Riley in Africa : The Last African Christmas

This week was kind of sad, because we had some disappointments. We met this super cool lady who really loved our message we have been teaching her. She is a widow and would read our brochures every night before going to bed. She came to church after our first lesson. It was two hours after church ended, but she still came. However, she just found out she has some friends or something in Senegal and will move there for 8 months, so we had to say good bye, which was rough.

We had some tough times in the sector not finding anyone who will progress however we were blessed with one Nigerian man who found us and really wanted to learn more about the Book of Mormon. We taught him and he was so happy so we’re going to try to find one in English for him because all he wants is to read that book.

So, that was some of the ups and downs this Christmas season My comp Elder Kappel got really sick the last few days and couldn’t get out of bed. Luckily he is feeling better now which is a Christmas miracle!

This Christmas is a lot more festive than last years because I was blessed with the master cooking of Elder Uaua, a Tahitian who really likes to celebrate. We got tons of sodas and he made breaded chicken with sweet and sour sauce with some great rice and crepes for dessert and breakfast. Some of the best food I’ve eaten.

It’s really funny to see how Christmas is celebrated here. Not many things change other then there are random parades of people that walk down the streets blowing horns and playing drums. There were a few fireworks too but because this is highly Muslim populated area not much changed, kinda funny.

Nothing huge happened this week sadly, and we are going to have our Christmas party tomorrow so we will see if that is fun.

{Kaelyn here...Riley sent the letter as normal early Monday morning. Then a little later he CALLED HOME! It was so great to talk to him. We even got video chat to work for the first time.}