November 24

Craziness week number 2 is over.

It started as soon as I finished writing last week.  We went home,
relaxed for about 5 minutes and then headed back out to the bishop's
house for FHE, which involved playing a scripture chase game (which I
won! :) ) and watching soccer as his wife prepared my favorite meal -
3 pieces!  It is basically a meat prepared with grass clippings and
peanut butter, but it's so good.  We ate it with manioc fufu and
chased it down with some bisap.  My companion told me later that the
meat may or may not have been monkey.  I couldn't remember, but I'm
still alive...so that's good!  I honestly think it was just beef.
But...

I had a pretty unique experience on Tuesday when we went out to meet a
family of 6 that had been left by the other missionaries.  While we
were talking, the mom suddenly stops and says, wait a minute...Elder
Garland, how many colors does the American flag have?  I said 3 - red,
white, and blue.  And she goes, "Glory to God! He is incredible!"  And
proceeds to explain this dream she had where the other missionaries
got mad at her and left the house, but her youngest daughter came back
inside holding a white duck that had red and blue stripes on it's
back.  Her daughter explained that the duck was well-trained and
wouldn't poop on the floor and could eat out of a bowl.  She said,
Elder Garland, I think that duck is you!  I said, Sister Sandrine,  I
promise I will never poop on your floor. *insert much laughing*
ANYway, I've always been secretly jealous of missionaries who've had
investigators dream about them (it's happened now 3 times), and have
always wanted my own experience.  Well, that wish was answered on
Tuesday.  Whatever it takes for her to be more attentive and come to
church and accept the Gospel, I went with it!  I really do love that
family though already.  It's the mom (Sandrine), and her 5 kids -
Messie, Vially, Laurna, Orchide, and Deo-Gracias.  They're all
adorable.  They remind me of the Tignyemb family from Douala.

While we were walking out of that parcelle we passed a group of cool
kids all in their late teens, and one of them was holding an untied
tie.  I said, "Hey!  Do you know how to tie that?"  He didn't even get
to respond because all his friends started accusing him of being
useless, so I invited them all over for a quick lesson.  I explained
while I tied it, put it over his head, told them all to come church,
and we peaced out.  It was great.

We had this incredible lesson with a less-active member who hadn't
been to church in over a year.  When we sat down he basically started
teaching himself - "I know why you're here.  I haven't been to church
and that's not good.  I need to be in communion with God and take the
Sacrament.  I will be there on Sunday!"  We were just like..."Yeah!
Can we say a closing prayer?" Haha it was really cool.  He was
sincerely humbled and really wanted to come to church.  We were
excited to see him Sunday.

As we were getting to know our sector, wandering the back alleys and
streets, we were stopped by a member who we figured was less-active
because we hadn't seen him at church either.  He was happy to tell us
where he lived and gave us his number, and that lead us to teaching
his whole family.  His 10 year old daughter isn't a member yet, so we
had another investigator!

District meetings here are interesting...we started surprisingly on
time, and it went pretty smooth.  The missionaries here love to
chastize one another through spiritual thoughts.  They take their
white handbooks, scriptures, and Preach My Gospel, call out another
Elder by name and ask them to read the particular paragraph that he
isn't obeying.  Then they talk about a time when that missionary
wasn't being obedient.  The other missionary then thanks him for the
thought, and proceeds to chastize the other missionary with another
scripture or passage.  It went on like that the whole meeting!  But at
the end everyone was just laughing and hugging and slapping fives.  It
was so funny...thankfully I didn't get a chastisement haha.

On our way back into the sector we walked through a sort of open parc
area where students were outside playing badminton.  On sand, with
fingers to draw out the lines, and no nets.  So.  Then we took a taxi
who, pulling up to an intersection (where police were controlling the
traffic) put on his seatbelt, and then right when we passed he took it
off again.  It was the first time I'd ever even seen an African put on
his (or her) seatbelt haha.  I was surprised he even had one
accessible in the car!  Hilarious.

We had our Ward Mission Leader walk around with us to show us some
member homes, which proved super useful later in the week as we
struggled to find people to teach.

On Thursday we really needed to go out and find someone who could come
by every now and then to take out our trash.  You literally just have
to walk around the quartiers until you find someone who's out and
about, collecting trash in his...trash...mobile...which is exactly
what happened!  It only took us probably 5 minutes before we saw 2
guys pushing around a...trash mobile...and we ran after them,
explained where we lived, and took his phone number.  Blessings!

When I woke up on Friday morning I started walking out of the room
when I noticed that the bathroom was totally flooded - the pipe from
the wall to the toilet was leaking.  It took me 30 minutes to clean it
up by myself, and then I tried to fix the leak.  Well, turns out
there's 3 problems.  The threads are stripped on the valve, the float
in the tank doesn't close off the water entry like it's supposed to,
and the emergency drain that goes into the bowl is higher than a
random hole in the side of the tank.  Incredible.  I spent all morning
trying to figure it out, but eventually called the proprieter to have
him come look.  When he got there, the power cut off.  We spent the
next 3 days without electricity - preparing dinner and eating in the
dark, sleeping in our sweat, and overall just suffering.

That same morning we had to leave really early to be able to catch a
girl before she left for school, which turned out to be really great.
When we walked for another 3 hours, however, looking for other people
it became tiresome.  We happily took a scripture study and lunch break
at the church after making a copy of the key down the street.

Some drunk guy threw a beer can across our path and I didn't say a
word.  Progression!

Our last rendezvous wasn't at home, but I quickly found out that the
entire parcelle speaks kikongo!  So I jumped in and blew everyone's
mind and then a maman roasting peanuts congratulated me with a paper
cone filled with fresh, roasted, delicious peanuts which I enjoyed in
the dark as I wrote in my journal to lantern light.

And I saw someone wearing a Seussical shirt out on the street, which
made me laugh.

We didn't have much planned for Saturday, but we left anyway to go
find someone who lived in the same parcelle as some families we met.
The first stop was golden - a maman was sitting out with the Relief
Society President just chatting next to a burning trash pile.  We
asked if we could sit down, which we did as we played with her 3 year
old daughter and shared her a brochure on the Family.  It was great!
We sat down again with our 9 year-old investigator and explained to
her mom that she doesn't really need to wait until her birthday so
they can throw a dual party for her to be baptized, which her daughter
was ecstatic about, so that was nice.  Plus they bought us some
"juice" which is actually soda, which we shared with her other little
kids.

We intended on going to an activity at the church, but no one showed
up except one girl, Ana, who was actually just there to clean the
building.  Since not even the rest of the cleaning crew was there, we
decided to help Ana and got to sweep, mop, and dust the church.  I was
happy to serve.

We met a girl whose name is "Saira" which is pronounced "Sah-ee-rah,"
which in French means, "It'll be ok."  So.  Weclome to Congo.

Later we went to a stake activity at the Bakongo/Kinsoundi ward
building, where we met up with the other missionaries.  There was a
young man there, and when I asked his name he said he was a Yengo,
related to Juno and Grace from Pointe-Noire, who I knew really well!
It was great to meet another Yengo.  His older brother was even there,
the one I met back in Pointe-Noire who lived in Hawai'i!  What a
reunion.  We got to chat in kikongo and blow away the crowd.  Hoorah's
for everyone.

Sunday started off disappointing because we didn't get to welcome many
investigators to church, but by the time the primary program was over
(ADORABLE) we turned around and saw lots of people who we knew.  There
were even more people that we didn't know who came up and presented
themselves and asked us to meet their friends and to come over and
teach their families.  We were happy to fix rendezvous with all of
them!  So we went from having pretty much no one teach to having too
many.  It got even better when we were invited to go to an Elders
Quorum activity and meet probably 30 friends of the member who was
hosting the activity.  Unfortunately, we had to leave right as they
started serving food...the Bills helped us change out our empty gas
tank (which died right after I finished making mac an cheese -
blessings), fill up 40 liters of drinkable water, and drop us off at
home.  All the missionary couples are angels, I swear.  We had just
finished making chili and baking cornbread (in a pot that we put in
another pot filled with sand - which works great, by they way, as long
as your pot doesn't have holes in the side to let sand blow in on the
top...), when the power came back on!  You could hear screaming and
shouting and hollering across the whole quartier.  Most of it probably
was coming from our own house haha.

Anyway, there's much left to learn and to do before I go home.  I'm
trying my best not to think about it but it's really hard.
Bittersweet has never meant more to me.  It will get more bitter and
less sweet until I actually go home, but for now I'm enjoying every
minute I have left!

Love you all, pray for you all, see you all soon!

Elder Garland