June 29, 2013

Hi everyone,
Haha you never give me advance notice on when you are leaving for pageant. I hope the trip is fun! Tell Cameron that I hope he feels better soon. I've never really had to travel while sick, but I can't imagine it being any fun. At least being in a motor-home is better than a car. 

I didn't get to watch the broadcast, but I heard some of the details. I'm assuming that I won't see any changes from that while I am on my mission. While a fair number of young people here do have email and even some facebook, the odds of it being a good contacting or communicating method are extremely small. I'd rather just get 2000 CFA extra phone credit every month so I'm not stressed about wasting credit when I don't understand what a person is saying.

Bummer that I missed Grandpa's birthday party. I bet that was one of the last times for so many in the family to gather together. I'd ask for pics, but I'm guessing you left them all back home. I'll see them some other time. 

The heat has not been bad at all here lately. Mostly because of the rainy season. Although it hasn't been rainy this last week. Just cool. I think it should pick back up again a bit this week though. Otherwise we may have a bit of a problem on our hands. No water also means no power.

Well, this was another week in the crazy office. First of all, we had a meeting with some people from Accra (church travel, distribution). Because of that meeting, I accidentally missed my interview with President! I ended up having that yesterday. Even though I see him most days, it was still nice to have an interview. Unfortunately, he didn't have any helpful advice about what I should do about coming home for school. I still need to figure out what I want to do about that. 

This week had a lot of interesting sights, sounds, peoples, and tastes. Probably the most memorable were; a hunchback, oreos, corn on the cob, ROOT BEER FLOAT, and starbursts. Okay, most of those were just tastes. I think I might have gained a pound back. I did get the other "package" mom, it came through just fine. I gave the banana muffin mix to Sister Semken, she is going to make them in her oven. 

Updates on babies and marriages and stuff like that is always interesting. I've only heard about one of my friends getting married, and that was about a year ago. It'll be interesting to come home one day and see what actually all happened while I was gone. 

General teaching this week has been pretty good. We've worked a lot recently with recent converts and less-active members. I've been very impressed with the branche's efforts to involve our recent converts, they are all receiving callings and being asked to give talks in sacrament meeting. 

I had an incredible little miracle this week. It starts out with an appointment falling through. Because we didn't really have anyone else to see in the neighborhood, we did some door-to-door. It turns out we were in a heavy Muslim neighborhood. That didn't work terribly well. We decided to walk a block or two and try again. We decided to try a certain door. They invited us directly inside and had us sit down. When we started introducing ourselves, the man said "yeah I know you guys, the missionaries used to come here all the time." Upon further questioning, he mentioned that his two children were even baptized in the church. This struck a chord. We had those children come in. I was the one that baptized those children almost a year ago back when I was still in Gbedjromede (since I was already baptizing that day, the assistants had me baptize their candidates as well). Eventually the children had stopped coming to church, and by the time I entered the area we had no idea where they lived or how to contact them. I cannot believe that we (and by that I do mean in part I) found them by accident. So we have an appointment set for Monday, we will see what happens!

 

Good luck for the rest of the trip! I hope you all get super cool parts in the pageant! To everyone that reads the blog, happy fourth of july! 

Love, 

Elder Christensen