September 24, 2012

Hello Family and Friends, 

Weather is hot like normal. It rained a bit on Friday, but not much.
Overall things are pretty tame. I've heard Togo is hotter, but since I
haven't yet had the opportunity to find out for myself, I couldn't
really tell you. I just know I'm scared to come home in January and
freeze to death.

There are a few new Americans coming out over the next few months. I
asked President about incoming missionaries and he told me there's a
wave coming in about 3 weeks that's mostly Africans with one or two
Americans, and then another wave at the end of November that's mostly
Americans and a couple of Africans. So that's that. I've been
interacting a little bit with Elder Ritchie, the newest American. His
clothes still look so nice and white and stuff. I can't imagine what
it must have been like to have made that trip by himself though.

This weekend we had the chance to go baptize Raoul. I think I talked
about him last time, he's the man who lives near the apartment who read up
to Alma 5 in his first week with the Book of Mormon. He definitely has
a testimony of the gospel. It was a great experience, the spirit was
definitely there. My companion baptized him and I got to confirm him.
That was my first time confirming, but it went pretty well. I said all
the important parts right at least. I'm excited for him, he's already
volunteering to give prayers. Lots of recent converts are scared to do
that. I'm really hopeful that we'll be able to help his friend Serge
to take the dive too. Serge has a testimony, but he's afraid that he
doesn't have enough faith yet to actually do it. So we're working with
him on that.

The baptism was interesting too because the younger brother of my last
convert in Gbedjromede was baptized. So I got to take some photos with
the two of them.

Primary Songs. Nobody out here has the Primary Song CDs. That would be
a really good thing to have.

I found out a little bit more why my companion was so excited to hear
from you last week. Turns out he hadn't heard from anyone in his
family in three weeks. So that really made a difference for him. Thank
you.

Oh yeah, I made rootbeer this week. That was sooooo good. Of course,
depriving myself of carbonation for so long and then drinking a liter
in under a half an hour was not the best idea.

This week we had an interesting planning session. As in, it was in
English. I was really impressed with my companion. He was trying so
hard. He did really well. So well, he accidentally started talking in
English while calling an investigator. I laughed pretty hard about
that one.

We taught two Muslim women this week, but one of them is moving back
north soon and the other one sees her husband so rarely, we're never
going to be able to get his approval even if she accepts the gospel.
 

Had a weird morning this week where we didn't have any cellphone
service. Just our carrier was down. Silly MTN. Did I ever tell you we
used prepaid phones? The mission office gives us about 16 dollars
worth of credit every two weeks.

Sorry, not a lot of time this week. 

Love to you all
Elder Christensen