March 31

Hello again everyone!

BIG news.  So we had heard that there were two new missionaries coming
to the mission, one here and one to Cameroon.  Well no one knew who
was training until I checked my email and found out that it's me!  So
I'll be a solo zone leader as soon as Elder Gelinas gets his visa to
leave for Gabon, and Elder Etherington will be joining me in the
aerport sector.  I'm super excited. Thrilled, even!  He gets here
tomorrow, so I'll let you know how that's going next week :)

Otherwise, Elder Gelinas and I had a great week.  We are blown away
every time we sit down with our friend Perfect.  He was more prepared
than anyone I've ever made.  He knows the answers to everything we
teach and then completes our lessons by himself.  He just knows
everything already from reading the Ensigns and scriptures.

On Wednesday we went to do this zone council with the president and
all the other zone leaders in the mission, but the internet program
that we were supposed to use didn't work at all.  They had a horrible
connection, so for the next hour we just sat there and waited for them
to figure it out, which, in the end, they never did.  So the Baileys
fed us spaghetti anyway and let us hang out at their house to do our
studies before we headed out to teach.

We sat down with our Israeli friend again and he told us about how in
Gabon he'd healed three different people when he was led by the Spirit
to this random hospital where he cured someone of internal bleeding,
elephantitis, and blindness.  Then he just left like a thief in the
night.  He also had started reading the Book of Mormon, and said that
he called his brother in Israel to double check that the names of the
people in the book checked out with ancient papyrus that he used to
study when he was in school, and yeah, they are all real.  According
to my Israeli friend and his brother.  No, Joseph Smith did not make
up the Book of Mormon.  He did not imagine it with his 3rd grade
education at the age of 23.  It's real!!! It's true!!!  Then I saw a
hummingbird and my testimony was sealed.

On Friday I went on splits with Elder Wright in my sector after
district meeting, where I learned from Elder Wright himself that if
something isn't working out then we need to change the way we love.
Awesome insight. At our last rendez-vous of the day (who we couldn't
get a hold of, and then we walk out of our recent convert's house and
he was just sitting there waiting for a friend in a house next door.
Thanks God!) we were invited in this little shack (we were sitting in
the line of screaming mamas in the parcelle and I couldn't even hear
myself thing so I asked if we could move), and at first all was well.
Then, as the sun set, we saw a big cloud of mosquitos hovering behind
us.  Then the cloud turned into a hurricane, and I've never seen that
amount in my entire life.  Disgusting.  At least they weren't biting.

It rained all morning on Saturday, and we entered into the Labyrinth
that is KM4.  Instead of taking our normal 2 minute route, we had to
zig-zag through the entire quartier, jumping streams and walking
across bridges of stones and sacks and trash, and 20 minutes later we
finally showed up - and the guy wasn't home.  That happens I guess.
The rain only got harder, and then we had to leave before we got
trapped in the parcelle of our ratez-vous.  Our 2 o'clock appointment
didn't show up until 4:30, but by that time we were going to check the
email about the new missionary, so we had to come back to teach her,
and that went well.

We had a great turnout on Sunday.  Darcine and her family came - 7 of
them.  We took a couple minutes after church to blow Josue's mind
about Adam and Eve, and then he wanted a blessing from Monami before
he left for Dolisi.  Monami had literally gotten the Priesthood 2
minutes before, and gave such an awesome blessing.  It was incredible.
 These people have such a big faith.  Then we walked over to Quebecois
family to see if they were there, and we met the dad this time!  He
was super nice and immediately recognized that Gelinas was a Quebecois
name, but we didn't get to talk about it too much because this rabbit
jumped out the gate and we had to chase it for 10 minutes and get it
out from a car.  They were entertaining guests, so he invited us back
for Saturday.  So excited.

Every night as we're making dinner these little kids behind our
apartment building yell out to us "mundele! mundele!" and then we yell
back to them in Munikituba and they all just die laughing.  Literally,
every night the same conversation takes place.  Mundele! Ndombe! Iki
nghe lamba ? Susu na madesso ! Beto mekwenda nayinzo ya nzambie
bubiyai na beno !! Kokila mbote ka mbassi !!!  Insert laughter.

Well I love you all and I know the Church is true.  I wouldn't be here
if it wasn't.  Sure, living in Africa is pretty sweet, but I love
America too much to just stay here for nothing.  I have a firm
convition of what I do every day.  I know that the Gospel of Jesus
Christ is the only thing that can bring us true happiness, and is the
only thing that will bring us back into the presence of our Heavenly
Father.  That's right, bring us BACK. We were already there.  YOU were
already there!  You wanted to come here - how bad do you want to go
back?

Elder Garland

I'm starting a list of less-mentioned scripture heroes, starting with
this guy in Mark 14:51-52