in the African American culture
back home, so you probably already saw that coming.

On Saturday we sweat a ton in the morning and then headed out to the
baptism.  On the way, a motorcycle guy thought it would be funny to
swerve into us as a joke and came literally 1 inch from running into
me (I checked the tire print in the sand next to my footprint) so that
was nice.

On Sunday we had a billion and 5 people at church.  The branch needs
to split so bad, it's the best problem in the world except for the
screaming children during sacrament.  Almost all of our less-active
people we've been working with came, and we had a blast watching them
interact with all the other members who they hadn't seen in forever.
So many warm feelings!  Then as we were driving in the taxi some guy
yelled at us, "hallelujah, amen!" We died.

Today has been incredible.  President Caillet of the other branch took
us all around the outskirts of the city to see these different sites.
We drove an hour away to see a library that the church built for the
village kids that has over 7,300 books.  The slave museum was closed,
but we got to walk down the path that 2 million slaves walked as they
were loaded onto ships and sent off to America.  It was crazy.  They
were fed mangos, the pits of which they threw along the ground, so the
path is just lined with 5 hundred mango trees.  Then we walked on a
golf course owned by a rich business man that actually has 9 holes and
a driving range and no one knows how to play sooo...we went to this
nice hotel on the beach and ate lunch and I went down to look at crabs
and got soaked by a wave crashing on a rock.  Then we drove over to a
big bridge and walked on that for a little bit.  I took probably as
many pictures as there are mango trees, so look forward to those some
day when I'm out of Congo!

Anyway it's raining and we have a lot still to do today because we
didn't get back till really late, but know that Africa is as beautiful
as you would imagine it (once you get outside the city), and I totally
encourage you all to check it out some time.

I LOVE YOU!

Elder Garland