The Witnesses Hat

A week has passed in the blink of an eye. I have a feeling I only have a month left in this sector with my son and I’m scared. I have so much more I want to do in this place. And the time I have is just not enough and it’s such a change from the first half of my mission.

This week me and my son went ham on our sector because we needed to at least double our number of serious investigators. We had some pretty cool experiences.

One of my favorites was being called over by an old papa, named Do___, he is an ex-Jehovah witness and has practically memorized the entire bible, and the same thing with his son, he has read the bible like 100 times or something. And you know what’s great about people who know the bible more than anything they are super ready to accept the gospel of our church! It’s only the people who don’t read or understand the bible who are really hard to teach. If you understand the bible you understand the bible is complicated it’s not always easy to understand and there are many human errors and mis-translations and mis-interpretations, mixed with much truth and light. For years papa Do___ has searched for truth but as he sees the churches of today and with the bible he reads and cries because he doesn’t understand anything anymore. Then Elder Larson and his son came in and he thinks he has found the light, we gave him the Book of Mormon and he is super interested. When we told him about the plan of salvation he was with us the whole time. All the truths that are not clear in the bible we showed him are clear in the Book of Mormon, I’m so glad we found this man.

Along with your cool investigators there is always the weird ones. There is this one dude that stopped me and Kadima back in the day and he talks a ton but never lets you talk. He asks weird questions but doesn’t listen to your answers, he loves talking about the time he has spent living in every country in the world even though we know he is lying and has never left Togo. And no matter where we are in the sector we always seem to bump into him, he is such a weird dude. Every time he comes up to us he has something weird to say. This last week he came up to us for the third time that week in another weird spot in our sector and asked if we could baptize him right then and there. We said yes because we like messing with him, so we told him he just needs to come to church on Sunday, he said he could only if we called him at 5h30 in the morning on Sunday. If it was 5h31 it was too late and he couldn’t come so we set our alarms that day and called him on the dot but he didn’t answer, nor come to church, we knew he was a pathetic liar but it was such a weird request we just had to do it to see.

Many, many, many people think we are Jehovah Witnesses. I know I’ve said it before but most people don’t like Jehovah Witnesses either, like a general hatred is felt towards them kinda. Any way when we present our self in French I often say, we are missionaries from the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, we are not Jehovah Witnesses. When you say that everyone gets more interested for some reason, any way this week my son found an old straw hat in our apartment and decided to wear it but the thing is all Jehovah Witnesses I’ve ever seen in Togo wear straw hats, and all of our investigators teased him about converting to a rival church, it was super funny.

My son often says he is single with no wife and no kids I often tell him saying your single means you don’t have a wife automatically, he refuses. He also says that reality and truth are two different ideas but I don’t think so. We talk a lot so these are some of our favorite topics to argue about.

Things are going well lots of people coming to church with all the efforts I’m doing, working hard, laughing a lot things are good and time is flying.

Kouadio finds a straw hat

Politically and Spiritually Divided

Okay!

I am alive and things are hopefully getting back to normal.

This week was transfer week which means we get very little done. A neighboring missionary had his companion transferred so he came to stay with me and Kouadio for a week. His name is Elder Hemon and he is a French man who comes from the same stake as Elder Raveneau, my old companion. Hemon is super cool and it was awesome to stay with him for a couple days. There are a lot of missionaries that eat a ton of food, my son (Kouadio) is one of them. However, in my whole mission I’ve never seen someone eat more than Hemon. That guy pounds food like no one I’ve seen.

Last week as we tried to fix appointments for this week. Everyone said that Wednesday and Thursday were impossible because no one will be able to go out because of the protests. There have been protests before and we have been fine so I was wondering why everyone was so scared.

We get up Wednesday morning do a few studies and then at 10 we start hearing some noise. We get up on our roof and just one street over where we couldn’t see we heard a bunch of voices screaming and yelling like a huge crowd was spilling on to the main road. Within a few mins they were burning tires making huge black smoke and the military came shooting plastic bullets and gas into the crowd. Me, wanting to work, decided to go out but as we worked our way away from the big road the protests were on small side roads too doing the same things. So everyone forced us to turn back. So I went back and slept, and my son tore his pants on the way back, I love my son.

On Friday we were able to go get the rest of our district members. We picked them up and spent the other two days showing them their sector. They are cool one is Bien-aime he is from Haiti. He was supposed to have come with me on the mission but because of visas he waited six months at home before coming. The other is a brand new American, Bradshaw, who is from California and is super cool. I see a lot of the difficulties he is having because of what I went through in training so I’m trying to help him as much as I can to make his training a better experience then mine.

I also taught a girl on Tuesday and on Wednesday she had already prayed and had an answer about the truthfulness of our message, so that was awesome.

We also had a conference this Sunday where the stake in Togo got split. Now there are two stakes in Togo, and I got to be there at this monumental occasion. But it wasn’t too exciting it wasn’t like Moses splitting the red sea, it was more like someone got up and just said where the new borders of the stakes were, but still a big moment.

Elder Hemon

Hemon likes food (we all do)

I love my son

Kouadio rips his pants

New district: Larson, Kouadio, Bradshaw, Bien-aime

My district

With Bradshaw


Togo Conference

How to buy a wife

I’m trying to get my thoughts organized so what I say is not just a brain dump but a cohesive story.

Let’s start with two more weird ideas people have about the United States.
- That everyone is burned after they are dead and there are no burials
- That the United States is a country in Europe.

Okay so the week started of pretty normal, I believe. We worked hard. There is this one family we teach where we were there almost every day this week because every morning they would call us to make sure we would come over.

Then in the middle of the week I got out of Adidogome and went into the middle of Lome in the sector of Elder Wride for the day. He is a super cool guy and we had some great lessons and talked a lot about our different experiences in this half dream half nightmare we call the Benin, Cotonou Mission. However, we are both a lot happier then we were in the beginning. Their apartment was super weird, every room was crawling with cockroaches, like little baby ones. Sorry for the image mom, but it was bad, like you can’t take a step without killing a few. Luckily I didn’t eat any by accident.

Then the highlight of the week happened the last few days. On Saturday I got to witness with my own two eyes how the Togolese do "la dote" in English that is the dowry. Basically it’s a big ceremony where a husband buys his wife from her parents. It’s all over Africa and it’s embedded in tradition. For purposes of religion its pretty screwed up actually, because what it is if a guy wants to marry a girl before he can do that he has to pay for her. But with a butt crap ton of money and so many people can’t pay so they end up living together without getting married and then bunches of kids are born and parents leave. It’s sad stuff. It brings lots of pain and suffering. However, you can’t change the culture so I went to go see one of the members of our branch buy another member of our branch for the price of about 1000 US dollars. When I did the conversion it doesn’t look like that much but this is Togo, one of the poorest countries in the world. Also one of the cheapest dowry’s in Africa and trust me that is a ton of money here.

Any way the ceremony was super interesting. The wife’s family is on one side and the husbands on the other. The couple is nowhere to be seen for most of it. It was done in the mother language of the couple, so of course I understood absolutely nothing. There is a lot of discussing, lots of whispering, then the husband’s family brings in the offerings. Expensive alcoholic drinks, food, pine, other gifts and a sum of money. Then the family of the wife goes and checks it out to see if it is worthy. If they say “no” the dowry is over, but they accepted. Then there was some more stuff that happened I don’t know but people were laughing a lot. Then a big lady came around to the husband’s side to get money to pay for "the transportation" of the wife. Then someone walks into a room with someone covered in a sheet they bring it, uncover her, and it’s not the bride. They repeat the same process many times trying to get more and more transportation money. I see money is everything here. They finally bring in the girl. Then they talk and then she goes and changes into clothes that match the guy and then the guy won the game he got the girl. Now they can go pay a butt load of money to the state at the town hall to get really married. I’m super angry I took so many pics of the ceremony but the camera battery died and we didn’t get pic with the couple.

On Saturday we also got calls for transfers. Thank everything that is good in the world I’m staying with my son for the next six weeks. They are adding two new missionaries into our apartment so I’m now a district leader to an elder from Haiti who is training a brand new American. I’m super excited to work with these guys were going to be a force to be reckoned with.

When me and Elder Kouadio started together we had two sectors to work in. We had only two investigators. Everything we have now is thanks to the work we have done and the help from the Lord. We worked really hard and brought these two sectors, that were both dead, back to life. However, when we got the call that two new missionaries were coming into the sector me and my son had a really hard time thinking that we would have to leave half of our investigators that we love so much. We prayed about it and came to a good decision about which sector we will take, but it was still hard. And I know for a fact people will take it hard that me and my son won’t get to teach them anymore. We are a good team and people really seem to like us.

On the way home from church a lady invited us into her home to teach her the gospel before we started the lesson she asked if we were thirsty. We actually were so she went to go get something to drink she comes back with a beer. I say oh actually, no thanks on the beer we thought you were going to bring water we don’t drink beer. You would think that would be the end of the conversation. I have never been pushed so hard to drink in my life, she is like what are you scared? It’s only got a little alcohol, you drink the whole bottle you won’t even get drunk. It’s nothing, just at least taste a little. Every line that gets people to drink she used. She was very pushy, me and my son just kept saying no and that it was against our principles and she finally let it go and we had a great lesson, it was just really weird.

This next week the rumors of the biggest protests and riots are coming so I’m actually kind of scared. I hope it all works out.

Splits with Elder Wride

Kouadio falls asleep while exercising

Eating Fishy Crackers - taste from home

La Dote Ceremony

Everything is so Hot

I think the rainy season is over. Because it is really heating up in the country, and for some reason the power goes out very often now at night, which means I wake up with all the fans cut and everything is soaked because of sweat. It is quite miserable but I’m still super happy, because just about everything else is going my way, so an hour every night of super heated sleep is nothing.

Another thing that is hot is the politics. Things are heating up with the many protesters trying to get rid of the current president. We knew that protests were supposed to be happening this week, but they have said that this whole month and we never have seen any, so we weren’t about to let that stop our work. However, weirdly this Wednesday when we started walking there was no one outside, it was super weird. No cars on the road, no one was selling anything, just like a ghost town. We did finally see a mama selling food and asked her what happened. Turns out we just missed a huge protest and the police came and blocked all the roads and sent everyone back home so that’s why no one was outside. Well we didn’t see anything, so we just did our work. However, Thursday was really bad. We saw the results of those protests, a bunch of people dressed in all red would stand on the road and throw big rocks at passing cars of people going to work to try to get them angry at the government. Also because according to them if someone is going to work on a day there are protests that means they are for the government. So we saw the smashed car parts in the road and the marks where the boulders were thrown in the streets. We were already well into our day in our last lesson when the pres called us telling us not to go out that day. But it was too late we already did. My son was scared out of his mind that day because he happened to choose a red tie and that is the color of the opposition.

The third thing that was super hot this week was the food. I don’t know if I mentioned it before but Togo, Benin and Ivory Coast all love lots of hot pepper in their food, so that it is super spicy. I have learned to like a little spice in my food, however this week I had a sauce that toped them all. Kouadio and I went to a place to have ingame pele with peanut sauce, but the sauce was so spicy it made me cry and my nose start to run. People make fun of me normally because of my race, but that day everyone in the restaurant was laughing that the “yovo” was suffering at the heat of the food, so yeah I had tears running down my face but I ate all the sauce but I’m sure I was drinking the devils sauce.

We worked really hard this week, which was kind of tiring but I didn’t know how tired my son (Kouadio) was until one day we took a short sitting break and my son fell asleep on the wall. (picture below)

We got to baptize our 11 year old buddy Em___ he is cool. He talks a lot tho. It was cool to have another baptism. When Elder Wride came to do his baptism interview he said he responded better to the questions then most adults he has done interviews with, He is very smart.

I will finish my email with some of the ideas people have about the US. Not everyone believes the same thing but I will list real things that at least one or more people actually believe about the United States of America.

There are no black people.
Trash doesn’t exist.
You don’t have to work because everyone is already rich.
There is no suffering.
Everyone gets an iPhone for free.
No one is ever hungry because food is free.
Trees talk.

These are some of the beliefs and I’ve heard even crazier, I’m sure. They are not all coming to my head right now but in later weeks I’ll tell you more. Even when I try to explain that US is not heaven on earth they say I’m lying. But it’s all good, I still love them all.

Kouadio falls asleep in the sector

Authentic Togo food

Em__ Baptism

Me with the many articles of clothing I have in pine

Assimilation

I’m trying my best to become one with the work and one with this country. I’m learning a little bit of their language and every lunch instead of eating at the apartment we eat from someone selling on the street. It’s a little dangerous but we find the nice mamas that we know don’t cook with typhoid and we eat with the people, it feels great.

My name is Elder Larson and pronounced in French it sounds like Lawson a little bit. Which is the name of white people who came to the north of Togo and gave that name to a tribe, so many people here that come from that part of Togo have the last name Lawson. Every time someone presents themself they say they come from a certain village here, so I just say I come form that same Togo village. It makes them laugh a lot, you know because I’m white and white people are weird.

This week we didn’t have many appointments fall through. We have found a lot of people to teach and the days flew by. We found some people with some big problems however we are there to tell everyone that through the gospel you can find happiness, and its great because it’s true and we have an amazing message. The guy that wanted to kill himself is now begging us to let him get baptized but he needs to get married first with his wife, so that is a little problem but its okay.

Fun fact here: telling people they are fat or got fat is a complement. It won’t be forever (only while I am here) that I get to tell someone they are fat and they smile and are like thanks. My son (Kouadio) has gotten fat, this is how I learned this. He showed me a pic before his mission and he has gained so much weight mostly in the MTC, and I’m like woah you got fat, and he is like, I know thanks. That’s how if found this out. And you can say that to anyone, even woman, and it’s a good thing. And if they got skinny and you say that they think it’s an insult, kind of interesting.

Yeah I’m working hard, lots of small miracles, sadly it was general conference and I didn’t get to watch. I love general conference but because of that instead of inviting people to church we had to tell everyone not to come and many were sad that they couldn’t come to church because we weren’t having normal church. It was sad because just a few weeks ago we had no one at church now we have to turn people away. They broadcasted conference at the stake center, but there was not enough space for me to watch so I missed it all but I’m sure it was great.

Okay that’s all for the moment.

With Kouadio

I got a new rule book