March 3

Hello again to my favorite group of readers!  My only group of readers...?

Anyway, what a wild week.  I forget to mention that last Monday we
woke up early to watch an AirFrance plane land on the airstrip right
in front of us.  It was so cool!  We were literally 20 feet away.  So
impressive.  We got home after writing emails and my dear companion
went with Elder VanAusdal and bought me the most delicious pair of
bright orange LaCoste shorts.  They are so awesome (the elders too!).
I wear them around the apartment all the time.

Tuesday was cool!  We tried these little yellow berry things I've been
seeing everywhere.  Turns out they ship them in from the village.
They're called mingyengye and are very sour, so they sprinkle salt
over a big stack of them and sell (or give for free if your curious
white missionaries) them to you for 10 cents.  They taste as good as
they cost! Next time you're in WalMart and see mingyengye, go ahead
and skip over them.  We also saw a white nun...so that stunned us for
a while.  Every sighting of a white person is a celebration for us.
When you work in the middle of the quartiers it's extremely rare to
see another white person.  No wonder we're always the center of
attention.

We went to visit a man on Wednesday who prayed to know if the church
was true, and the first night got nothing.  Well, the second night, he
had a vision of a temple (which we'd never shown him) and was welcomed
in by some white guy wearing white clothes and they went and prayed
together and he felt awesome the whole time.  His interpretation?  The
Church is true!  I hope I'm not making it seem like these things
aren't special...they happen all the time, but they blow my mind EVERY
time!!! It's as incredible as when we found out that people carry 155
loaves of bread on their head and just walk around like no biggie!!!
#thingsthatneverhappeninamerica

Anyway, we went on splits on Thursday, and I got to visit the other
side of Mpaka with Elder VanAusdal.  It's funny because the last time
I went with him it rained ALL day, and this time was exactly the same.
 Literally from morning until that night it just rained.  I gave my
umbrella to an investigator in need, so I was soaking wet after about
10 seconds.  We walked for two and a half hours and got ratéd twice,
so that was unfortunate.  It allowed us to meet this really cool guy
from Brazzaville.  When you knock on a door here, everyone walking by
stops to see what happens.  If no one answers, even though it's none
of their business, they always ask you who you're looking for, or if
you're looking for someone.  It's the funniest thing.  Like, nahh
we're knocking on doors to make noise, that's all!  Haha what do they
expect?!

We got to help an investigator pull the cell wall off of the stalks of
these leaves he was going to eat (no surprises there), and while we
were at it we went ahead and taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
It was awesome.  Later, a member gave us a ride home so we didn't have
to pay for a bus (which would've taken 15 minutes, but the car ride
ended up being over an hour, but we were thankful).  We were all
freezing cold that night.  For the first time in my mission, I made
hot chocolate to drink with dinner.  So good.  The power went off, but
I slept like a baby and even used my sheet!  Blessings for having
walked in the rain all day, I think.

Friday was pretty sweet too!  One of our investigators told us this
story about how he was working on this fishing boat when one of the
lines snapped, thus completely dividing another fishing boat (canoe)
in two.  The same line hit him, but only left a small scratch.  He is
convinced Jesus Christ himself protected him because of his faith, and
says that if it wasn't for us teaching him, he surely would have died.
 So he was really grateful to us.

Another investigator had a vision when she was younger about this
golden lion, the same color of the sun, running across the sky.  Then
she had another dream where mermaids visited her and it was really
creepy haha.  It's ok because she's an all-star.

Saturday was incredible.  We helped a less-active member do his job -
make little books of paper using cardboard, glue, and string.  It was
actually really fun.  We just cut out cardboard for a while and talked
about church, it was really nice, and now I know how to make a book of
my own!  On our way to the church we talked with our taximan Yves who
is actually from Cameroon, so we got to talk about that for the next
hour.  We realized it was probably the longest anyone would talk to
him all day.  Well in the end, he gave us back 300 francs (of the 1000
we paid him for the ride, which is about $2) so we could buy lunch.
Such a nice guy.

The best part of the day was our baptism.  We met this guy Arian on
Valentine's Day.  He came to a member looking for work because he lost
both his parents (he's only 21), and was thrown out of school because
he didn't have any more money to pay.  So this member (Gaston) took
him under his wing and started teaching him about computers, and then
we showed up and started teaching him the Gospel.  After our second
meeting with him we were talking about baptism, and he agreed to be
baptized, and we decided to ask him when he wanted to do it, thinking
some time in april, and he says, "March 1st."  We didn't know what to
say, since it was the next week and we'd only seen him twice!  Well we
kept working with him for the next week, and by the time Saturday
rolled around he was super ready to be baptized!  It was a miraculous
event.  A 15 day conversion story.  Incredible.  He absolutely loves
the church.  This is the same guy that said, after his first time,
that it was "perfect."  He's so awesome.  He told Elder Baker, who did
his interview, that he wanted me to baptize him, even though we all
encouraged him to pick Gaston, so I was super honored to perform that
for him.  It was an amazing day.  The service went as smooth as
unsalted butter, which is actually just as smooth as half salted or
salted butter, depending on the temperature.  Anyway...it was a
beautiful day.  Coming out of the water, he just stood there as water
tumbled off him and was staring straight ahead, and he couldn't let go
of me.  It was a deep moment for him.  It took a couple seconds for
him to let go and wipe off his head and start going towards the
bathroom.  I knew it was a significant day for him.  Later, we talked
to him about fasting, because yesterday was fast Sunday, and he spent
the rest of the afternoon by himself just walking around the church
yard pondering on what he needed to fast for.  Great guy.

The next day he was confirmed, and even though it rained and even
though he didn't have money he walked over an hour to get to church.
We got to meet with this guy after church who is super excited about
the Gospel.  We didn't get to see as many people as we wanted to, but
we got to catch up on our weekly planning and now our area book looks
real nice and clean.  Then we realized that our apartment has 25
doors.  There's 10 in Fouks, 10 in Bonaberi, 10 in Ekounou, 6 in
Bastos, and 3 in Bonapriso.  Incredible.

Today we got transfer letters.  Mind - blown.  I was called to be a
co-zone leader with my good friend Elder Gélinas in the aéroport
sector in the other apartment (Fouks).  It's crazy...I only got 1
transfer with Elder Hatch, so I'm super bummed to leave him!  He's an
awesome missionary though, so he'll be great.  He already knows the
sector....pretty well haha, but I'll give him some more tips this week
and he'll be just dandy.  I can't believe it though!  What a change of
pace...it's a lot of responsability, but God prepares those He calls,
so here goes nothing!  I have a lot of studying to do to be able to be
the best I can be.  Crazy.

We're going to Ship Wreck Beach later to enjoy our last P-Day with
Elder Lundberg and Elder Morin.  I've been with Elder Morin for the
last 9 transfers, and I worked a lot with Elder Lundberg.  It will be
really sad to see them go on Friday.  They're the same generation as
my trainer Elder Zurcher, which makes things even more crazy.  I'll
miss them a ton.  They're the oldies in the mission, and it will be
weird to have them gone.  Next is Elder Baker and Lavering, the
Gelinas and Masse, and then me and Hatch!  Ah!!!  Gotta stay focused,
there's lots still to learn and lots of people to teach!  All in all,
the mission just keeps getting better and better.  I imagine by the
time it's time to go home they'll have to take me kicking and
screaming.  This is truly the best work in the world.

I love you all.

Elder Garland

February 24

Hello again!

We had another awesome week of course.  You can't go wrong when you
start off going to the beach.  We had a nice picknick with the Baileys
and played in the sand and had a grand old time and even made a
pyramid of missionaries in the Congo, what the.....

On Tuesday we met up with a guy that a member took under his wing
because he didn't have a home anymore and wanted to learn more about
computers (the member is a technician).  He had come to church and
said it was "perfect" and that he wanted to be baptized NEXT SATURDAY.
 So...we're working hard with him and we're really excited to have
such an awesome guy as a part of our branch.  He told us he knew the
church was true because he started doing things that he never used to
do - read scriptures, pray, go to church, answer questions at church,
etc.  We explained how that's called conversion, and he was really
excited.  We're all excited.  Africa.

We tried looking for a less-active member and got lost...I wonder why
he's less-active...and ended up at another member's house an hour and
a half later to teach her daughter, who wasn't there but was on her
way to the house.  So we waited for probably 30 minutes as Les
Misérables was playing on the TV.  We finally had to get up to leave,
but the mom was really hoping we would have stayed for dinner, but we
really had to go.  As we left, about 100 yards from the house we ran
into the daughter.  Dang it!  It's ok because they were all at church
anyway :)

In one of our taxi rides the driver was dancing so hard to the music
playing, it was hilarious.  Well, it was all fun and games until the
old mamma in the front seat just suddenly takes off her shirt!  It
brought a whole new meaning to the song, "It's getting hot in here..."
 The driver literally danced her shirt off.  I didn't think it was
possible.  He turns to the mamma and goes, wide eyed, "HEY!" and she
just looks at him and ties this thing on her head and puts her shirt
back on.  Thank goodness we were in the back seat and didn't have a
full stomach to throw up all over the floor.

I got a call that night from William Tignyemb from Douala, the dad of
the family I taught with Elder Zurcher.  It was so nice to hear from
him, but I had to call back to talk with the other 6 members of the
family.  I miss them a ton, but it was great talking with them eacha
little bit.

Oh and we met a girl named "Give" who didn't like her name so she
changed it to "Michael."  Welcome to Congo.

We had an awesome district meeting on Wednesday with the Baileys, who
brought us oatmeal cake that melted in my mouth, and then Elder
Baker's lesson on gratitude which melted my brain.  We went on splits,
Baker and I, and I got to teach the Luzolo family again, which was
great.  We walked off to see Padma, another saint of a woman who can't
be baptized because she lives with her polygamist boyfriend.  We were
just chatting and somehow music came up and she said, "I have a
guitar! I haven't played it in like 5 years so I'll just give it to
you."  Well my heart about sank when I saw that it was an acoustic
bass, but I was still overjoyed that it had all the strings.  I wasn't
about to walk home with it though, so we asked her to bring it to
church with her.  Then she fed us chicken and safou and it was
delicious.  I went to other apartment so we could do splits across the
zone and didn't really sleep because it's been forever since I had to
sleep somewhere without air conditioning.  Even with the fan I just
laid there and enjoyed the car horns and loud music and yelling
people.

Thursday was really eventful.  I went with Elder Gélinas, the Canadian
who is very excited about having taken the gold in hockey even though
I swore that Patrick Kane would lead America to victory.  We worked
with a member who speaks great English, who taught me a lot of kikongo
as we were walking around.  As we were walking, a plane flew right
over the top of our heads.  It was so cool.  No wonder the name of the
sector is "aéroport"...

We were stopped by several drunkards attempting to speak English with
us, which was funny already because we were only speaking French, and
one of them explained that if we wanted to see God, all we had to do
was lock ourselves in the house without food for a week.  He didn't
get around to explaining his second system though, which is too bad.
I was curious.  We sat down with this one woman who they'd seen
already a week ago, but this time she says to us, "You know, Elder
Gelinas, a few months ago I had a dream where all these people were
welcoming me down this street and telling me to go forward, to just
keep going.  Eventually I got to a building that was a church, and the
door opened and I met you, which is why the first time I saw you a
week ago I was so surprised!  But anyway I know the Church is true."
WE WERE FLOORED.  These things happen every week! It's crazy!  The
Church IS true!!!

Well then we were on this spiritual high until we went to visit this
member and we almost went the whole lesson without her breast feeding
her child when - oh, too bad, the kid starts screaming and they don't
have binkeys so they just breast feed to keep them quiet.  So
distracting.

It was nice to be back home with my real companion Elder Hatch, who's
personailty is "wildly unforgettable" to quote himself haha.  I love
the kid, though he's a foot taller than me and makes me look like a
chump.  He's nice about it though.  I guess when he was on splits with
Elder Morin these two investigators were asking them about America and
saying stuff like, "when it rains...does it come up to your waste and
do frogs fall from the sky?  I heard that in America people can
just...levitate.  I saw it on TV.  Yeah it was called Cris Angel."
That's when they just busted up laughing, which is normal. These
people believe that everything they see on TV is real life.  The
questions I've gotten about America are ridiculous.  They love to tell
us how America is, as if they've already been there.

Anyway, we got to make cookie dough with a less active member on
Friday and meet some more cool people, so that was fun.  With one of
our investigators we talked about forgiveness, and how if you want God
to forgive you, YOU have to forgive others!  She then told us about
this one guy who she just hates for no reason, so we told her that she
needs to be nice to him and start saying hi to him.  At first she was
convinced that there was no way she could do that (this is a teenage
girl, by the way.  If that explains anything.) but eventually we got
her to agree to say hi to him, and when I called her the next day she
said she even asked him how he was doing!  Baby steps, haha.  One of
our recent converts sat us down to tell us how we should come back to
Congo and start a business, and as he explained he gave us this large
bottle of frozen ginger drink, which I'm actually starting to
like...Elder Hatch let me have the whole thing to myself, he's so
nice.

Saturday was great, too.  We went out to meet the friend of our ward
mission leader, who bought a new guitar which only has 3 good strings
on it, but it was enough to play a couple songs and have so much fun
and want to steal the guitar for myself.  He walked us to our next
rendez-vous an hour away, but I got to play the guitar the whole time.
 Little kids got a kick out of that.  Heck, even old people were
stunned.  It's not every day they see a guitar, and sure not every day
they see a white guy walking around playing one!  The reactions alone
were worth it.  When we eventually got to our appointment the person
wasn't even there, so we walked down the street to see another older
investigator who we hadn't seen in a while, and he happened to be
sitting in his front...yard...(?) reading a school book, so we got to
sit down with him instead.  He told us that for the last 6 days he'd
been praying about the Book of Mormon and the Church and every time
he'd had a sort of out-of-body experience, which at first he didn't
understand, but then he decided afer the 4th time that it means that
the church is true!  We were stoked.  Baptism is imminent.

On the taxi-ride home, I specified that we wanted it for 100 francs a
piece, which he was ok with.  Well, on arrival at our stop, he
demanded another 100 francs, which we argued until eventually Elder
Hatch got out, and then the driver reached over and shut the door and
locked it, thus attempting to kidnap me.  Thankfully, it was just to
argue some more, and he was being absolutely ridiculous, but
eventually I had to pull the, "I'm a man of God, I'm just being
honest" and he let me go.  So.  Racism.

The best part of the day was when we went over to this house we've
contacted a couple times and got a couple different people every time
and got to meet, this time, the dad, who welcomed us as his own
children and told us his house was our house (and it's a nice
house...) and was so excited to sit down with us.  It was great.  We
are crossing everything that can physically be crossed that they will
join the church!

Then Sunday we had 11 people at church just for our team, and then we
went walking around after church to find people and found them and
preached them the restored gospel and this is every day of my life.
The people are always very receptive and always ready to pray to know
if it's true.  That is our invitation to everyone!  Pray!  We can
force you to believe, but we believe God can convince you, so just ask
Him if what we say is true and He'll tell you!  It's awesome.  People
love it.  I love it.  I love you.  You are my Monday morning hope!  I
love hearing all your stories and your adventures and your success.  I
know you're having difficulties and problems and trials, but that's
all part of the game.  Thankfully, God is on YOUR team, so don't worry
about it! All will end exactly according to His will, but if you align
your will with His, then you will come away victorious! :)

All my love,

Elder Garland

February 17

Hello, mbote, bonjour !!

This week was once again crazy.  We didn't get to see as many people
because President came through!  He had to leave his country, visit
TWO other countries in our mission, and then come through our town.  I
had a great time speaking with him, especially over breakfast on
Tuesday.  The Baileys invited us over for a real American breakfast -
eggs, ham, pancakes, and potatoes.  I didn't need to eat for the rest
of the day.  America.

We were walking around looking for someone to teach when, naturally,
we were stopped by a couple people who invited us to sit down with
them to tell them about why we're here.  One of the ladies was from
Cameroon!  Unfortunately, she didn't speak Douala, but it was still
awesome to have her speak with a Camerounian accent.  I love it. I
miss it.

On Wednesday we had zone conference with President, and it was
awesome, obviously, and very inspiring.  We talked about dedicating
ourselves to the work like a temple is dedicated, and we talked about
how our mission had 127 BAPTISMS in one weekend, and how we have
600-700 invesitgators at church every Sunday (50 of them in one branch
in Gabon!!!).  They also told us this story about how the members in
Central African Republic have been suffering with no food or water
because of the dictator who took power recently.  The branch president
in the CAR wrote president on Wednesday, who wrote Elder Hamilton of
the 70, who wrote Elder Bednar, who then wrote President Monson, who
then held a special prayer with all the members of the 12 in the
temple on Thursday.  THE NEXT DAY, the dictator was chased out of the
CAR after holding power for months, and the members were receiving
aid.  INCREDIBLE.  AMAZING.  THE CHURCH IS TRUE!!!  Oh and I decided I
need to start exercising again...unrelated.

Anyway we had a great time with the Cooks, and I bonded with Sister
Cook when she found out that I know how to crochet.    We got stuck in
traffic on the way home for 2 hours, so we didn't get to see anyone
that day :(

Thursday was great though.  We sat down with this investigator who was
pretty interested and agreed to be baptized on our first sit-down with
her, but we sealed the deal when, after asking her about how she felt
about her baptism she said, "well I've been holding something against
someone for a long time and it's been weighing me down, but otherwise
I feel great."  So out of nowhere I remembered this verse in Mark 15
that talks about how if we want God to forgive us, we need to forgive
others, so I shared it with her.  And then she started crying and
don't take this wrong but it was awesome!  The Spirit was so strong
and I KNOW she felt it!  She looked up after a couple minutes, wiped
her eyes and said, "ok, I'm ready!"  IT WAS SO COOL!!!  We high fived
and fist pumped when she got up to get another tissue.  So.

Later that day we saw a pokemon skirt, so that was probably the best
thing that happened to me all week (just kidding, but seriously...how
cool is that.).

We went over to our recent convert's house, but she was watching
cartoons (she's 11) and her mom wasn't home, so she told us to come
back on Friday because she was busy haha.  I love kids.  She was
watching this show Kirikou, which is the story of this tiny naked baby
African child who rides on the head of a giraffe and discovers the
Savannah and asks his creepy grandpa that lives in an ice cave
(random?) why certain animals are a certain way.  It was actually
really educational and showed live videos of lions, alligators,
hippos, rhinos, chameleons, giraffes, zebras, and vultures!  We
learned a lot before we decided mom probably wasn't going to show up.

We met some cool people when we were back home with 15 minutes left in
our day and we decided to just stand on the side of the road and hand
out family brochures to people as they walked by.  Africans are the
best, no doubt in my mind.

Gaston (a recent convert) had us come to his place to meet this kid he
took under his wing to teach him the Gospel, and he's an all-star
already.  Arian.  His bottome jaw comes out like an inch more than it
should, but he's stellar.  We walked for over an hour to go see the
little girl who told us to come back and when we got there no one was
home, so that was awful.  We took a taxi all the way back because we
weren't about to walk for another hour, and we met this man with a
perfectly coiffed salt and pepper goatee.  He was way cool!

We walked up the hill to Loussala to see two other people who blew us
off (unintentionally) because of work or something, but I got to eat a
palm nut out of it.  It was basically a tiny coconut!  Not as sweet,
but similar.  And very crunchy.  And hard to swallow.  And not very
good...so not really at all like a coconut.  But for some reason I was
reminded of coconuts, so maybe just try one for yourself.

On Saturday we walked another long distance only to be ratéd.  We went
straight to the baptism of one of our guardians, who was super
excited.  It was awesome, and then I got to teach some little kids how
to play basketball.  I had forgotten it was Valentine's Day until
Sister Bailey showed up with a tub of what she called Bishop's
Brownies, which were absolutely to die for.  God bless America, and
God bless Sister Bailey.  I also got a call from my Congolese convert
in Douala, Hortense, and that made my day.  I loved talking to her.
She's the most jolly woman ever, and she was so excited to speak in
kituba with me haha.

We had another great Sunday, with 28 investigators at church between
the two companionships.  The branch presidency had great talks on
being at church on time (a serious problem here haha), and sitting in
families in sacrament.  Awesome talks.  I also saw someone taking
notes on a piece of cardboard, so there's that.  We came back, did
studies, and then Hatch and I went out to find this woman we met last
week, and ended up finding two more women.  For some reason those are
the only people I find...so I just stopped asking questions and
started accepting what God sends me!  We met a guy named Christ and a
girl named Belphaine - and no, that's not a normal name, that's just
Congo.

Elder VanAusdal made chimichangas the size of my head, so he's truly
outdone himself.

Also we were playing basketball, first to 11, and we were at 10, and I
had a break away on a steal and dunked it for the win, so that never
happens and it was basically a miracle.

We're going to the beach later, so that's exciting.  I'm wearing my
"digital music victim" shirt, which is also exciting.

I love you all.  I love the work I'm doing.  The harder I work, the
more motivated I become.  I'm even trying to become a morning person
and wake up half an hour earlier, so look out world!  It's all in the
head, it's all in the head...

Have an incredible week filled with miracles and blessings and hot chocolate! :)

Elder Garland