Dear Family,
I am going
to have to agree with you again on this one... This week absolutely FLEW by! So
fast! I can't believe how fast the time is going by. I know that I say it every
week, but it's because it is true. I don't even know where the time is going! I
think father time broke his watch or something... But not to make time stop, to
make it speed up.. I don't know. Time is just leaving quick! Elder Burkhart and
I have a good time talking about it together :)
It sounds like everyone is doing well
with your lives back at home. I cannot wrap my head around the fact that Kenzy
is going to freaking college!! That is insane! She is now officially more
advanced in school than I am.. That is so weird! It sounds like they are having
a good time living together in that house. Shelby is blessed still to have you guys so close!
Just make sure she ain’t inviting any boys over there! Or you could tell them
that once her big brother gets home, he is going to kick his butt to Africa.
And not to the cool parts.. That is exciting that Cam has started schooling. I
can only imagine how tough that is... I thought taking debate my sophomore year
was tough! Law school... Haha I have much respect for him that is for sure. I
am sure that the Strongs are having a good time with their move! It is like a
little mini vacation there at first! I mean I guess it still is with them still
staying in the hotel! That is good that Jackson is getting to play football. I
bet the coaches are too! Such a stud! I am sure that they are going to like
their schools a lot! There is an Elder that was from Henderson I
think Elder Thomas. Maybe they are in the same ward... Sounds like the whole
family is doing well! And that makes me happy!
For me this
week... It was a pretty busy week! There was a lot that happened, but not
really much to tell haha. So don't get all excited thinking that you are going
to get this big long email explaining every detail of every single little thing
that happened. But I will do my best! Monday through Thursday was pretty
normal. We spent a lot of time teaching and getting the Assou Family ready for
their baptism.
Their story is a pretty good one. They have been seeing the
missionaries for the past 3 years. The father, Laurent, works as a plumber I
think (who make good money here). He was working on a baptismal font for one of
the branches here in Togo when he asked about the church. He invited the
missionaries to come and talk to him and his family at their house. Coming from
a very rich family, it was almost impossible for him to do the dote
(traditional African marriage where you have to pay a certain amount of money
to each side of the family. The richer the family, the higher the demand). So
that always threw a hiccup in his families progressing to baptism. But they
came to church, his wife and kids and all for 3 straight years without being
able to be baptized. He said that in that time he assisted many churches that
would accept him without marriage. But he said that every time he visited
somewhere else, it just didn't feel right. So he kept coming to church here. He
has a greater knowledge and deeper testimony than a lot of the members here..
He is always talking and answering questions in Elders quorum. But this
last Saturday, he was finally baptized! Him and his whole family!
My
companion and I considered leaving them a couple times because they weren't
really making any efforts towards their marriage and other things. But a couple
weeks ago in casual conversation he told us that it was already done. Haha my
companion and I were so stoked!!! The service went very well and there were no
problems with the font or water or anything! The room was FULL of people!! We
had 14 baptisms and 7 of them were from our zone alone! Go Bé Kpota!! We were
also able to baptize Mimi, a girl we have been teaching for a couple months
now.
She is really nice and I will try and send some pictures of them all. We
had to change Fofo's family's date because his wife still isn't feeling to
great from her pregnancy, and he has to go to his village
to get the marriage papers.. With time, everything will work out well! I love
both of these families so much!!! We
were talking to Fofo about him having his 10th kid and asked him if he had any
tips for us when we will have kids. He said there are three things you need to
know about raising a child. 1) If it wakes up in the night, just feed it, 2) if
that doesn't work, that means it’s sick and take it to the hospital. And 3) if
you just don't know what to do just pray to God and everything will be okay.
Haha I found though quite helpful!
On Friday we have our Zone Leader training with
President Weed and the Assistants. That went really good as usual. There are 3
zone leaders leaving soon, so they had to pick three others. Elder Edwards was
one of them. The other two were African Elders. We talked about the importance
of the spirit in lessons and just in life in general. It was really good! I
always love learning gospel principles. When you think you know something, you
see that you really didn't understand at all.. When the spirit leads the
lesson, you can really learn so much more! Oh yeah! I forgot about my lesson.
It went SUPER good! It was for sure lead by the spirit and I think that
everyone else really enjoyed it as well. I will have to just tell you about it
when I get home haha. Seeing that the lesson plan is all in french... Ah well!
But it was really good! Gotta love all the meetings you get to assist in being
a leader. That is probably the best part of being a Zone leader to be honest..
To be able to talk to president a lot more and take monthly lessons from him. I
love it so much! And eating charwamas (chicken and salad and fries and sauce wrapped up in a tortilla) and hamburgers isn't bad
afterwards either :)
Today we
had a "missionary/investigator" soccer activity, which turned out to
be just missionary VS the members activity haha. There weren't very many who
came. Or who played at that. There were a few that watched though. It was
really fun! I was totally put between the sticks as goalie. I am a pretty dang
good keeper if I do say so myself... The first match ended in penalty kicks and
I blocked the last one and we won!! Haha I was so lucky! That is all it really
is is luck.. I just picked a direction and jumped that way and guessed right!
The second match ended in the same way but the players who were shooting on my
choked and didn't make one... Needless to say I am leaving my ambitions of
coaching football and going to join a minor league soccer team being their
goalie... Who's with me!? Nah not really though... It was fun either way! Gotta
love going a little exercise every once and a while.
 |
| *Thank you Elder Jenkins for the picture! |
I got a pretty rad gashed
up knee too! Playing on sand is pretty tough... Makes me look tough! Haha there
was this girl who was like, "oh my heck you need medical help!!!"
because it was all oozing and looking pretty rad. But then this other girl ran
and got what I thought was disinfectant spray (I don't know what I
was thinking though of course they wouldn't have any of that here!) But in the
end it was hairspray and it stung really bad.. I was at loss of words.. Who
puts hairspray on open wounds!? She said that it worked as a disinfectant
either way, but I beg to differ... All in all, a good day :)
That's about it... My week in a nutshell! Just gotta
keep on keeping on. Love you all!! Have a great day to you all :)
Love,
Elder Landon Dean Layton
No comments:
Post a Comment