Week 101 Email

From: Christian.garcia@missionary.org
Date: Monday, May 22, 2023

Bonjour tout le monde, I don't have much energy this week haha so I'll send you guys the email that I typed up last week :) 

So to kinda start off the week we went to our first district concil of the transfer and we kinda got to know everyone. When I say kinda I really mean that because the assistants (who are in our district) went to Togo this past week so they weren't there so we didn't "get to know the" too. One day though they will have the wonderous oportunity to do that for us haha. But this district is super fun! We are able to have a great time but at the same time we are inviting the Spirit to come and teach us so it's really cool. 

We sadly had a lot of rendez-vous fall through this week. We planned a whole lot and even called the people but when we showed up to their house or boutique they weren't there... so that led us to do some good old fashioned door to dorr contacting!!! It has been a minute since I have knocked on someone's door but let me tell you guys, I forgot how easy it was just to walk into someone's house here haha. Elder Okyere and I went on a little walk on the opposite side of where we normally teach and we ended up finding a few families that we are going to try and get to teach this week. They weren't free at the time but I do feel really good about thier progression. 

This last week I did my lst exchange too. And that was such a bitter-sweet moment. I was really sad because it was like I was done with an era in my life (almost like leaving elementary to go to middle school) where you know that there are cool things ahead but it's sad to leave what you know. It was sweet though because I was able to look back at all of the exchanges that I have been able to do on my mission and with who and all of that kinda stuff. It was really cool for me to see all of the progression in myself and how each one of those people have helped me to become a better missionary. 

During the exchange I was able to meet these 2 really cool families. The first family was kind of a miracle family if I could call them that? They found the church because the dad was at a bar and was talking to one of his buddies about church and stuff when a friend that didn't want to be taught decided to tell him about the missionaries and the church that was just down the street. So he left his drink and payed the bill and then headed down to the church, where he was able to talk to a member who invited him back the next day because it was a Saturday. So Sunday morning he got up and went to church with his oldest daughter! After that the missionaries started to teach him and his family and they are really interested in baptism and following the path of Christ. It was so cool for me to sit and be able to listen to their story because it made me realise again that even by just asking a question the Lord will get us our response. At just the right time too. The other family was a member family by the name of Domingo. They were really fun and Ireally enjoyed being able to sit and talk with them and share just some spiritual thoughts with them. They also gave us food and then showed us the way back to the main road. That was a really great blessing because we got lost for a sold 20 minutes as we were looking for thier house haha. 

Elder Okyere and I also had the chance to go and celebrate the birthday of a member this Friday! I got real ince cream and some pretty bomb cookies so that was a really nice mix up from the regular eating schedule. The only problem was that both of us were like 'bleh" for the rest of the day because it had been a minute since we had taken in that much sugar like that. 

We found twinkes too!!! They aren't called twinkes but they are basically the same thing! They have little penguins on the package and when I tried it all I could think about was the twinkie run from high school track meets ahah. 

This week as I was studying I read a passage of scripture, thanks to Hank Smith, in the book of Mosiah. We went to chapter 18, and as a missionary this chapter is known as the chapter that talks about baptism but this time I focused on the verse 30 where it talks about the place called Mormon. And a few questions came to mind that I thought I would share with you guys to end off this email. I invite you guys to read the chapter and then focus on verse 30 and then think over these questions (if you want to)

1. Is the Book of Mormon acting, for me, as the place of Mormon for the Nephites?

2. Am I getting a greater knowledge of who my Redeemer is through reading and studying these passages?

Thank you all so much for reading this far if you have gotten this far haha. Hopefully you got a little glimpse into what it is that we are doing here in Africa. If you do have any questions feel free to send me an email to ask, I wll try my bes to respond (even if I have to use Google Translate so we can both understand in English)

Envoyant beaucoup d'amour, 

~Elder Garcia

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