Week 86 Email: Work work work

From: Christian.garcia@missionary.org
Date: Monday, February 6, 2023
Subject: Work work work

Bonjour tout le monde! Wow this past week was something to say the least haha. I absolutely loved it!! Let's get into it...

So on Tuesday last week I started out the day with Elder Ilunga, who also happens to be my mission "grandson", and we went and visited this older guy who's a retired principal turned artist. The stuff that he has in his house is so cool!! Honestly I just kept looking and thinking to myself "wow... beautiful." Elder Ilunga didn't really understand why I liked it so much haha, so he was the controller of the time. We ended up back at the Bohicon apartment about 20 minutes before our new companions arrived. Elder Kayembe and I then headed up to Dassa for the evening of run around haha. Elder Kayembe (kii-em-bay) is from Congo just like most of my other comps but he's from a place called Lubumbashi. They speak Swahili there so it's super cool. We went and visited the group leader and his family and then went and taught Fr Dimitri and his family a little bit from the Book of Mormon.

Wednesday we stayed out in sector for the whole day, even finding a nice lil place to eat food so that we could do that and it seriously helped so much! Being able to go and just say hi to people and not feel overly tired because you "stopped" has made it so Dassa has grown a lot. We did some lessons and contacted most of the day. We went and said hi to some members as well so the Elder Kayembe could get to know them and Dassa a little bit more. 

Thursday we went out contacting and teaching in the morning and found 2 families and a pastor kind of guy. One of the families, the mom speaks ewe so both of us got to use the "togo language" in that lesson haha. After we went and found some more food and I ate antelope meat... it honestly wasn't that bad. Though I'm not sure if it's 100% legal that they killed an antelope and then sold the meat. Oh well though, hopefully nothing happens. Afterwards we went and re-found an ami that had been contacted wayyyyyyy back in October when the missionaries first got to Dassa. She was interested and so was her mom so we ended up teaching them the Restoration and they loved it. Sadly they weren't able to come to church because they traveled but hopefully next week! When we got done with that lesson we walked ALLLLL the way to the basically other part of our sector and said hey to Sr Audrey. We taught her about enduring to the end and shared Helaman 5:12. She was tired from work so we didn't stay too long. On the way back we went to go and try and teach Fr Dimitri again but he wasn't free so we reprogrammed it for Friday.

On Friday we had a get weekly planning and also a zone call to talk about our goals. It went alright, definitely better than the last time we did it, and we got some pretty good goals fixed for February. This month is going to be such a good one already. I can feel it!! The power went out when we were planning because well Benin haha. So we went out to find food and also to buy food for the apartment. We went back to where I ate antelope but this time I didn't get any meant just the "foufou togolise" and peanut sauce. On our way back we went and bought food for the apartment and came back to still find the power out and the sun absolutely beating down on us. It's fine though because we changed into our armour and then headed don't to sector with Fr Gedeon to teach Fr Ange. If you guys could keep Fr Ange in your prayers it would help a lot! He is struggling with his faith a little bit and prayers will help a ton!! After we taught Fr Roland about working together to help Dassa grow and then we went sooooo far to teach the pastor guy we had found the day before. And honestly, I never thought I would be that confused and annoyed on my mission ever. We talked about the plan of Salvation because he had asked us where everyone from Adam to now is, but anytime we explained something he tried to contradict it with the bible by using the same scriptures we were using. I was confused and both Elder Kayembe and I felt that it was a waste of time to have walked all that way just to get denied even an ear to listen. We can't force people though, we just have to accept them and hope that one day they'll listen :) We went and taught Fr Dimitri and his family again and this time they gave us some weird fruit things and I won't lie to you that stuff basically killed me... i will never be eating it again haha. 

Saturday was a little bit more of a stressful day because we tried to teach every single baptismal candidate to help prepare them for thus Saturday buuuuut not all of them were free so that was a bummer. And one of them said that he would prefer to be independent before he committed to another church and then he didn't come on Sunday :'( 

Buuuuut Sunday was awesome! We had 29 people ar church!!! And 11 were amis that we're teaching! I was seriously so happy to see the room filled and the hard work paying off. I know without a doubt that the Lord was behind it because man, we worked our butts off but didn't think that there would be that many this week. We also got to listen to many testimonies too since is was fast Sunday. Our lessons were focused again on our amis who has a baptismal date that afternoon and they went well. If you guys could keep Sr Alphonsine, Fr Samson, Fr Espérance, and Sr Florence in your prayers for this Saturday it would be much appreciated.

There was honestly a lot that we did this week and I loved every second of it. Even if I was tired byt the end of the day most days haha. Times ticking down but there's still a lot that the Lord needs from me so hopefully you guys aren't going to get tired or reading my emails haha! Thanks for reading too, I love you all.

~ Elder Garcia 

Photos: not many this week sorry