August 13, 2012

Greetings from the land of..... You know, I never have figured out how
to describe this place. Don't know if I ever will.

I did get your letter you sent from pageant, but not the package yet.
The handout made me laugh. It's totally a handout Bro. Ludlow used to give his
students in his Book of Mormon classes. I guess when you reach that
age it just gets hard to change.

Things are doing well here. I had a rough spot this week, but I'm
getting over it. Honestly I was expecting it before now, I've already
been here for so long.

This week I lost one American and gained another. Elder Burkhart went
to Togo and Elder Gundersen came from Togo to be Elder Bukasa's new
companion. It's been interesting to watch how the dynamic of the
apartment has changed. Of course, with new people comes new news. I'm
learning a little bit more about what Togo is like. I also found out
that apparently my first MTC companion went home in the last week or
two. That's really weird for me, I always figured I'd run into him
here somewhere. That makes 4 out the 18 of us Americans that came this
winter/spring. The mission takes a toll.

Confession time, I'm about four days behind on my journal. I might be
able to catch up tonight, but probably not. If I have another bad
week, I may have to think about just doing it a couple of times a week
instead of every day. I've still probably written more than most
missionaries ever right.

I did the unthinkable the other day. I left my badge at the apartment.
Luckily, we weren't out teaching. We had a zone meeting out in
Gbegamey. So it was just the other missionaries who saw it (or rather,
didn't). I had been using my badge to mark a verse when the taxi
arrived at the apartment. Oops. I'm just glad that it hadn't dropped
in the taxi, it would have been gone.

This week I had a little personal spiritual moment. We say often that
Christ died for our sins. But it only just finally sank in that even
if I was the only sinner in the world, if every other person was
perfect, Christ would have died for me. His love is all for one and
one for all, if you will.

Our investigator Christoff is doing well, he came to another baptismal
service, and he's read almost half the Book of Mormon at this point.
He still hasn't accepted to come to church though, but I think he
might be close.

Brice continues to be golden. He was walking back with one of our
investigators after the baptism service and just sat down and talked
to him for a while. Ended up managing to resolve most of Amour's
doubts about the church. Definitely the reason Amour came to church
yesterday. I really just want to give Brice a badge and let him at it.
He's also thinking about building a bakery on his property, which is
pretty much fantastic as far as I'm concerned.

Don't have as much to write about this week, sorry. This last week was
just kind of 'off.' Fun fact. There is no word for "off" in French. It
just doesn't exist. In any context. You have to explain around it.
True Story.
Lots of love,
Elder Christensen