Hospitals & Miracles! (Week #63)

This week was so crazy and so so awesome. It went by so fast but so much happened... wild. Anyways right into it as always. *WARNING IN ADVANCE, LONGEST EMAIL EVER* only read if you have lots of time, and you really care about me enough haha *MIRACLES AHEAD* Monday I was still sick with the fever. I stayed in that evening. Got some porc au four (tasty pork), and then went to bed. Tuesday woke up did my stuff and then we had a pretty good district Council. Elder Tanner led a good discussion on inspired questions that's impacted my teachings throughout the week. We had a fun role play and I personally learned a lot. I hope the district feels the same haha. This same day we had a couple great lessons, first with Digbeu. That man is great! Last time we left him with the book of Mormon. This time we came back, and he had written down questions that came to his head through reading. It led to an amazing discussion and im so glad he's taking an initiative. We left him with 3 Nephi 11 and hope he'll read and ask questions again. Also we're pretty hopeful for seeing him at church this Sunday! one of our members said he'd pass by and grab him Sunday morning. Also we had a lesson with Sylvia! She's amazing! She was given to us by a member and used to be nervous and closed off to the missionaries but it's so cool to see how much she's opened up to us and to see her start to take charge of her own testimony. She also will be picked up by a member on the way to church! Wednesday. Wednesday was probably one of my favorite days of my mission oh my gosh. It was an exchange with Elder Okubalu from Nigeria. Ah we had so so much fun. We started the day with a goal to find and teach 3 new people... well, we found and taught 18 haha In the morning our lesson fell through so we ended up contacting and teaching. God just kept placing miracles and perfect people in our path. We just kept asking people if we could help serve them, do their dishes, hang or wash their clothes etc. The entire day we probably asked like 30 people. And surprisingly 3 of them actually said yes!! So we got to help! I'll get back to that later. Anyways when they would say no, we'd be a little persistant, mess with them a little, and then just talk and be friends! It wasn't hard to always bring the conversation back to Jesus Christ. And on doing so we were always able to teach a couple principles and give a brochure out. At the end of the morning, we found a bunch of people washing clothes. We asked if we could help and they said no no! Then my companion Elder okubalu went and just did it anyways It was SO funny ahahahah everyone was laughing so hard. But he was like dead serious. They were trying to push him away but he was like no, I'm washing your clothes lol. It was so hype. Anyways. Miracle same time, this happened to be the neighbors of a recent convert from Andokoi! Élysée! He lives so far away from his ward but he's such a beast. I knew him because I was in andokoi before here and so it was awesome to find his home! So after a successful morning of service we found and taught 4 new friends. Pretty good!! To celebrate our efforts we went to the KFC in their area haha. It was kinda mid tbh but it was just SO HYPE because we were just messing around and having fun. We skipped language study and went out to a members (ward missionary leader) house so we could take him to lessons. While we were waiting for him to get ready this girl named aria came and talked to us. Well I was like "hey that's cool and all, but I'm just gonna call you Ariana is that OK?" And then she said "only if you add grande at the end" and I got SO HYPE. Let's just say we ended up all singing Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, and Juice WRLD together hahahaahahhaha. Then they went and looked up my Instagram and it was kinda fun/ embarrassing to look back through all of my posts but mad hype anyways. We were all singing so loud. Anyways we left with the DMP (Ward Missionary Leader) and went to a member that hasnt come to church really since his baptism in 2010. BROOO THE LESSON WAS SO HYPE. The guy was like ok I've been sinning since 2010 until now like what can i do? Broooo. Christ's Atonement is Infinite! We explained a little and he was frapped by the spirit (hit by the spirit) he really understood what it meant to repent and he said he would and then he'd come to church on Sunday for the first time in like 10+ years. Whaaaa Then we started walking places and the DMP would just yell out "POP SMOKE", or "LIL' BABY" Super loud. It was hilarious. Anyways we started going to our appointments. Literally 2 doors in a row we interrupted them "doing it" it was so crazy oh my gosh. So that led us to having no appointments, so what'd we do? We started finding again ahhaha Like I said earlier, service with a spiritual thought is definitely the way to go, so we found a group of mamans pouring water into barrels so of course we ran over and offered to help, they said yes so we went over to water pumps across the road and down a little, filled up buckets, and then carried them back. They loved it so much! They were having so much fun with us. Finally we gave a little lesson. At this point they were literally circling around us, I felt like I was sermon on the mounting this thing up bro. Like I was literally just talking to multitudes. 3 of them were actually interested and wanted to learn more so we took their numbers and set up a next appointment. After this the DMP took us to one of his friends. We sat inside this shack ish area and initially wanted to teach the first principle or something, but neither of us had a brochure or anything to give out. Except I had one last book of Mormon so I was like bro let's just go straight into the big book itself. So we taught the book of Mormon. More and more people kept entering until the place was full. It was funny the people would come on and be loud and the people that were already interested just chastised them so hard hahaha. I really felt the spirit during that. And finally the MIRACLE! Please if you're going to read anything, read this part! It was definitely a mission highlight. Ok so, me and Elder Okubalu... oh I love that man. We didn't have anything to do and didn't know where to go. I saw an apartment building and couldn't stop looking at it. I knew we needed to go in so I said Elder okubalu you wanna do door to door contacting?? (Something my cher collegue and current zl Elder earl taught me how to do) and he was like no no no no no. It's very unheard of to do door to door contacting here. Although it's efficient it's just not necessary and some people don't like it because it's kinda scary. Anyways he didn't wanna and I was like nah bro were going so I walked in and I looked back and he was still in the road just watching me lol. I was like bro! Let's go! Finally he was walking slowly while being like nah nah nah! Anyways I'm kinda just following the spirit. I look at the first floor and don't see anything that really hit me hard, walked to the top floor which was blocked off and then walked down some steps and saw an open door. I kinda just was staring at it. I felt like I needed to go in but same time the door was open like I couldn't even knock so it was kinda weird. Anyways I just kinda stood there and waited haha. I knew I needed to go in but because of the situation it was weird. Anyways I finally snapped outta whatever trance I was in and noticed the someone was making eye contact with me the entire time from their living room in the crack in the door. And I was like oops that's awkward sorry for staring at your door for 2 minutes. So I started walking away and someone ran out and said "il y a la place" which kinda means like hey there's room, come sit. So I was like okay bet. We got in and oh my gosh it was just the best family ever. There was a mom and 6 kids. And they were so so obedient. The mom just told them to sit down and listen to the word of God and they did! Anyways. We sit down and were just talking a little and introducing ourselves. It's the family Bolou. There's the Mom, adele. And then Grace, Ayisha, Enoch, Princess, Leslie, and Naomi. I'm never gonna forget them. We started with a prayer and then I asked if anyone had any questions. The mother said yes, here was her question: Why are there so many different Jesus's? At first I was a little confused not gonna lie. But she explained and it was a perfect question. Here in Africa there's so so many different religions, and everyone believes in Jesus Christ in a different way, and everyone believes that he's different. For that reason there's tons of different versions of Jesus out there, some who believe he's just a spirit. Others who believe he has a body of flesh and bones. Some who believe he's God in the flesh, others that believe he's the son of God and a different being completely. This gave me a perfect example to really go into the apostasy and explain how all these different beliefs really started. And then show what we know to be true. We started the lesson and the spirit was so powerful. They asked the perfect questions and the spirit definitely guided the responses. We taught the full first lesson and when we got to Joseph Smith the spirit was so strong. It was one of the first times that I couldn't hear a thing if i didn't talk. It's so hectic here and even if you're inside, there's always speakers outside, or kids inside, or music etc. But for one of the first times, if I didn't talk, it was dead silent. It was such a delicate discussion we had that was handles with such care. It got hard for me to speak, the only thing carrying my voice to this family was the spirit. Then we taught the book of Mormon and the spirit only got more powerful. My companion lost his voice, I could hardly speak, and the family was so attentive. We finished the lesson and the first thing the mom said is, I need this book for my entire family. We wanted to give them one so bad but sadly I gave out our last one and the apartment was like a 30 minute walk away and it was already late and dark out. But the spirit really pushed me to say something I've never said before. I said we'll come back tonight and give you some. But in order to do so and be obedient at the same time we literally full sprinted home. Elder Okubalu and I were so wiped. On the way we called the elders at the apartment and told them to pull out books of Mormon and brochures so we could just grab them and run. We got back, grabbed em, and ran again. We showed up drenched in sweat but in time with some books and brochures. It was great, we got a brochure for every family member except for the 1 year old and then a couple books. Wrote our testimony inside and name and numbers. They took it and started reading while we were there haha. They couldn't even wait. Then the Mother told us the craziest thing yet.... SHES LEGALLY MARRIED!! Hahaha not the craziest thing but definitely so so rare here and made them even more perfect then they already were. Anyways. It was an amazing day where we found lots of people with potential to progress. It's a BEAUTIFUL sector. I'll send tons of pics. In facts, I'll make it a drive link so you can actually see them all.. at the end of that day we found 18 new friends that have potential to progress. It was so inspired and definitely one of my mission highlights. There's just proof for me that even if your appointments don't work out, and it's hard, we can keep going and make the best of our situation and have so much fun doing so. The next day I had an exchange with my amazing MT Elder Hendrickson! Woo-hoo! It was so hype.... for the couple hours that it lasted haha. His companion was feeling sick sick so they ended up following the council of sister Litchfield and went to the hospital. When they received the news that he had malaria they sent me to the hospital to give him a blessing. I love blessings. They're so awesome. We also got some fun pictures with the nurses there and got to talk a little. Then there was a food place close and we didn't have food at the apartment so we stopped by real quick and ate. It was super cool and gave me and Elder Ojo a great opportunity to strengthen our relationship. The next day we had weekly planning, planned a LOT, and then got out to an amazing lesson. It was a lesson with someone we had coming to our church's husband. He seemed very sincere and interested. Well we invited him to church and he came! Then he walked up to the bishop after and said hey, how can I be baptized? It was so awesome! We explained to him that we needed to teach everything first and he needed to be in line with the principles as well. Sadly he's living in wedlock. Not legally married but live as if they're married. Sadly he can't be baptized until they're legally married but we have high hopes! Anyways sorry I skipped from friday to Sunday. After weekly planning and that one appointment with that guy I just told about, we got a call saying another member of our district got sick with typhoid and was staying overnight in the hospital soooo.... we went back and gave another blessing. We blessed them talked a little, then visited the other companionship in the same hospital in our district then left haha. We went from there to a baptismal interview. I love baptismal interviews. It gives such a special delicate opportunity to really get to know someone and see the love they have for God and our redeemer Jesus Christ.. after that we went home and rested Saturday we had another baptismal interview in the morning, and then went out and worked hard. We did some door to door contacting, found some interested people, and then had some good lessons. After all of that and a busy night we had someone give us some good food then we went home. Now Sunday. Sunday morning I felt like GARBAGE. My entire body just hurt, and not just like sore muscles I overworked myself, it was like it hurt to the touch. Apparently that can happen from serious fevers, which is probably what happened with me and my fever from the week before. Anyways, I was like struggling to keep myself up at church so we came back and Elder hendrickson was in a pretty similar situation so we just took our stuff to the hospital. We went to a nice one this time ahha. Not the same one we went to with the other people because they were short staffed over there. So we got to go to the nice big hospital in koumassi (farah) . They took a blood test and gave us some medication to get better it wasn't anything serious. Elder Hendrickson has a "blood Infection" but he didn't make it sound bad at all so we were just confused haha. Anyways, my body still hurts but were feeling better today. It was a nice drive tho and allowed me to focus on my health instead of going out and working (which is what I would've done if I stayed home) So yeah! That's that! We found a pet porcupine, saw a pretty sunset and a bunch of other stuff. You'll have to check the photos haha. Ok WINNER OF THE WEEK!: BELLA BOMAM BROO WHATTTT . BELLA IS ENGAGED!! NAHHH THATS CRAZY!! There's someone in my apartment from corner that knows Bella so it was so hype being like bro, she's getting married, and then just both of us having like a brain explosion because like there's no shot people our age are getting married. That's soooo hype!! Nahh I literally couldn't stop thinking about it. BELLA I DONT THINK YOU READ MY EMAILS BUT IF YOU DO, KNOW THAT IM SO PROUD OF YOU AND I LITERALLY COULDNT STOP THINKING ABT IT. nahhhh what!!! Ahh that's so awesome. Ok enjoy photos! 1-2 Landscape of Judée 2-4 Palm Tree Internet Tower 5-10 Selfies on a Hill with a Bunch of Teenagers 11-13 View of Judée 14-17 Walking with the DMP on exchanges 18 View 19-23 The MIRACLE Family Bolou! 24-26 Eating with Elder Ojo 27 Porcupine 28-30 sunset 31 family again 32 just finished getting water in the rain 33-37 Elder Okubalu and I 38 Dog in Shelter 39-41 In Hospital