Dang it, they're still here?

The investigators here are trying new and creative ways to avoid us. We had one older man say for us to come over one day as we passed by his house. Then as we went over to see him, he saw us coming and quickly tilted his head and pretended to be asleep. But we saw him do that. We thought it was weird so we got close to him and wondered what to do. Should we try to wake him up? Even though we knew he was fake sleeping. Then we saw him keep opening his eyes a little to see if we were still there and then closing them. We decided to just leave because the gospel is not forced. I don’t know why people want to see us one day and the next they do everything to get us to leave.

We did get to reactivate a member this week so that was cool.

I’m starting to see what the zone leader stuff is all about. It basically means if there are baptism interviews to do, you got to go do them. We have Porto-Novo in our zone so we have to make trips up there from time to time. So we go up there. We do get to visit our zone members often, we got some good elders here. We also did a split this week with Elder Angbo and Jenson it was fun to see Elder Jenson back in the mission he is a fun guy.

When Jenson and Angbo came we executed project babysitting with four missionaries in our sector. Jenson and I took care of all the kids in a house where we know the oldest sister can really progress, but is often distracted by her younger sisters. So, Jensen and I took them on charge while Segal and Angbo fixed a baptism date for her. It was great and funny enough the people we were babysitting weren’t kids one was 14 the other 16 they are just big disturbers.

On our way back from Porto-Novo we saw a dead lady on the street. (Death count now is 2). She had just been in an accident. We don’t know what happened but there were two motos and two cars involved and at least one fatality that we saw. When accidents happen they attract huge crowds here, like there was a crowd of over 100 people standing around and yelling. When people have a problem here everyone and their brother comes to add his opinion to the situation even if he wasn’t even there. It’s really funny.

Segal is a somewhat spiritual guy and is always motivating me saying there are people prepared for the gospel in our sector. Not just for anyone tho but for me and Segal specifically to teach and baptize them and I think we found one of these people. We met Fab__, a very young banker, who has had quite a sinful life but is now looking for Jesus. Segal and I are the right people to teach him. He has met with the missionaries before but he said he was never quite on board. But when Segal and I taught him he said he was comfortable and knows this will work. And before I will go home he will be in the US actually so I’ll have a convert in the US too that will be cool.

A good busy week.

Pictures at a dinner with a member family

Segal and I doing zone stuff

With one of our investigators

The Painful Sabbath

So, this week was super chill because I’m still with Elder Segal. We spent the first part of the week preparing for our zone conference, which was on Wednesday. I was very happy the zone conference was good. There was the spirit which is rare to find sometimes here. And not too many crazy things happened. The zone conferences I did when I first got here to the mission were weird. Everyone just using scriptures to chastise and insult each other. Everyone trying to derail every lesson and craziness. But Segal and I were among the oldest ones there and the mission is so much different. There was one missionary who like openly disagreed with president and he got flustered but other than that, completely calm.

We white washed this sector and because there are no addresses. It’s really hard to keep what the other missionaries had for us going, but we held on to three of them. To try to find people this week we met up with the ward missionaries who are a group of young adults and they showed us to every active members house in our sector. It was great. Like I’ve said in the past, the Beninese custom is to give people water every time they come visit you and your forced to drink to respect the custom. Because we visited so many people, by the end of the day Segal and I had to pee so bad.

That was what we did for the week. It was good. We met some good people, some interesting people, as well as all the joys of this mission

The hardest thing about this week was Sunday. It was hilarious I don’t know how to describe how funny and weird the three hour program was this last Sunday. We had four talks for sacrament meeting and each one of them talked about how we need to respect the bishopric, for some reason, along with a topic of their choice. It was very funny to see. Three of the talks just made no sense at all. It’s as if they just said a bunch of gospel words but not really having any point. An example of something they would say is

"the flesh is not spiritual and the flesh will lead you nowhere, for the spiritual leads to the light and the light will fight away the bad, and the good will lead the spiritual person away from that which is no longer righteous for those who believe in the flesh. So, what really will help this ward is to overcome our weakness though abandoning our flesh and helping our spirits be more spiritual, and we need to respect our bishopric."

I wish I was making this up, but it was that bad. And the kicker was the last talk where a brother shared the weirdest story I’m not quite sure what the point of sharing the story was but I’ll try to tell the real story using two (fake) names to clear up how it went. Sam is member and Bob is his friend. So, Sam offended Bob, his friend for many years, but Sam started feeling guilty because he totally lost Bob as a friend. So, he went over to Bob’s house to say sorry, but Bob was still offended a little bit but Sam was not having any of that. He wanted Bob to forgive him. So, Sam just stayed in his house and wouldn’t leave. Bob started to eat dinner with his family and Sam was still there. Bob’s wife asked him if they should invite Sam to eat. Bob said “no, I don’t know why he is still in my house.” Sam just watched them eat and complained about how hungry he was. Then night fell and Bob thought Sam would leave, but Sam didn’t leave. Sam decided to get his apology and he would just sleep in Bob’s living room, that would show him. Bob wakes up to find Sam still there. Bob and Sam both go to work, but that night Sam shows up at Bob’s house again to repeat the same thing. He does this for four days. Then on the fourth day Sam is so mad that Bob still hasn’t forgiven him he decides to sit at the table with his family and forcefully eat Bob’s food. Bob says, “if you even touch this food I will not eat it.” Then Sam sticks his finger in all the food. Bob is furious he goes in to a room his wife follows him into the room, they talk. Bob goes out says to Sam “thanks, you taught me a lot, I forgive you.” Then Sam goes home.

This story was told to us from Sam’s perspective because he was the member who actually did this. If any one understands this story, that would shock me. Segal and I were holding back laughs about how horrible this member was to his friend who he already offended and then forced him to accept his apology. The rest of the church followed a similar pattern of lessons that made no sense.

I love this place, it’s nuts.

Segal and Larson looking towards the future

A picture in my sector - Finagnon

My room in Finagnon (mine is the bed with the net)

Me

Number One and Eleven

I spent the first half of the week in Porto-Novo with all my stuff packed up. We had a crazy experience on Wednesday. The tenth of January is the biggest Voodoo holiday and the country that practices the most Voodoo in the world is Benin and the place where they have their festivals is in Porto-Novo, the capital. So, we got all ready to go see the Voodoo festival where people stab themselves with knives and don’t get hurt and do a lot of dances very similar to the chicken dance. Anyway, we got to the place to wait with a family that had a brother with a car who would take us. We got there at 7 and waited forever. When he finally showed up at 10:30 we were mad. And then he didn’t have enough places in his car for us four because he already picked up two other people. And because we can’t take motorcycles here he decided to go to the festival drop the two off and come right back. As he left the family said after all these inconveniences God probably doesn’t want us to go, something bad would come to us. Beninese are a very superstitious people so I believed them and we went home. So, I don’t know what bad thing would have happened, but I did not see the biggest Voodoo festival in the world because of God's protection, I guess.

I finally got to come to Finagnon on Thursday and meet my new apartment and new elders inside. There is Elder Tolman, a missionary form Utah, who has been out about a month and a half on his mission. He is still in training and his trainer is Elder Kahombe, another Congolese who wants to learn English. So, I speak English to the guy who speaks French and I speak French to Tolman, the American who speaks English. A little backwards maybe, but it works.

The apartment is fantastic here. Nice size, nice location, biggest bathroom I’ve had on my mission, everything I need. A bread lady stopes by every morning with french bread but speaks no French. We told her to wait we would grab money come back and buy. When we went into the apartment to grab money, she had already left. She must have thought we said go away.

Because neither of us know anything we are kinda finding our own way through the sector because there are no addresses. The elders before us left a list of where the people live on a piece of paper and showed Elder Tolman the places and Elder Tolman showed us, it was funny.

Then the biggest blessing, my first companion came back and became my eleventh companion. Segal and I being back together in this big apartment with a nice sector and no worries makes me wonder what happened to the Benin Cotonou mission. This mission is supposed to be hard all the time but no, this is great. Segal and I get along great. We have had different mission experiences, but we have done good work. He has done all his time in Togo. I’ve done most in Benin and I’m showing him around. Just the fact I’ve spent over a year of my life in Benin I’ve picked up some of their languages and stuff, it’s really cool to see. Things seem to be going up. The zone we have seems good I’m really happy after much suffering. I think some blessings have come, the church is true.

With Segal

Good bye Elder......Johnson?

I have a testimony God works in mysterious ways. I have been transported backwards 16 months and will work with one of my MTC companions, Elder Segal. We are going to be zone leaders in Finagnon, a sector in Benin. Which means after only five weeks in Porto-Novo I will have to leave. This is super weird, the branch members here are actually pretty friendly, for the most part, which is a little rare for this mission. But when they wanted to be all sad because I was leaving they were not sure my name. I got called Ellison, Ellie, and most commonly Johnson. I got lots of people saying goodbye to Johnson so Elder Johnson will be greatly missed here in Porto-Novo even though he doesn’t exist.

This last week we kept visiting our crazy investigators who don’t progress. Uaua had two baptisms, which was cool to see. We did some good work but five weeks is not a long time at all. My reflections on Porto-Novo are it’s not that different from Cotonou. I really like the apartment and its placing with everything I need nearby. The branch has some work to do but I’ve heard where I’m going there is even more work to do.

Some really good news I heard for those of you who remember the story of Ge__, the man who was going to kill himself when me and my son found him. Well, he was baptized last week by my son it was such great news to hear. A man at the lowest depths of life has risen and now has joined the true church.

I know Thomas S. Monson was God’s chosen prophet on the earth, and I love how I know can already fully trust His new prophet. This Church is true, and I’m excited to have seven more months of telling this people that very message.

With kids in the sector

Porto-Novo district

With Uaua

Frozen eggs from the fridge that doesn't always work

Bowling in the apartment

"Perfect Brown Baby" From Bad Lip Reading (2:35)

Uaua with a pig

I, Missionary

It is really interesting having a Tahitian in my apartment because he has seen all the same movies I’ve seen, watched the same TV shows and stuff. However, he watched it all in French. As we have been discussing moves and TV shows I have found sometimes in the French translation of English movies they change words and names. The ones I thought were funniest are Hogwarts is Poudlard, Squidward from Spongebob is named Carlos, Gollum from Lord of the Rings is Toby. All these things made me laugh, a lot.

So, last Monday was Christmas but on Tuesday we had our Christmas party. The food was super good but the presentation of the nativity and stuff was pretty sad. Our zone was in charge of a skit about the nativity but our practices were weird and ineffective so when it got to time to do our sketch no one knew what to do so we all looked like losers fumbling around. We sang an impromptu off pitch version of Oh Come all ye Faithful and called it good.

The rest of the week was not too eventful. My comp was pretty sick and slept a ton so I went back to my killing old missionary techniques to not go crazy.

We had a branch activity on Saturday and it was insane to see how we had about 100 individuals present 80 of them were under 12 which is the most people I’ve ever seen at the church building. Sadly, when it came time for church the next day there were about 10 people on time for church.

New Year’s is a super big deal here for some reason. The idea of the year changing is super crazy and people love blowing lots of money they don’t have to party and shoot of fireworks all night long. It was kinda cool to get on the roof and see the whole capital a light with little African firecrackers and this morning the city was so clam, everyone in their beds hungover, so great.

“Does believing you're the last sane man on the planet make you crazy?” is a quote from I, Robot. This quote often passes through my head as I see the different personalities of people here; missionaries, members and investigators alike. I don’t know what it is but I’m sure everyone here is insane. We teach this mama who is just crazy. We call and ask her if we can come over she says yes. We get there knock on the door, no one answers. Then we see her next time she gets mad we didn’t come. Then she remembers that right after she hung up the phone with us she went to sleep. And she randomly laughs really loud at nothing. All of her past experiences, she has to act out. I love teaching her because you never know what’s coming next. I asked her if she believed in Jesus Christ and she went on this rant about how she is a prophetess and got a vison about how the Catholic church is a church run by evil men. It was a very crazy piece of theater we watched. I watched a Muslim chastise a bunch of other Muslims for celebrating Christmas. I also can teach people the same thing in a million different ways and they will never remember. I love my investigators and this people is really open I just wonder if it’s just me that’s crazy or it’s just everyone else.

I was also blessed with a few people that came to church on their own so we might have some people who progress. I haven’t had an investigator come to church since I got here to Porto-Novo, so a little progression was great to see.

I get to come home this year I’m so happy. I did all of 2017 here in Africa and on my mission. It has been a million dollar experience that I’ll cherish, but I wouldn’t pay a cent to do again.

Pictures from the Missionary Christmas Party

At the Christmas party we got a bunch of cards from random members of the church. I got a drawing from a primary kid with the same name as me, it was just a coincidence, but it was crazy. So thanks, Riley.

Thanks to the Ellingford family I got some pizza ingredients for Christmas. So on this New Year's Day I embarked on a quest to make an African Pizza

No can opener - a knife works just fine

Re-hydrating the freeze dried cheese

All put together - time to cook

Creative cooking when you don't have an oven

Success!

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.}

Call home for Christmas! (Kaelyn added this picture)

Our fridge stocked for Christmas

The water after washing my clothes

The Christmas Parades

Bringing the joy of Christmas to Islam

This week was the week before Christmas, but seriously this place does not change for Christmas. Luckily Elder Uaua had the Christmas spirit and put up some Christmas lights (pictured below) so we kinda were feeling the Christmas spirit.

We had a normal week in the sector just trying to find people. We found a few, and lots reject us. I have found this sector is highly Muslim populated, so that makes things interesting. I always said I wanted to teach a Muslim so I could help someone gain a testimony of Christ, which I had never done, and now about half of my investigators are nice Muslims that will let us talk to them. So, that is awesome. Maybe my wish will come true.

As the Christmas season comes around I’m thinking about doing more service. You would think I would find many service opportunities every day because everyone here does everything by hand. Well, that is true, however, no one wants to let us help because we are white and are dressed nice. Like people get mad at us for trying to help them. Even if they are struggling to carry something they would rather let the thing fall or they would rather die before letting us help them. Every time they DO let me help they are always surprised that a white person could know how to sweep or carry something. It’s really funny. They all applaud like it’s the first time I held a broom. I have found that people are used to just treating people that teach the gospel as “gods on earth” because that’s how the pastors like it. But we are not pastors. It’s weird when people treat us as if we are. They are surprised to find that we wash our own clothes and cook our own food. They say it is unjust for a man of god to do house work. It’s a weird culture thing. I work hard to get that out of peoples’ heads because just because you teach the gospel does not make you perfect, ever. I have a big testimony of this principal after coming here.

We had a dinner with a family this week to celebrate the holidays and I wore a traditional West African clothing made for me. It was super cool. We drank some of their flower fruit drink and it turned my poop blue, so that was crazy but I didn’t take a picture because that is gross.

Okay sorry if that was too personal or something just some of the adventures I’m having, nothing too spiritual yet because I’m working hard to find people but its coming along.

Christmas lights in the apartment

With Daniel

Me with kids in the sector

Boomba, traditional West African clothing

Me with Kappel in our boombas

Uaua, Kappel, Larson

Saying goodbye to Araphath, who is leaving for his mission to Nigeria