Falcons vs. Knights (week #7)

Hey everybody! Sorry I missed last week with getting here and training it just didnt really work out in a convient way however after a full week in the field I got tons to talk about. 

First, Ghana airport. We went to the Ghana airport and it's pretty nice! I bought pizza, some candy it was as close as I've  gotten to an american looking place. I bought 2 bags of sour skittles, which I'm sad to say are already gone, and a giant thing of mentos, which I'm also sad to say I lost. The airport was awesome though and the flight was so quick! We flew on emirates and left ghana and I swear it felt like we were landing in Côte d'Ivoire 15 minutes later. It was really 45 but it went by super fast. 

On the drive in to the mission homes for our first training we really started to get a taste off what Abidjan is really like. If you ever look up a picture of Abidjan you'll see a giant city on the coast with giant skyscrapers all of that stuff. That's not anything like where any of us are serving. Yes its technically Abidjan but its the buisness part of Abidjan. Abidjan actually got named the economic capital of Cotê d'Ivoire and that's half the reason. Basically it's too much just work based that no one cares what we have to say so for that reason it isn't in our mission boundaries. Also on the way in our car we saw our first fully naked black dude!! Woo-hoo! 

Next we made it to Cocody. Cocody is actually in the east mission but the west and east mission homes neighbor each other so we went to the west mission home to start interviews and get trained. Before we went in they drove us to the temple which is currently underconstruction but looking great. It has a silver angel moroni which is interesting but it looks so cool. The head of construction there told us all that we WOULD be there for the dedication of the temple, that was so awesome to hear. I can't wait to go through the temple.

Quick little intermission. If you're ever wondering how much currency here translates to currency in america do this. Lets say something costs 3000 CFA

Take the 3000, times it by 2 (3000 x 2=6000) and then move the decimal point 3 over. So 3000 CFA would be 6 dollars. 40000 CFA would be 80 dollars. There ya go incase i ever talk about currency here you'll know what I'm talking about.

The night before i got a companion assignment we slept in a hotel which was, not to my knowledge, the last place I'd have a hot shower. Man imma miss it :( we got up had a scrumptious breakfast and they picked us up brought us to the stake center and gave us companion assignments! The night before in interviews president told me my companion probably wouldnt be a native speaker and they'd be english speaking. I considered myself so lucky. Turns out 7/8 trainers were white or spoke perfect english. Did not expect that. You could really tell all the companionships were assigned by God. Everyone worked perfect for each other and it was awesome. We got to know everyone before a tiny bit just through basic conversation. The mission president got to me and...... drumroll pleaseee..... Elder Miller! Now you guys don't know who that is but I was hyped.

Elder Miller is from DRAPER UTAH and played soccer most of his life. He was the goalie on the Lone Peak soccer team and the kicker on Lone Peak's football team. He played a semester of college soccer then came on his mission after.  He's pretty hype. How crazy is it that my first companion is a white guy from the neighboring city over. 

Now I apologize for the long email but here comes the crazy stuff that happened in field. First, this place looks like a giant call of duty map. Everywhere. Giant holes in the walls of broken down buildings, im serious if zombies started coming out of building I don't think I'd be too shocked. Also our apartment is being taken over by cockroaches. It's actually been kind of fun though to try and get my "cockroach kill count" up. Pretty sure my companion is somewhere in the 500 range. I got some catching up to do. 

The second day in the field had it's ups and downs, but regardless, it was so wild. I had my very first lesson this day and yes obviously I cant speak the language very well and I dont understand it all but i actually understood a whole lot more than i thought i would, i bore my testimony in broken french and bam first lesson done. Not too har- sorry i stopped typing to kill a cockroach -not too hard! Then the second lesson. Man it was tough. Elder Cavé was Elder Miller's last companion and everyone loves him, he speaks fluent french and is just a stand up guy. I'm the Cavé replacement, the guy that can't speak french at all and just listens. You could tell this second girl was super super bummed I wasnt elder Cavé. She was just frowning the entire time and seemed really disappointed.  I felt super bad because i couldn't even help cheer her up cause how am i supposed to comfort her in french! It was really hard. It sucks being the replacement especially when you're a worse replacement at the time. Next we went to visit sœur(sister) colombe. Her two best friends came and joined, sœur comfort and sœur Éméline. We call them the triple threat. They were acting bummed at first but then they just started all messing with me in a loving way, I've actually since then have done service with sœur comfort and ive started to teach sœur Éméline english! None of them are members but they're all very close to baptism.  Sœur comfort goes to church most weeks and will get baptised after she learns to read! She's learning to read through the book of Mormon which is awesome.  Most of our lessons with her now are just teaching her how to read. They're all super fun though and I can't wait for the day when i can start to communicate with them well.

Interpol??? If you read no other paragraph please read this one. Towards the end of the night we were walking around and this guy stopped us. He spoke english!!! That helped so much cause i could communicate and help out! Elder Miller caught me up and told me they met with him once and a tiny bit about it. Anyways after that he was pretty much just saying he loves us and he loves our work. He invited us into his house so we sat down. Our conversation was gospel orientated for aboutttt 2 minutes before it went all down hill. We gave him a book of mormon and a pamphlet but instead he'd rather talk about america. He goes on saying he used to work in interpol and then he went to his room brought out 10 passports and just laid them out on the table for us. Then he started talking about America, then the fact that white people dont belong in America and they should leave. Ok weird, whatever then he was talking about how all we care about is money, here's a quote "instead of in God we trust, it should say in money we trust *insert hysterical laughing here*" this guy was insane. He said white people have no real friends except for money and we don't care about anything or anyone unless money is involved. We just laughed it off. Then he said "let me show you what african power is" goes to his room, comes back with a bag, dumps it out in front of us and its full of whips. I swear he was one thought away from cracking those things. Me and my companion were ready to run at any moment. Also this guy LOVES obama, wouldnt be surprised if he had a shrine in his room. This guys insane. Even more happened but we'll stop it there haha. 

Except for that nothing too crazy! I bore my testimony in church. My heart was thumping but I said a pretty good amount. Ive been praying in french a lot and thats helped. We did a service project and probably collected like 50 pounds of trash out of gutters in the side of the road. Not sure actually how much it was but it was a lot, and gross. French is coming slowly but coming. Yeah that's pretty much it! Sorry for the crazy long email I had a lot to cover. Love and miss you all and i love hearing from you! Keep em' coming! Au revoir!