December 2, 2012

Howdy all, 

This is Togo reporting in! Togo seems to be a really great
place. I'm excited to be here. I'm in an area full of red sand/dirt,
so it feels kind of like St. George. My companion is cool. I honestly
think he'd be perfectly fine as senior companion himself. He doesn't
really speak English, Ivory Coast doesn't have English. What's really
interesting is that the Malagash that Elder Burkhart is training
actually speaks pretty good English. Did I mention last week that I'm
in an apartment with Elder Burkhart again? That'll make at least 6
months of our missions that we've done in apartments together. We're
pretty good friends by now.

I'm glad to hear about the flash drive getting there, I was a little
worried. You can send it back if you want, I'm not sure if I'll need
it personally, but I can probably give it to one of my companions.
It's a little hard sometimes to find flash drives and memory cards
that are reliable. I'm not sure what would happen if I took a photo
inside of a cyber. I'll try in the next few weeks.

Before coming to Togo I got the ward newsletter for November and I got
Grandma Lundstrom's Christmas letter. That's all I've received for the
moment. Now that I'm no longer in Benin it will probably take me at
least a week or two longer to get mail, with getting it over the
border to the Leavitts and then to the right apartment.

Yes I'm aware of the Leavitt's little cleaning competition. I'm also
aware that I have very little chance of winning it. I was the only
Elder who actually cleaned this morning, and I took out about 300
cobwebs in the process. It doesn't matter too much though, because they
are apparently going to be putting us into a new apartment in 2 weeks.
For the moment we are living above the branch, but the branch has
become big enough that they need the upstairs as well. We're just
waiting for the painting to get done and they will move us over.

Christmas should be fun in a nice new apartment. I was going to wait
to set up the Christmas tree you sent until we got there, but Elder
Burkhart started playing Christmas music on Saturday so the tree had
to go up.

I was looking at the Visa they issued me for Togo. They spelled two of
my three names wrong. Thank heavens there is a 0 % chance they will
ever look at that when I come back to Benin. If it was the US, there's
a chance I would have problems.

This last week I have seen all the Elders from my wave at the MTC, and
the wave behind us. It was really interesting to see what has all
happened to us over the last 8 months. For the moment I'm the only one
that is officially senior companion. Sort of. Two of them are 'equal
companions' so to speak. Lots of them have lost a lot of weight. We
have an new American entering the apartment this week, it'll be
interesting to see his starry eye look that we all had back then.

Elder Cline was transferred over to Benin, so we never got to see each
other throughout the mission. Oh well.

Okay, We're out of time, my bad. The cyber is a little bit slower than
at Fidjrosse, but not too much, at least today. I'll just have to tell
you about seeing Ghana next week!

Love to you all,
Elder Christensen