Riley in Africa : From Ghana to Nigeria

The mission often likes kicking me out of my home, so I’m now going to leave Adidogome and Togo behind and go back to Benin. I’m going all the way to the political capital, Porto-Novo. I’m sad that I’m leaving behind my son and all my Togo friends to go to an unknown place but actually I’m happy because I’m going to work with an American for the first time my whole mission, so that will be a new experience.

Adidogome is basically Ghana because it is touching Ghana on like all sides. Like I’ve probably walked onto Ghana ground on accident, and now I’m going to Porto-Novo which is basically Nigeria. Often people will live in Nigeria and come to work in Porto-Novo, so I feel like I’m going from Ghana to Nigeria.

This week, to help my son be prepared to take over the sector, I had him plan every day and take the lead in all teaching scenarios and helped him see his weaknesses and strengths. He grew a lot from that experience and I see he is now ready to take on the mission. It was the fastest and most fun three months I’ve done on the mission.

This week was Thanksgiving number two so we went to a restaurant to eat pizza and shawarma to celebrate the American face stuffing holiday.

This week it rained quite a few times. I asked my son and he says there is a short rainy season in December which brings some pain because the rain has no place to drain, I miss rhyming poetry.

I got my hair cut by the barber by our house. I didn’t want to but he begged me to come so I did. It wasn’t a bad haircut but it wasn’t a good one either, but unlike tails on foxes, hair grows back.

We got a directive from the president of the mission to give out at least 6 books of Mormons each month, so we started taking those things around every day. It was super cool to see how many times it was useful to give those to people and really make that amazing book the proof that were not lying.

That one investigator that was ready to kill himself, but we found him and we started teaching him. Well, it’s been about two months and he has come to church every time. We had a lesson about home teaching and supporting those who were weak, so he went out and brought a bunch of people to church this last Sunday to do missionary work. Even though he is not yet baptized he is a super big fan of the church and is super passionate about what we do. He has no training on teaching so he kinda goes crazy when we try to teach people but it’s cool. He loves the church so much, and he has stopped drinking alcohol and you can see in his face how much he has changed.

It was sad to say goodbye to Adidogome. Many people were sad to see me leave, they often say a mark of a good missionary is someone who leaves the sector better then they found it. In the four and a half months I’ve been here the first Sunday there was 0 investigators and barely any members and this last Sunday some people had to stand because there was not enough room and we had about 11 investigators at church and some brought kids so it was more. I was so happy, the president thanked me for revving Adidogome after such a long sleep, I like my mission.