October 19, 2013

Dear family,

Well, the second rainy season seems to be just about over. I think it was about the same as last year. Overall it was a pretty dry year though. I may only see rain maybe once or twice for the rest of my stay in Africa. 

By the way, I think I forgot to mention last week that I have another companion. When Elder Razanamparany went home he was replaced by Elder Ouonnebo. He's an Ivoirien Elder who has been out for about 18 months. He's pretty fun, and loves to cook. He actually already served a long time in Gbegamey branch, so he knows a lot of the members already. 

I can tell you that for the moment, Bishop Field and President Frischknecht have not yet received copies of my travel plans. They will receive them next week, but feel free to talk to them about it at church tomorrow. I personally wanted to go through Paris again, but Brussels will be fun too. It will be very weird being in JFK with Jacob so close in Chinatown. Maybe I'll buy him a postcard in the airport. 

Most of my "Africa friends" are either not going to BYU, or come home after me. At this point, I'm not really sure who you should contact. My other old roommate that you could try is Destin . He was fun. This may be a far stretch, but it'd be fun to go back to my old off-campus stake. I was near the southwest corner of the stake I think, so probably stuff around 4th north/4th east, 3 north, 3 east, Given the amount of time you have to find an apartment, that's probably not possible. 

I have been taking pictures mom, don't worry. I probably should be taking some more photos of myself though. I'm not sure how I am supposed to take pictures of "smells" though. 

If you were to send a package right now, I would probably still get it. Personally, I say just hold onto whatever you would send me until I come home. No sense sending me something I will just have to bring back, and if I won't bring it back, no sense having it for only a week. Just keep the tree watered and I'll celebrate Christmas when I come back. I think it would be a good idea to put a little bit more money into my account though, I still have to get a couple more souvenirs. 

This week as you know we got to orient 20 new missionaries. That included our first two Americans to pass through the Ghana MTC. I didn't get much of a chance to talk to one of the Elders, but Elder Sagers spent the night in our apartment and we had a bit of time to talk. It was nice, it sounds like the Ghana MTC is a very different experience than Provo. Hopefully that was the last group I will ever greet in the office. I've had a lot of fun greeting people, but if I'm here for the next group, that means I will be finishing in the office. I've loved serving here, but 10 months would just be too much.

Tomorrow we will have another District Conference. This will be the fourth one in the country, all four of which I have attended (I'm a Benin Missionary, not a Togo Missionary). I'm excited, this one will be presided by Elder Vinson of the second quorum of the 70, who is in our area presidency. I'm interested to see how his translation goes, he apparently has a really good Australian accent, which is practically unheard of here. I hope that we will have a lot of investigators come. The conference room we are renting out is kind-of in our proselyting area. 

We had a great lesson yesterday with the "hakuna matata" family. Rosa has now read almost all of 1st Nephi in the Spanish Book of Mormon you sent with Elder Allred. She's really enjoying it and had a lot of questions. They said that they will come to the conference tomorrow. 

One of my personal study moments this week came from Romans 4:20-21. The thought makes a little more sense in the French translation. We often think that faith is having the conviction that God will do what we want him to do. In reality, faith is believing in the promises that God has given us. We have to believe that God can and will do everything he has said he will do. This is a faith that is not hurt when a Priesthood blessing doesn't lead to a miraculous healing. This is really a faith that enables us to say "thine will be done." I've been learning slowly over the course of my mission many of the promises that God has made to us. Having the faith that he will do his work gives me the strength to go forward. 

 

Lots of love, 

Elder Christensen