April 13, 2013

Hi Everyone,

We have a couple of investigators that are doing really well. We
actually have one sister that will probably be getting baptized next
weekend. We need to talk a little bit about that. Rosemonde (literal
translation of name "pink world") wants to get baptized and is totally
willing to respect the commandments, but hasn't entirely grasped all
of the implications of the apostasy and the restoration. Teaching her
has been a lot of fun though, she understands incredibly fast. We've
actually been teaching her with Elder Semken, which has been very
interesting (Elder Semken needs constant translation). I'm pretty sure
she'll pull everything together though. It would be nice to have a
baptism at least. I've gone a long time without having a baptism.
That's really been getting me down for a while. We have another sister
(Deborah) who has stated that she wants to get baptized, but she
really wants to understand everything before she does it, apparently
she's been baptized in 4 or 5 other churches, wants to be really sure.
Our newest investigator is named Gospel. He's from Nigeria, ran into
the church a little bit but never attended. Well, he just up and
decided to come to church with us on Sunday, and now he wants to come
every Sunday. Even though he only understands maybe a third of whats
going on. I'm honestly not sure how well he understands our accents
either. He was super happy to get a copy of the Book of Mormon though,
so that was nice.

Interviews with President Weed went pretty well. I think. This time it
was a LOT longer than usual. Probably because he only had to do five
the whole morning, so he actually had some time. As far as I can tell,
I'm staying in the office for a while. No reason to think I'll be
heading out at the end of the month (except for the irony of the MTC
elders showing up with my drivers license, and I wouldn't need it any
more. That would be funny). But I really expect to be here until at
least June, if not August or September. I get mixed feelings about
that sometimes.

I did talk to President about whether or not I would be able to come
home early for school. He recommended that I look into doing the
second block first, see if that would be possible. I'd honestly never
considered it, but it sounds not to bad. I'd get to be at home for
probably a month, so not to long nor short. The only problem is that I
don't know if I can do that with my scholarship. Could you look into
that mom? If it is possible, what kinds of classes are given second
block?

I did not burn a pair of pants and a tie at my year mark. I don't
recall really doing anything special. I think I got an ice cream cone.
I haven't been big on celebrating events out here. I don't like being
all "okay, now we're going to go do something I want to do" to my
companions.

My pictures were in a small format? I know that some of them were
bigger than others, but I don't remember if any were "small". I'll
look into it on my camera. I might have cropped certain photos. I'm
sorry I don't take "cityscape" pictures, but I reallllllly hate
looking like a tourist. Everyone already sees us a mile away because
we're white guys in ties, but to whip out a camera and start flashing
is really uncomfortable for me. Related, I'll get you that better
photo for the drivers license. I can't do it right now because I don't
have time (see below). Elder and Sister Semken will understand, they
want another driver too.

We might be getting our Conference Liahonas a little bit faster this
time. The April Liahona came about the 3rd of April. Is that because I
was assigned to write a complaint to Distribution Services in Accra,
and CC the Director of Temporal Affairs? Possibly. Six months without
English Liahonas was just not fair. In any case, I'm super excited to
read conference. It sounds like it was a really good one. Here's a
shocker for you though... One more conference until I come home. Wow,
it's weird to be able to say that.

No I haven't used all the jdawgs sauce yet. I've actually not used
hardly any since coming back to Benin, we've been meaning to go and
buy some real hotdogs or even sausages (instead of the chicken-dogs
everyone eats normally) and make us some really good jdawgs. We've
been talking about that for a month though, so we'll see if it
actually happens. We have actually started making more root beer
though. I hereby report that dumping milk powder into root beer
creates melted root beer float, and it is delicious.

So shortly after coming in to start writing, we noticed water flowing
down the hall.... The water heater in the kitchen broke somehow. So we
had to mop that all up. Yay! Hence why I can't do the pictures today.

Speaking of mechanics breaking, yesterday was a little nerve wracking.
Let's just say a moto wasn't paying attention until the last minute.
Threw himself off of his bike right before he hit us. Luckily, he
never did hit us. As our Elder Quorum president/Police Chief informed
us, in Africa the law is 'no contact, no fault'. The blessing is that
this all happened on the street where said EQP/PC lives. So he was
there in like 2 minutes. I think it wasn't our fault anyways, but I
wasn't really paying attention at the time so I'm not 100% sure. The
man calmed down pretty fast (his moto wasn't all too badly damaged),
and at the end of it we explained who we were and ended up taking his
contact info for other missionaries. I'm sure that will be a very
interesting first lesson.

In other news, my CD player now works again. Apparently letting it sit
still for 3 weeks fixed it. Go figure.

Okay I got to go now, love you all (but especially you mom!)
Elder Christensen