Thursday, February 7, 2013

January 28th, 2013

The week here was pretty good, no complaints. The work progresses bit by bit. We had interviews this week with President Weed. They were.... a little uneventful. Since I'm not a trouble maker, I never really take a long time anyways, but this time we all felt it was a little short. At any rate, President now knows where the apartment is, so I guess we can't goof off any more. Not that we were before.
I wasn't really planning to send an SD card home with Elder Hanna, I was just planning on sending one home with Elder Cline. That'll be my last chance for pretty much the rest of my mission.

I'm guessing that I will stay in Togo for a while, but you never know. I had a week or so where I thought I would be replacing Elder Hanna as zone leader, but then I realized that President has no good reason to put me there. That was just my ego hoping to build itself back up. I'm thinking I'll stay in Doumassesse until April, and then I'll be moved somewhere.

We had a faith building experience here recently. We were considering a course of action, but something seemed wrong about it and my companion and I both agreed that it wasn't a good idea. We ended up being really grateful that we changed plans. Serious blessings there. I love having the Spirit to warn us.

I haven't heard anything about any flies/larva stuff. The only thing even close is that I may have gotten a worm in my arm a few months ago. It never hurt, but I had a red line that turned pretty white afterwards. It's faded quite a bit though. Haven't seen any boils. I'll keep an eye out. As for the garlic pills… Sorry mom, but it has been a little while since I took them. I am taking my doxycycline everyday though, which is more than the majority of the Elders that get Malaria. I would say at least 75% of the Elders catching Malaria don't take doxy, and I'm guessing none of them use mosquito nets. Over all I'm very safe, I only got maybe 3 bites all last week.

For the debit card, I'm thinking I'll just tell you that I want to pull so much money out of the bank, you'll put the money in, I pull out, and then you can freeze the account again if you want. I know a few Elders have pulled from the ATM, I've only heard of one having problems. I don't plan on pulling more than 1 or 2 times.

This week we had a first lesson with Malik. He's an interesting fellow, a Camerounian that works in the marché near our apartment. He called us over one night, he really wants to turn his life around but doesn't feel like he has the strength on his own. It'll be really interesting teaching him because although he speaks pretty good French, he can only read English. So we'll be speaking in French and asking him to read in English. His English accent is pretty good at least, way better than Nigerians.

We've started teaching a woman named Léonie, one of the other companionships found her outside the church building and she asked if she could come visit us on Sundays. She's now been to church three times, and already has the Daughters in my Kingdom book. So she's being well integrated by the branch. The only problem for her is that she lives with her parents who are solid Catholics, so she hasn't told them that she meets with us. She's well over the age that we legally need their permission, but socially that is a hard thing to overcome here. She loves coming to church though.

Fun fact, one of my recent converts is in the Liahona for January! The little blurb at the back for the pan-african service activity has a photo that one of the missionaries in Benin sent in. It was so awesome to remember that day. Had a lot of fun.

Got to see Elder Kiputa again this last week at a zone training meeting. He loves getting emails still from Dad. He also says I've lost weight. That's probably true, I walk a lot more than I did in Aibatin. I'm also a little bit more spendthrift here. I have almost a third of my monthly money left. Not really sure why that is, but it feels good to know that I'm not wasting the Lord's money.

My favorite General Conference talks for the week are from Elder Gray and Elder Whiting of the 70. What would a man give in exchange for his soul? and the Temple Standard. I'm not sure why I like them so much, but they feel very real to me.

I think the one complaint I could have for the week is when you teach someone who understands extremely well, and who at the end of the lesson says "well, I come from the interior, I'm going back next week" and you know that the church won't be there for at least a few years. That's kind of a bummer.

I think that might be all the time I have for this week, love you all so much!

Elder Christensen

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