July 7

Mbote a beno ay !!

First things first - I love my companion Elder Sperry.  He's just
awesome haha.  I don't have enough good things to say about him.  He's
a real trooper, and I've never met anyone that sweats as much as I do
until him.  We're two peas in a pod.

Being zone leader has its set-backs as far as teaching goes.  I just
have to do a lot of stuff outside my own sector at the price of time
seeing my own investigators.  I do love it though!  On Tuesday, for
example, I went out to Elder Wright's new sector to do an interview
for one his old (literally she's over 60) investigators.  She was a
hoot.  She had her first kid when she was 13...I guess that's Africa
in the 1960s for you!  Well I guess it hasn't really changed
much...ANYway, we went out to go prepare one of our baptismal
candidates and at the same time interview another one who has been an
investigator for probably 2 years.  I've seen a lot of people get
baptized after being investigators for a long time, now that I think
about it.  Anyway, because of traffic we were held back and didn't get
to see one of our recent converts, and Elder Bailey wanted to show
Elder Sperry the beach and pick up some shelves we had ordered from a
local artisan.  When we were done, we one of our other recent converts
then ratéd us at the church.  While we were waiting for her, we got to
play basketball with these Canadian kids who live in the quartier.  It
was really fun.  I'm trying to wiggle my way into getting back to
their house to talk with their mom again who seems to be under the
impression that the Book of Mormon contradicts the Bible (which it
doesn't).  Since our convert never came, we stopped at another
investigator's house on the way home and got to sit down with her and
talk about the plan of salvation, which is one of my favorite lessons
to teach.  It answers so many questions!

When, eventually, we did get home, we offered to make the Baileys
dinner, so we got to work making sweet and sour chicken with fried
rice, and it turned out delicious of course.  Sister Bailey provided a
banana cream pie - SO GOOD.  Side note - I had been reading and
finished "The Great Apostasy" by James E. Talmage.  Genius.  You
should read it, if only for a history lesson.

On Wednesday we had district meeting over in Mpaka.  I stole a bunch
of Elder VanAusdal's recipes because I happened to be in the loop that
he was going to be leaving Pointe-Noire for Yaoundé and I had to take
advantage of my visit before he left.  I'll sure miss that kid.  We
got to visit a new investigator, Fall, and then teach the Plan of
Salvation again to Sophie, who is still on route to be baptized on
Saturday.  We ended up teaching Darcyne's brother and neighbor at the
same time, so that was cool.  That night when we got back we heard
from the Baileys that Elder Rakotonindriana was called to be the new
Assistant to the President in Brazzaville and that he was leaving
Thursday afternoon, so that was just nuts.

We changed our schedule around a little bit on Thursday so we could
see him off in the afternoon and then do studies and whatnot.  On our
way back in the morning we came across these mamas and a huge pile of
tree bark that they were going to load up into a wheelbarrow and take
into their parcelle, so we just started picking up wood and bringing
it ourselves.  They thought it was hilarious.  The wood pile was a lot
bigger than I thought haha, so we ended up being there for like half
an hour, and the wood got all over our clothes and whatnot, but it was
totally worth it.  They tried to give us 500 francs but we told them
we wanted to help just to help!   I think that may be the first time
they'd ever heard that haha.

It was very appropriate with my studies that morning, because I'm
reading in Jacob 5 about the analogy of the olive tree, and there's
this passage from verse 21-23 where the Master of the vineyard says to
his servant "Behold the tree" after his servant asks why He planted
the tree in such a barren spot of land.  The tree had surprisingly
brought forth much fruit!  I applied that to missionary
work...sometimes we think "what the heck am I doing here/nothing is
working/the people don't care" but if we take the time to prune, dig,
and nourish them with the Word then one day we'll step back and behold
the tree and all the fruit it produced!  I don't know, I thought it
was cool haha.

Sister Bailey made us another lasagna to share for lunch with Rako
before he left for Brazzaville.  It was good to see before he left.  I
love that kid.  His name is Sonny, and he lives up to his name's sake.
Always laughing, always smiling.  He'll make a great AP.

Otherwise, we got to see some of our other recent converts before the
day was over, and that's always a great way to spend the day :)

On Friday I went out with Elder Bailey to do another special case
interview with this guy that Elder VanAusdal sent us, and that went
really well.  He was all set to be baptized, but eventually called and
asked if we could push it back a week so his family could be there. No
problem.  I'm starting to get to know this other part of town pretty
well - the other half of Mpita.  Darcyne lives at one end, but we've
got quite a few people to see in this new part!  I love getting to
know more of the city.  It makes me feel more at home.  Are there
parts of your city that you don't know?  Go get to know them!  There's
something homey about it haha.

After seeing Sophie and Lovely, we all got together in Mpaka to
celebrate the 4th.  The Baileys had made potato salad, and I made
burger sliders while VanAusdal made the buns.  We had a few drinks and
sang the national anthem, chatted for a while and then closed with
"America the Beautiful."  I had to be careful about not thinking too
much about the lyrics or I would've cried like I did last year, but
thank goodness I made it out ok.  I welled up, but none escaped.
Whew!  For dessert Elder VanAusdal made an apple pie and Elder Wright
made oatmeal cookies.  Delicious on all accounts.  Happy Independence
Day everyone!

We had our baptism on Saturday with no flaws.  Didier (a.k.a.
Gierdano) and Hughes were both there on time, which is always the
biggest worry.  Didier asked me to baptize him...what an honor.  I'll
never get over that.  He had this sweet frohawk goin on so I had to
give him an extra shove when he was in the water, but he got down ok
haha.

Afterwards we helped set up and prepare for another wedding - brother
Léandre from the Mpaka branch.  A wonderful man, one of Pointe-Noire's
best.  He had everyone in the church for some reason, and of course
there was no room, so we had a million chairs going down the hall.
They gave some talks and then everyone took their chair outside anyway
to watch them get presents.  It was a beautiful ceremony, as always.
It marks one of the very few times I've seen Africans kiss.  The other
5 times were 5 other weddings haha.  By the way, this couple that just
got married had been preparing for the last TWELVE years to earn
enough money to pay the dote and everything.  So.  Be patient in your
afflictions.  We had some nice fish and chicken and rice to finish the
evening, so we didn't have to make dinner at the apartment, yay!

We had a crazy fast Sunday.  Fortunately, after about 11 I wasn't
hungry at all for the rest of the day.  It made it a lot easier to
focus on the Spirit of the sacrament meeting and the other classes.
We welcomed several new people to church and had to sent out referrals
to their respective missionaries and get directions for the ones who
belonged to us.  I had to organize with the Relief Society president
for an activity we're putting on Saturday (we're going to show the
video on Restoration and the Testaments) so they could make some bisap
(Camerounian folléré which is like hibiscus flower juice, and tangawis
which is frozen ginger drink, and maybe some sandwiches.  We had
coordination meeting with Alain, who is awesome.  By the time we were
done with church and meetings, all our investigators and people we
wanted to maybe sit down with afterwards were gone, so we walked Paco
and Jhostavie, two of our finest branch missionaries home.  They asked
us a lot of questions about dating, so that was hilarious.  They
thought you had to ask the branch president if you could go on a date
haha.  Anyway, we ended up teaching Paco's sister, and that was
awesome.  While we were on our way out, we met an old investigator
(he's only 18, but Elder Hatch used to teach him with Elder Morin) who
happens to play volleyball, which we'd been looking to do since we
found out that we both love to play, so we made plans to come back on
P-Day to knock a ball around with his club.

Then Elder Sperry noticed his tie clip was missing, which was not
awesome.  Bless his heart, he said a quick prayer and we started
looking in the sand.  I immediately thought that there was no way we
were going to find it.  Anything shiny would've been immediately
lifted by a child or anyone who spotted it.  Plus, it was gold, so it
would've been really hard to see.  We'd covered a lot of ground, which
lowered the odds even more.  All these factors went off in my head and
I decided it was gone before we even took the first step.  I wanted to
help, however, so we started combing the sand with our eyes and
covering our tracks and asking people around to let us know if they
saw anything.  Poor Elder Sperry was so bummed about losing it.  We
looked around for probably 20 minutes, started walking back, decided
to look one more time, and then we left, no luck.  We had walked
probably half way home when my companion says, "do you think we could
look just one more time?" He really liked that tie clip haha.  I said
yeah of course, and we walked maybe 15 steps when he turns around,
holding the clip in his hands!  Turns out it was clipped into his
shirt, right over his belt.  There is NO way that that could've
just...happened!  I think there was a lesson to learn from his finding
it.  We talked about how attached he was to it and how losing it
would've seriously jeopardized his feeling the Spirit during his fast
and on the Sabbath, so we concluded that maybe he shouldn't wear that
clip anymore until he goes home haha.  We ended up getting called back
to the church by one of our recent converts to deal with a personal
problem, and then she was an hour and a half late, but it was ok
because we got to talk about the Atonement and how we've felt it at
different times in our life and all the struggles we have had.  It was
a great bonding time, I really appreciated it.  Now we've connected on
just about every level.  I just need to cry with him and we're golden
haha.  That'd probably be uncomfortable so...maybe not.  Well, it's
bound to happen, who am I kidding.

Anyway, I love you all.  Thanks for sticking through your trials.
Elder Sperry shared this thought with me that I love - "Don't tell the
Lord about the power of your storm, tell the storm about the power of
your Lord."  I'll let you think about that this week.