When Yes Means No

I have heard a million ways people say they are not interested here on my mission and most of them sound like they are interested. The most common is, "Wow this sounds great, after I read this brochure you gave me I’ll call you and we will talk about it." I have heard that phrase over 100 times on my mission. You know how many times someone has called back? 2 times and neither of them have been in this sector. This people can’t say no, especially to Jesus, so they just lie and say yes. We can find a person, they give us an appointment hour and time, they give us their number, we call and confirm the appointment the night before or the morning of, we get to the home, they are not there and their number no longer works meaning they turned off their phone. This happened to me and Kouadio this week about 20 times which is fantastic. Usually when this happens I give people the benefit of the doubt and try again but after three times we have to leave them because they waste our time like nothing because they say they are there up until it matters.

Yes, things are discouraging, sometimes it’s hard to tell the serious yeses from the not serious yesses, but they all kinda sound the same. I have only had a few people outright reject our message. Like maybe five my whole mission, this mission is not like others.

I had many amazing experiences this week, hard to name them all, but I have one I still don’t quite totally understand. We had three appointments fall through in a row, I didn’t know what to do so I said a prayer in my heart to know what to do. I had the feeling to go visit the president of the branch, we saw him and had a good talk. He mentioned a less active brother in our branch, I haven’t seen him in a while but I knew his house, so we made our way over there. We knocked on the door, and the man’s son came to the door saying his dad was visiting with some men. We told him we could come back later but the boy went to ask his dad if we could come in and we got invited in. We saw the man who lived at the house with two other men and they were all in a state of shock. We said hi and before we got to talking they said that we were sent from God to save a life. Turns out man number one brought man number two to the person’s house (that goes to our church) because man number two just went through some unknown crisis and lost everything and wants to kill himself. Man number one says he can find peace through Jesus Christ, the suicidal man number two didn’t believe. Prophetic man number one says that God will prove to you he needs you alive, and right as he said that two missionaries (us) knock on the door. What weird timing what weird experiences. I hope that all made sense, but it turns out we had to go to the president’s house to get the tip to come to the man from church’s house, get lost a little on the way to arrive at the perfect moment to be a sign to another not to kill himself. We told the man God loved him and then he came to church this Sunday even though it rained, and he is very interested now. I would be too if that happened to me. I’m just weirded out by that prophetic man one who said we were coming, I don’t know how that worked but I aint complaining.

And to finish, a funny thing. Me and my son (Kouadio) are not the best at walking all the time, my son doesn’t really know all the sector and even when he does he gets confused a lot and I will sometimes not warn him when we are turning and we will both want to turn opposite ways and we bump into each other. This happened a lot this week weirdly, which I bet makes us look even weirder two dudes one white, one black, dressed the same, bumping into each other all day long. However we are working on walking, it’s getting better.

The food fight continues with Fried Ingyam - so good

Me and Kouadio with our 9 year old friend (and soon to be convert)

At the Stake Center