We also tried to find a costume for Don Carlos Smith Band and went with the old man look.
I would like to talk about my portals theory. Here in Benin there are things called portals. Most probably due to Voodoo. You walk down a street and when you come to the end of the street you pop out in a weird place. This can work to your advantage. I used portals in Hevie to walk a distance that should take 45 mins in only 15 because I knew where all the portals were and which ones to take. They are often hidden in back roads and weird turns. Here is a story that happened this week to illustrate my point. There is a part of our sector called Wome and it is exactly like Hevie my old, red, villagy sector. We got a contact form someone who lived there. Usually when we get a contact, because there are no addresses, we get the person’s number, call them and find out a time they are available and get the name of the place they live. There aren’t any maps or signs. Maps are all in the heads of the locals. So, we get to Wome and ask where the place is. The people we asked cry out, “oh gosh it’s far. You can’t go there.” In our mission, it is illegal to take moto taxis and in this villiagy area there are no cars, only moto taxis. We tell them we are forced to walk. They do the catholic sign of the cross because we’re already dead and tell us where to walk. So, we walk down this one street forever then they tell us to take a right. We take the right, walk a ways, then they tell us to take another right and walk strait for another long time. We start wondering why on earth would they have us do that? If you can visualize what that looks like we just are taking the biggest U turn ever. So, we walked and walked and finally made it. It took us two hours to get there. When we arrived, we taught the family then we decided instead of going all the way around in the huge U shape, we would just cut straight across and save lots of time....... Famous last words. I have never been so lost on my mission. We walk into this weird jungle. We see all sorts of weird places and paintings. I’m sure we were the first missionaries to step foot in those secluded corners of this planet. I walked by some kids where I was the first white person they had seen and they stared in awe. It was nuts. After walking for a while we realized our plan was not working so we asked someone where the bridge that we took to get in and she cried even louder than the first lady. “What? That’s too far. You will never make it.” We are like well, we walked from that point to here today. She was baffled. How could we have done that? It’s like that place is miles and miles away. However, we asked the directions and they showed us the portals back home. So, after two hours out there, forty minutes of teaching and three and a half hours to walk back we made it home. I collapsed because I was still feeling a little sick before I went out that morning. I believe the only explanation for why we got so lost was portals and I learned to never try to make your own path, trust the locals, they know what’s up.
We had 9 investigators at church which was cool. Serge and his wife are getting married on Saturday which is exciting. Sadly, I didn’t do much else this week.
The "Old Man" costume for Don Carlos Smith Band
Me during the concert
After the concert
