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!