HOLY WHAT A WEEK. I have so much to say about everything that's happened this week...I could literally write a book, but I'll try to keep it condensed.
Here we go.
Last Monday after writing home we had an FHL - Family Home Leaving, which was basically dinner and a testimony meeting. The testimony meeting turned into everyone saying something really nice about me, and then me trying to blubber something about everyone else through tears and sobs. It was hardest to say goodbye to the Baileys...I have really, truly learned more from them than anyone else on my mission. It has been a most special opportunity to leave in their attic, haha. I could write a book on them alone! I can't wait to meet back up with them in the States to share stories about Africa that no one will understand. Jhostavie and Paco came as well on special invitation. Jhostavie gave me a nice Bob Marley necklace and Paco wrote me a song on piano that was super touching. I said my final goodbyes to the elders, which was hard. The good news is that I'll probably see most of them back home, and Elder Nkulu will come to Brazza to join us in a last dinner together.
The next morning I spent packing while Sister Bailey came up and cleaned our apartment that has been suffering as Elder Sperry was sick and I was occupied writing letters to all our recent converts and others. Soon enough we were leaving for the airport with my bags packed. My carry-on was apparently too heavy, but they let me through anyway. I said goodbye to my companion and hugged the Baileys. Tears. On the plane to Brazzaville I talked to this old man who's married, and that was pretty great. I got his number and left him a brochure. I especially appreciated his fedora.
When I got to the airport in Brazza, Elder Bills (one of the missionary couples here) and my companion Elder Mandefu (from the DRC, Lumbumbashi) were there to pick me up. Elder Bills drove us to our house, which is pretty nice! Getting out of the mini-bus there was a mamma with a huge pile of plantains that we helped her transport into the back of her parcelle before unloading my own bags. The house has just about everything - but none of it works. The water doesn't run, but there's a big resevoir underneath, so we have to pull our water from there to take bucket showers, wash the dishes and clothes, etc. There's air conditioners that don't work, and we don't have fans. There's 31 lightbulbs that don't work. There's no fridge or oven, but there's a small deep freezer. No microwave, but there's an iron!
We didn't stay long; just enough to drop off my bags, and then we went to the mission office, which is found in a STAKE CENTER. It's incredible. I met the Bills and the Nelsons, and brother Santi who works for the missionary department here. President was there, so I got to say hi to him too. We had a missionary leader reunion in preparation for the 4 new missionaries who are training in Brazza. The other missionaries are really nice! It was weird being the only white guy. They have their own sense of humor here, that everyone seems to be in on, but that I don't understand at all. It's all pretty much based on scripture jokes and whatnot, but they all think it's the funniest thing. Anyway, I'm trying to fit in and make the same kinds of jokes...it's not rolling quite yet haha. Then I met the sister missionaries...weird. They're really nice. But it was weird. I was really uncomfortable the whole time haha.
Turns out my companion was moving into the house as well, and that means we're white washing! Unfortunately, the area book and the phone were both gone. So. We planned on getting that the next day for an orientation meeting for the new missionaries who were arriving from the MTC. White washing also means that we had no food in the apartment, and by the time we left the mission office it would've been too late to buy anything. The Bills were kind enough to invite us to come to their house to eat Moroccan soupe, which was delicious. I had apple slices for the first time in forever. When we got back, I laid down in my bed and sweat until I was knocked out by fatigue.
Our meeting was for 9 o'clock, but it turned out to just be a meeting for the new missionaries to have interviews with the President. In the meantime, I just got to know the other missionaries some more. One of them, Elder Kabasele, actually speaks Kikongo, so we got to chat for a while and that was fun. When all the interviews were done, President Monga invited everyone to his own house, the Mission Home, to welcome all the new missionaries for lunch. Sister Monga had made sakasaka, rice, and beef and I watched as one of the sister missionaries prepared corn fufu, the specialty here that the African missionaries can't live without. It was fun to sit around and eat like they do, talk like they do, joke like they do. I found out from the sisters who used to live in our house that water does sometimes run through the faucets, but usually at 1-3 in the morning. So...there's that. From the Mongas we drove home all the missionaries all across the city. It took like 4 hours. We stopped at a boutique and grabbed a 10 liter bottle of water, because we don't have filters at our house yet. We were also so full from the Mongas that we didn't have to make dinner, which was nice because we still didn't have any food. We took home with us Elder Rakotonindriana, my good friend from Pointe-Noire, who's the assistant here and who'll be working with Elder Leavitt, who I worked with on his very first day in Africa back in Douala with Elder Zurcher. His plane didn't come in until Friday though, so we were a trio for a couple days.
The real orientation meeting was on Thursday morning, set for 10h00. We were the first to get there, a ten minute walk from the house, and we waited for another 30 minutes before any other missionaries got there. Even then, some didn't show up until around 11. President didn't seem too surprised haha; I guess that's just how it is here...anyway, we had a nice time introducing ourselves to the newbies and my companion and I shared a thought about the Missionary Handbook and Preach My Gospel. After the meeting was over, we had to figure out our money situation, because they weren't planning on giving out any until Monday (today), but since we didn't have any food at the apartment they gave us a small stipend so we could so some shopping. We had to wait around the office though as Elder Rako took care of business as a single Assistant. He looked really busy, and we didn't end up going home until the end of the day.
On Friday my companions and I went out to the market - not far from Fond Tie-Tie! There were some new items though - bats, catipillars, maggots, giant crickets, among other things. I started learning a little Lingala, so I'm excited for that. When we were done we dropped off our veggies and came back to the office. Elder Mandefu and I did weekly planning while Elder Rako was doing his assistant stuff, and he eventually left to go pick up Elder Leavitt from the airport. His flight got delayed, but eventually he came in and we got to see him. He looks good! The same as when we met him a year and a half ago in Cameroon haha. On our return to the apartment we had a lower power input, which basically means that only the 2 light bulbs in our bedroom were on. That was it. The rest of the house was dark. We were all starving, so Elder Leavitt threw together some veggies and Elder Rako made rice, which we ate on the porch in the light of the neighborhood.
When we got up to get breakfast at the boutique on Saturday morning it started raining a little. When we got to the boutique it was pouring. The boutique lady speaks Kikongo also, and she loves me, which means we get good prices on stuff. My companion wanted to wait the rain out at the boutique, but I convinced him to run home with me. It was a good thing we left when we did, because the street was rapidly becoming a river, and the quartier street was already impassable. We had to take off our sandals and run barefoot up to our knees in the biggest storm I've been in since last year, laughing hysterically the whole way home. From head to toe we were soaking wet, and as we were drying off inside the thunder and lighting kicked on full blast, and we took a bolt either directly on the house or nearby, because the electric box right next to me exploded and scared the bejeebees out of me. The assistants left in the rain to drop off soutien to all the apartments, and my companion and I waited out the rain to go back into the market for the things we couldn't get the day before, a.k.a. fufu powder and rice. They have a special lady who makes corn fufu for all the missionaries, so we had to cross the whole city once the rain was died down.
All this city crossing has allowed me to see a good part of Brazzaville. It is beautiful here. It's hilly and so green everywhere. I love it. There's really cool infrastructure, and almost all the streets are paved, complete with sidewalks. I've seen some huge university complexes and even a giant library. The biggest surprise was the 6 lane road we drove on. It's been...2 years since I've seen that. There's two rivers here - the Djoué and the Congo, both of which are really impressive. Basically I'm going to love being here. It's extremely hot, but I'm thankful for the rain.
When we got back we dropped off our groceries and left to go see our WARD building, which is along a busy road in town. There happened to be a Relief Society activity there, so we got to meet some of the sisters and the BISHOP, who is a young, return missionary who is on top of everything. He had already scheduled a meeting with the ward mission leader and missionaries for after church the next day. I was baffled. Organization?! Here?! Nah...it makes everything so much easier. My companion is also so easy to work with. His name literally means Elder Hope Beard, so that's cool. He's experienced and works hard, and knows how to work with the leaders. I can't say enough about how awesome he is and how thankful I am to have a diligent companion.
The water happened to be running Saturday night, so I filled up 10, 25-liter bidons of water while the others went to bed. I also spent an hour and a half making spaghetti with this beef we bought from a local buchery. May I emphasize local. As I sat outside filling up the bidons I looked up into the heavens and was caught up in the moment. Despite all my studies I couldn't figure out where in the sky I was looking at, and at the same time I was like, "What the heck am I even doing here in the middle of Africa?! I'm worried about stars and I'm overwhelmed in a sector I don't know, in a city of missionaries I don't know, passing millions of people and comparatively few of them actually GET IT." So there I am, begging God to show me something in the sky to show me He's there and He cares. I filled up bidon after bidon, always coming back to stare at the stars. Eventually they were all full, and I disparingly got up, shut off the water, and started locking the doors. When I was standing in the last doorway, I looked up one last time at a spot of the sky that had been behind my head and I couldn't see from where I was sitting. I squinted and recognized a small cluster of stars - the Pleiades !!! And next door, Orion !! I couldn't help but smile. At last, I knew where I was in the sky. And I knew that God was the Creator of all of these things, I am His son, and that He let me look around the rest of the sky to find myself, but only after considering the whole picture could I recognize where I belong in the moment. And where I belong is here in Brazzaville, preaching His eternel Gospel to His children. How thankful I was in that small moment, filling bidons off the porch of my electricty-less house.
I learned a lot again on Sunday. We went to church at 9 (in a taxi that had to hotwire his car to start it) and met many members. The church is about a quarter of the size of the one in Pointe-Noire, but the members are great. The ward mission leader wasn't able to make it, so we pushed back our meeting with the bishop to Monday night at FHE. He invited us to bare our testimonies during sacrament meeting, and that's always fun. We left with the first counselor and a branch missionary (who ended up being a recent convert from the Mpaka branch and knew Elder Brockbank?!?!) and the Bills to go visit some less-active members in our sector. It was really cool! My first time in my sector, haha. We pulled out on to that busy road and almost got blind sided on my side by a speeding 4x4 who almost drove off the road and into the sidewalk, but thankfull swerved back on to the road. I was surprisingly passive about the whole thing...like, oh well, I'm about to die. That was comforting haha.
Our sector is beautiful, and we already met some prospective investigators. The Bills offered to drive our branch missionary home - we didn't know he lived in the bush. But it was a really pretty drive! We crossed a bridge over the Djoué, alongside the Congo river (SO impressive), and up this small mountain where, looking behind us, we could see Kinshasa on the other side of the river. It took 30 minutes to get there, but we were really impressed with his diligence in coming to church every week. Awesome member. The Bills took us home, I washed my clothes by hand (raw knuckles...so thankful for a washer now...) and my companion fried some chicken and made rice for us. It was delicious. We ate it in the light of our bedroom.
SO that's been my week. I left out the more gruesome details, but know that everything is going according to the will of He who knows all. I'm proud to be in the service of the army of the Lord, for however much longer I have. Time is precious. I probably won't have that much to write next week, but hey. Why limit adventure?!
I have so much to pray for and to be thankful for. I pray for you. I love you. Have a wonderful, uplifting week. Remember to read your scriptures and say please and thank you.
Elder Garland
No comments:
Post a Comment