Week 19 Email: A birthday celebration, church opened again, I rode an elephant?!?! Transfers

From: Christian.garcia@missionary.org
Date: Monday, October 25, 2021
Subject: A birthday celebration, church opened again, I rode an elephant?!?! Transfers

Bonjour tout le monde!

Well it's been a minute so let me update you on what's been going on down here in Africa. Elder Obyea had his birthday on the 1st so we went and partied it up with some members in the ward. I learned that Africans are really into footwork dancing. Not so much anything else, so it's safe to say that I didn't really dance. But the worm saved me so that was fun.

Remember this thing called COVID? Yeah it came through Togo for about a month is all. The branch up here in Kpalimé was closed for a while but hey it's open again! Hopefully we can get more and more amis coming to church now. It was hard to do that when we could only meet in groups of 15 or less.

As of right now we are teaching a lot of people and they are awesome. Frère Stanley is about my age and he has one of the stringest testimonies ever. He is just waiting for a response for a day for baptism so hopefully I'll get to be here for that.

Frère Paul is a legend. I found him onenof the first weeks that I was here and be is progressing really good. He has loads of questions and he wants to do everything he can to stay righteous. (Righteous

)

Frère Nicola is a little 8 year old who speaks the native language so we always have one of his buddies (fr germain or gorge) with us when we teach him so that he understands. He wants to be baptized but we just need to find a time to talk to his dad since he's a kid.

Frère Emmanuel is kind of like an older version of Frère Nicola. He speaks only native so Frère Freeman comes to help translate for us. He has a desire to be baptized and has been coming to church but we don't know how his progression with lessons is going because he follows and then forgets most things.

Sœur Heléné is a single mom of 4 that loves God and Christ and wants to learn more. We got recommended her by a recent convert(Sr Vivian). She's been doing great in lessons and is so energetic all the time. But she can't come to church right now because she needs to work on Sundays to have moneh for her family :/ hopefully soon she can come.

Frère Patrice is a wood carver and he is awesome. I got some wooden elephants from him the first day we met him. And this last week when we went and taught him there was this bigger one he hasn't finished yet but he let me sit onnit for a picture. So I rode an elephant... it was wood but I still got to do it haha.

We have transfers coming up tomorrow so Elder Obeya is leaving and my training is done. Kinda weird to think that 12 weeks have already gone by since I've been in Africa. I'll snag some photos of me and my new comp when I meet him for the next email.

Thank you all for the emails that you have been sending me. I love each and every one of them. And sorry if you don't get a response, I will try harder haha.

Shout out to Sister Garcia in Brazil for turning 20 this Friday! Keep killin it down there!!

Until next week, much love for y'all,

Elder Garcia