Riley in Africa : The magic Chinese

Well, this week I got to call home! And hear all sorts of things! That was super cool. I got some feedback on my blog which was cool because it’s one of the things I like the best. I try to be honest about what’s going on and how I feel. And my parents said my weekly posts have a tone that I’m barely surviving or something. Which is quite funny because the more I thought about that I realized that day to day living here is survival, that is for sure. But that should not make you guys worried for me I really love my mission, because the craziness, the hard times, all that changes me and now I just laugh it off. It’s never easy but it’s always possible to over come the daily difficulties with a smile.

This whole week we have had no water pressure, which means we have to leave the faucet open all the time to fill up water bottles with the slight drips of water that come out of the sink to later poor them on our mounds of dirty dishes. It’s sad there is never enough water to cook or clean so we have all learned the art of patience as we watch little drips of water fill up a pot in 20 mins that used to be filled up in 3 seconds.

This week was kind of hard for some reason because we looked at our investigators at the beginning of this week and we saw we only had two investigators in progress, which means we had work to do. My companion is a little tired though so I had been praying and fasting that I could have people prepared for the gospel to come to me so we could teach them. And this Wednesday we found 3 new investigators who were super prepared, you could say it was a miracle, and for me it was a direct answer to my prayers.

A fun story to end things off. The Beninois people believe in voodoo and also in the power to stop rain. There is a saying it never rains Saturday in Benin because the voodoo people will stop the rain, and during the rainy season it rains almost every Monday because the voodoo people stop holding back the rain from the weekend. It’s a really funny legend but everyone here believes it with a passion. However, in Hevie the legend has changed because there are a bunch of Chinese people building a bridge between Cococodji and Hevie and everyone is convinced the Chinese are so technologically advanced they can stop the rain with their magic Chinese powers so they can continue working on the bridge. We try to tell them that that makes no sense but they refuse to believe, so here in Benin the Chinese fight against God.