August 3, 2013

Hi Everyone,
Well, it's a new month! July flew by. Considering we are already 3 days into August, I think it might do the same thing. Shoulder to the wheel. Nose to the grindstone. Foot to the pave-stones. Finger to the doorbell (just kidding, very few people here have doorbells. And most of them leave their doors open anyways for air flow, so we just end up saying knock knock).

No, I still don't know exactly when I am coming home. President probably won't fix us all out until sometime in September. He still hasn't picked a date for the missionaries leaving the transfer before me. What I want to know is, are you and/or dad going to come pick me up? I'd be more than happy to take you out to Ouidah or something. And the airport isn't too difficult, non-french speakers get through it all the time.

Yeah, the branches are all being divided again. We've been working on that for a while, it has been nice to get that done. I was actually a little surprised by it, once the paperwork was all done they just had to pick the leaders, and I wasn't included in that process. I do have another big project that I am working on related to that though. The growth in this mission has just been phenomenal. 

Elder Mary is a clown. He's one of the most colorful characters I've ever known. For a brief rundown, he started his mission from France, but when he finishes his mission he will go to Peru for a month before going to BYU (accepted and deferred). Also, Peruvian cookies are good.

Oh yeah, I finally caved in and punched a new hole in my belt. I think I might be able to punch another hole, but it'd be pretty tight at that point. So I think that means I'm about a 28.5-29 inch waist right now. I still seem to weigh about 138-140 lbs. 

We had an apartment inspection this morning. We got full points. But I think we lost the coin toss with the other apartment that got full points, so I'm not sure if we actually won or not. All I know is, our apartment is clean. .  .  .  Until tonight when we pull half of it all back out again.  

I saw a rasta man wearing a Brighton Utah Ski Resort shirt the other day. That was different.

I've gotten to drive the assistants' truck the last few days. It's so much nicer than mine. I'm sad that we have to go back to the Ranger now.

On Sunday we announced in Church that I would start teaching a class to learn more of the hymns. Only one person showed up this week, so I ended up trying to teach him a bit of piano. I found out I don't know any of the french musical vocabulary. We'll announce it again this week and hope that more people show up. I honestly prefer to teach singing rather than piano. Learning piano is almost impossible if you don't actually have a keyboard at home. 

We had a really cool lesson about chastity this week. I know, you weren't expecting that! Actually, we had cool lesson prepared with a nice scripture chain. We get to the lesson, and the investigator reads out the whole chain to us. He had put it together himself during his own personal study. It was a pretty easy lesson from that point, and it even strengthened his testimony of the Book of Mormon!

Our zone conference was pretty good this week. I didn't have to translate this time. Thank goodness too, Sister Weed thought that talking about the tides would be a good analogy for her lesson. It was, but no one knew how to say it in French. President Weed talked about obedience again. I know that I am not a perfectly obedient missionary, but there is a nice feeling when President writes a list of obediance problems up on the chalkboard, and you know that he isn't talking about you. Maybe that sounds self-righteous, but it's more like relief to know that I don't have to worry. 

Sorry I didn't talk much about missionary work this week. I'll try to talk more about it next week. Unless I end up spending the entire week with Elder Semken searching for new missionary apartments (which is possible). 

Lots of love,

Elder Christensen