Skeleton in the closet

Not gunna lie I think my golden birthday was the worst one ever. It’s true I can’t remember some, but this Tuesday was not ideal. I woke up to get packed to go to my new sector and sadly all my clothes I had washed on Monday night had not quite dried overnight and were all still wet. So, I had to pack them wet and wear wet clothes to the transfer. There was also no power and little water, so ironing stuff and showering were no goes. Then I got transferred. When Martial and I walked into the apartment that we were supposed to live in we were appalled. We then spent the whole week cleaning it. It looked as if no one had lived in it for years. So much dust and trash and weird smells. We could not go out in the sector because we were forced to clean everything.

However, a good thing about my birthday; I got a bunch of movie quotes to read and guess the movies they were from. Basically everyone I know wrote one so thank you all for that gift.

We threw away so much stuff in our apartment purge. We found many weird pots, we found Santa pants, old clothes. We put our trash down stairs because that’s where the trash guys come in and take it away. Then on Saturday we went out to buy some rice from a mama across the street who also owns a little shop on the side. Then weirdly enough I looked close at the paper lining her table and it was ripped up sheets of preach my gospel. The pots, the Santa pants and many other things we had thrown away were now on sale in her store, coincidence? I think not.

Martial likes musical things and we set up my piano and he brought his guitar and we have jam sessions. He has named the band “Don Carlos Smith” after the coolest sounding name of Joseph Smiths brothers.

Martial is a great guy. It’s a little hard white washing the sector, but on our first day we fixed two baptism dates and the branch seems cool enough. Things are finally clean.

Weird things we found while cleaning:

Lizard Skeleton

This random drawing

It's hard to tell, but things were really dirty.

The finished product

Me with Elder Martial "Don Carlos Smith" band

Good days larson elder...

First, I want to type out letter for letter a text I got form that schizophrenic guy we met:


Good days larson elder great

to yours 3 brothers this numbers

no for me is this my girlfriend

ZEKINATH OLOHOUNTO,,,MY

NAME CARD PAPERS BACHABI

NOUROU thankyou MY NEW FAMILY

TO LIFE GO I GREET ALL FAMILY

GOOD PRISE FOR JESUS AND

THEY TO MUCHLOVE DJOUGOU

NORTH is very no be have pollution

air fresh thank yo



Definitely the best text I have ever received in my life.

So, the worst days for me with the worms were after I took the medicine. Tuesday and Wednesday I was super sick. I guess the worms did not like being killed so they took me down with them. I was really feeling bad, but we had some things to do on Wednesday so I asked for a priesthood blessing and from the moment I had the blessing the pain went away and I'm feeling better. So, I chalk that up to a miracle.

This week I got to see my converts. I visited Sr. Ju__, the one who couldn't speak French, but after her baptism she could. It was awesome. She had just moved from Ouida, where the church is not found, back home so she can become active again. I’m so happy for that. I saw the Mik___ who are doing so many great things. They are saving money to go to the temple this year to be sealed. Papa Mik__ has told all his brothers and cousins and family in Congo to join the church and is constantly inviting amis and through the efforts of papa and mama over 15 people have been baptized in the church. Really these two are the best converts ever and the Lord did it all. These people were prepared by the Lord, I was just the instrument, and boy does it feel good to be that instrument.

Another blessing is an investigator, he is a contact from a member. Ever since we taught him about the restoration, he has not missed church, an activity, or institute. He reads the Book of Mormon every day. He was very touched by Joseph Smith’s testimony in the beginning and is going to be baptized in March. Segal and I had some good lessons with him where the spirit was really strong. We had one moment where I pulled out a scripture that came to my head and Segal was about to share the same scripture, so we knew we were doing the right thing. This is a really good investigator, sad I have to leave him.

So, the transfer happened. I’m going to leave again after having only done a transfer here in Finagnon. I’m going to Cocotome to be a zone leader with Elder Martial a half Haitian half Asian black American. He is a super positive guy, so this should be really fun, I’m excited. Sad to leave Segal, but still excited.

There is this one lady in our sector, no matter when we pass by, she has to stop whatever she is doing and show us her brand new baby girl (who has pretty light skin). Why she does this I’m not sure. Even if the baby is sleeping she runs in and grabs her to show us and we do nothing but look at her, say thanks and try to get out of there because it's so weird.

We had a good week. It was sad to say good bye to Finagnon. There are a lot of good people here many were sad I am leaving so fast. I made some good friends in the ward. We took pics and they made us dinner so we chilled with them all that night. I shared some pixi stix I got in a package with them and they all thought it was the best thing ever. The littlest kid called it his favorite chocolate, don't know why, but was very funny.

So, a new adventure awaits.

I am going to miss Segal

Good bye, Finagnon

The Last Supper in Finagnon

Ouida Snake Activity

The door of no return

Driving to zone activity

Saw this on our drive. It is called "The Deformed Child"

Food after the activity

Aliens

Segal got sick last Monday. I started feeling sick on Tuesday. Elder Kahombe and Tolman had been sick the week before. Our stomach aches, vomiting, diarrhea and nausea had me thinking, there must be an intruder in our stomachs because bacteria is often very painful. I asked my district leader if he had changed our water filters recently because it’s his job. Normally they are supposed to be changed every month. The words he uttered were freighting "what are filters?" I immediately did some quick calculations on how long Kahombe has been here and who had been in the apartment before him and I realized those filters probably hadn’t been changed for 9 months or more. So, I opened up the filters. There are three, they are supposed to be white or a little yellow if they need to be changed, but these were a super dark red. I knew we were in trouble. I cleaned them out. They had sand, dirt and there was this weird long string of clear goop at the bottom of one. It was bad. So, I knew the water we had been drinking was killing us. I changed the filters on Wednesday. When it got to Friday we were all still sick and trying to get some anti-bacterial medicine. Then the burro Elders came with Sister Walker, a senior couple missionary. They came to change our filters. I laughed and told them I had just done that because it was needed. They said good because they had found some long clear worms in some other filters in other apartments. Then I remembered I pulled out that clear stringy goop and I look at my stomach and had a flash back to August 2017. I GOT WORMS AGAIN! Those aliens could not leave me alone. I’m now pregnant with their babies ugh, this sucks. We got the medicine this morning so I’m feeling a little bit better but worms in Africa twice, nice. Let’s see how many times that can happen.

I’ve told a few stories about our taxi man. I think this guy is pretty funny. He has worked with the missionaries for a long time. We took him up to Porto-Novo the other day and he told us we would have to be quick because he had another person to take at 17h00. So, we get there, everything looked good, but the person we needed to do the baptism interview for said he wasn’t going to be ready till 17h00. We saw our taxi guy was frustrated. We thought he was mad that we were not getting the thing done on time, but when I talked to him he started crying. Not because he was gunna be late for his other appointment, it was because he did not want to leave us in Porto-Novo. He does not trust Porto-Novo drivers and was scared for our safety and felt morally torn to leave us. I told him it was okay, he could go. He said he would pray for us the whole way home and I’m sure he did, great guy.

Segal and I had a baptism. It was great. We had a good service the other companionship was supposed to baptize with us, but the day of the baptism the man’s pastor said no. This means the guy obviously did not understand the gospel because he was still talking to his pastor, so that was dumb. Any way we baptized Ver___ who is good friends with the young woman in the ward. She is really nice and we were happy to help her accomplish this ordinance. I wrote down her as my 15th baptism on my mission. My goal at the beginning was 24 baptisms total on my mission and I was kinda sad that that goal might not be accomplished but that all changed when we had a meeting on Sunday where we went to the Stake Center to give a small training to a group of future missionaries. In the group was an investigator I taught in Cococodji but did not baptize. She was at the meeting, baptized and preparing for a mission. I was so happy to see her along with other members from Cococodji. They were all so happy to see me. I saw the daughter of the Mik___ and I’m gunna go visit them this week because it’s been so long, and they are my family here.

I then thought, wow, I wonder how many people I found and taught that other missionaries baptized and I realized there are 7 active members that I was a part of finding and teaching and my son is about to baptize 2 more. All these can be counted to the efforts made on my mission and I see I’ve done a lot more good than I thought. Not counting countless other seeds I helped plant that I don’t know about. This week sucked because I was so sick but I was so happy to see the fruits of my labors.

Now to end with a little bit more of apostasy in the church here. It is really important to pay attention in church because the church is so new sometimes things are done wrong and it’s just because people are learning the gospel and learning how to lead at the same time. So, the other week someone came from the stake to teach the ward how to better do the sacrament saying the 12 year olds need to be passing the sacrament. They told them the adults don’t need the practice and the people blessing should be priests in young men if possible. So, this week we saw two little small deacon age kids passing the sacrament it was great to see up until the third hour when they called up those two little boys to receive the Aaronic Priesthood; myself, the other missionaries and some members were shocked as we realized those two boys passed the sacrament without the priesthood. We went and talked with the bishop and he just did not know there was a problem it was just ridiculous. This place will never stop surprising me.

Worms revenge

With my district in a taxi

Ver__ baptism

These pictures are from the meeting at the Stake Center. It was so great to see these people again.

Reunited with my former ward mission leader from Cococodji

With a ward missionary from Cococodji

Ellison!

[Addition by Kaelyn, Riley's mom]

The man in the suit jacket was on a humanitarian trip to Africa and met Riley. He sent me this picture with some nice words about Riley. It was a welcomed gift to receive the text and picture!

This mission is making me crazy

Um, I feel like I’m totally lost. Yes, I have done about 18 months of my mission, so I see all I have left is what will make me a man because all sisters are now gone. This week Segal and I were bombarded by complete weirdness that I can’t begin to explain. But for your entertainment and reading pleasure, I’ll try to give you a glimpse into this week.

We went up to Porto-Novo at the beginning of this week to do a split with the missionaries up there. My old comp Elder Kappel was there. We are good buds so we just kinda hung out together for a while catching up on what’s going on. Turns out one of the crazy ladies we found together is getting baptized next week along with her husband and three kids which is five baptisms that I had a part in finding. So that was some great news. Kappel and I went out to get lunch for everyone, as we were waiting for the rice lady to fill up our black plastic bags with rice to eat, a girl came out of nowhere and slapped Kappel really hard in the face. I looked to see who it was and it was one of our old investigators I had taught with Kappel. She then looks and Kappel and said, (referring to me) "you said he wasn’t coming back." I tried to apologize but she had already walked away. Kappel looks at me and said he didn’t deserve that. So me coming back to Porto-Novo got Kappel slapped, that sucks. But I got slapped this week too, I’ll talk about that later.

As we were coming back from Porto-Novo our taxi man gave a huge speech on how great white people are. He is a black Beninese taxi man, but he loves white people. It was so funny to hear what he had to say. His speech went something like this: "You whites are crazy, you can do whatever you want. I look up in the sky and see air planes and wonder how in the world did the whites get something that heavy to fly. But that’s not all. Look at those big boats that come to the port they are huge and heavy but they don’t sink, no its unbelievable. You whites are strong, so strong. What do we have here that you don’t have? Maybe magic but we don’t use that for any good we just kill each other, ugh. I would love to go to the US. I bet a white man could even create another man. But of course, you couldn’t give the breath of life, only God does that, but I bet you could do everything else if God gave you that power too. I bet He (God) would be like ‘dang it those whites are gunna pass me up’."

So, mental illness is a social problem, right? How do we treat mental illness and stuff. People talk about that all the time in the US. I remember one campaign in my high shcool "spread the word to end the word." It was to have people stop using the word retarded as an insult.

This week I saw a first-hand account of how people treat mentally challenged people here. We were teaching a really nice good Christian family the gospel the other day. This family is so nice the mama gave us a little bag of four eggs so we could try “African food” (thinking eggs did not exist in America). As we were teaching a couple starts walking down the sandy path we were teaching on and they all started laughing and talking in Goon (their tribal language). Segal and I asked what was wrong and they said, you see that girl that is coming with that guy? The girl is "folle" which direct translate is crazy woman, but it means she has special needs. They told us that this man with her married her from some dumb reason. The way they were talking was quite rude then when the couple got closer they all stood up and circled around her and started harassing her and her husband. They were poking her, putting leaves on their heads and dancing like crazy people. The man seemed very nice about it though. He just kept trying to keep his wife calm. The couple bought some stuff from the Mama and kept walking. After wards the people we were teaching all ran to the well and washed their hands saying if you touch mentally ill people and don’t wash your hand you will become like them. This was a nice Christian family that did this too this woman. I’m sure she gets the same treatment everywhere Segal and I were so shocked we just ended the lesson, it was too much for us.

The second run in with mental illness was so weird. This week we were walking and we hear this man hiss behind us. The universal sound for “look at me”, so we turned to see where the hissing was coming from. We see a man running at full speed towards us dripping in sweat. He is wearing a golden boomba shirt with really tight skinny jeans tucked into black military boots. This man has some orange powder coming out his mouth as he speaks and he starts to explain rapidly, out of breath how he is a security guard, and a man who speaks five languages. He says how he super smart but does not goes to school. Then he loses all strength and runs across the street and collapses in front of a house and askes for water. They bring him some and he drinks it, splashes some on his face then tries to steal the drink of a man walking by. The man was so shocked he just kinda pushed this crazy guy off while we watch in horror. We wonder if we should just leave, then he runs back across the street and has a totally different personality. He starts explaining his life from birth. Then he points to this random girl down the street a little way and he explains that she was a “creature of the night” meaning prostitute. He says that she is pregnant with his kid and he has brought her along with him where ever he goes for five months. He calls his “girlfriend” over and we say hi to her give her a restoration brochure with our number. Then the man looks at us and just starts bawling his eyes out. Through his tears he cries about how the police are chasing him and he has nowhere to feel safe and how he is going to run away to his village to present his prostitute girlfriend to his mom so that he can get out of his forced marriage. Then he abruptly stops crying and closes his eyes, changes his voice, and in a creepy deep voice he says in a mix of French and English "The whites will always be whites the blacks will always be blacks. I know you want their hearts. I know how to get them, they are easy I will do anything for you. I am your servant." Then he snaps back into his first personality and says sorry if I was a little intense say “hi” to Elder for me and he shakes our hands and walks away. Segal and I were very shaken up about meeting a schizophrenic. Since that day he has called us two times from two different numbers. The latest one was just this morning and he said he made it to the village, his mom is out in the fields and he told us have a good Sunday, even though today is Monday. I’m scared, that guy is too weird, too weird.

So, for when I got slapped. At the end of one of our lessons the family we were teaching wanted to take pictures of us so they held up the phone and I smiled kind of jokingly as I do and they are like “stop that you are ruining the picture.” I’m like, sorry. So I changed to a normal smile and they said “stop, we are taking a picture, stop”. So I just kinda made my smile less big and the girl slapped me in the face kind of annoyed. She said, “don’t you know what a picture is?” I remembered back in the day when my converts would not smile for their baptism pics so I realized they are not down with smiles in pictures. I made a face that looked like I was really ticked off and they were so happy, “now that’s a real picture.”

As a young man was praying for us in an opening prayer for a lesson he said "bless the missionaries that suffer in thy name." I had no idea he knew about that.

I took a picture of a car this week because as we were out about doing our zone stuff we saw on the back of it written in blue was the phrase in English "cover me with your blood," of course.

Segal is a really fun guy. I like teasing him from time to time because in some ways he has really adapted to the African way of life. He cracks his eggs by hitting it with a fork. He uses a bunch of oil to cook his eggs and uses a bunch of every single spice in the apartment in his eggs when he cooks them. When he cooks eggs, he has totally lost his nationality and its super fun to see.

Segal and I are always on the same wave length, it seems. We love to joke around with people. We met a guy that helped Segal get a virus off his camera card, and we convinced him that living in Benin was so much better than the US and that the people who want to leave just don’t understand the reality of what awaits them. Segal is big into politics debates and economics. He gave the guy many reasons that he will now use to convince his friends of the same thing, it was so funny.

We figured out there is a goddess that people worship here that lives in the bottom of the ocean and her name in their language is 'Mami Watta' which is just a funny pronunciation of mommy water. People say that those who wear ankle bracelets worship her. Jenson happened to have one on when we did the split to teach some people so they are convinced Elder Jenson worships Mami Watta. Segal and I are constantly attacking the beliefs of the Mami Watta people. We often joke to people here that we have seen her and because sarcasm is not a thing here everyone always believes us.

I can begin to explain the weirdness that is going on in this place. I saw a mama throw knives at her kids, luckily, she missed. I saw a kid running from her angry mom, the mom picked up a rock and with perfect arc and aim beamed her in the back of the neck when she was quite a ways away. Life here is a mess, but there are still bright sides, like Kappel baptizing that family we found. A girl we were gunna baptize in two weeks this last Sunday she said that she felt ready now, so she moved up her baptism date a week. My son Kouadio is baptizing people I found with him in Togo. My converts are going strong here in Benin, Menotin and Cococodji. I’ve done some good work. I’m very happy, life is nuts but it’s okay, I’m kinda used to it.

District lunch to celebrate Tolman and Kahombe first baptism

Check out the back of the car. "Cover me with your blood"

Kenzi Marsh sent glow sticks for me to share