Fishers of Men

I hope everyone had a great Easter yesterday! This week was mostly just finance clerk training for me- so with that I think it'd be better if I shared a story from a couple weeks ago as opposed to learning how to be an accountant in french west Africa.

About two months ago I started teaching two brothers named Herve and Sidjwon. I first got to know them by playing soccer with them on Saturday mornings with other members in the area. Herve is 16, Sidjwon is 14 and they both live with their aunt because their parents are gone. They don't speak the best french because they've only been able to go to school when their aunt has had extra money. (Side note: Here you pay the school daily or weekly so if you don't have money you might only go to school once a week, or one week out of the month). They were excited to get some education about the bible, english, and I helped them with their other homework. They live in a town called Zongo that's a littler farther away from Lome so we were only able to go out there about once a week.

In one of the lessons we were talking about chemistry, history, and what makes a sin a sin. After I had explained what a sin was they looked at me with very worried faces. They talked in hushed voices for a second and then Sidjwon hit Herve indicating that he had something to say. Herve turned to me with a very somber face and said in french "I think we're going to have to keep sinning every morning and every night, we kind of need to if we want to eat." I was a little confused by their response and agreed that everyone sinned everyday but we always have the opportunity to improve. He insisted that they couldn't stop that they did it every sunrise and sunset. I asked him to explain exactly what they were doing he just kept saying "We sin". I asked him to repeat what he was trying to say in Ewe to see if I could better understand. Turns out he was saying that they fished every morning and evening. To sin and to fish are the same words in french. After I figured out that that was what they were talking about I quickly explained that fishing isn't a bad thing to do. They have a drainage ditch/ stream right by their house. So after we cleared up that confusion about fishing and sinning we started talking about fishing and how they do it there. I was intrigued and wanted to try but we don't exactly have a lot of time to do stuff like fishing while we are here. I explained that to them and they were both pretty sad that they wouldn't get to show a white man how to fish in Africa. Seeing that they were upset I decided to make a deal with them; when they got baptized we would go fishing right after the baptism and stay out with them for the rest of the day.

That's exactly what happened last Saturday. I baptized both of them in the morning and then all of us head up to Zongo to hit the river (drainage river). Their poles were some bamboo sticks with string attached and a hook. We dug around the river found some worms and then we were set. I ended up showing them that apparently I am a master african fisherman. I caught 5 fish, Sidjwon caught 2, Herve caught 1, and everyone else combined caught 0. The fish were about as nasty looking as the water (see the attached pictures). That didn't stop us from frying them up that night and eating the with a healthy serving of pat.

Later while we were eating I got my call from President where I learned I'd be leaving Togo the next morning. Really thankful I got to spend my last night in Togo with Herve, Sidjwon, and the fish.

Hope you guys all have a great week. 

Sometimes You Pray for A Truck...And God Sends a Tractor

So first off I got transferred to work in the office of Benin, as the financial secretary, district leader, and my district is only sister missionaries. Should be another interesting transfer.

On Wednesday, I got to do a split with Elder Bracken in Tsevie. We had planned it out a couple weeks ahead. They just got bikes so we knew we had to test them out- to the extreme. We decided that we were going to bike to the village of Gape centre (only like 30km away) but we didn't really think ahead about how it would all be sand or gravel paths in the middle of nowhere.

Biking there took a good three hours, we got to see a member and she was so excited that we made the journey out and was even more impressed when she had seen that we biked out. On the way we felt like we were going to die because it was about 100 degrees with no shade and no way to get water and we found that biking in sand isn't super easy. Got some insane pictures of beautiful African savanna  She made us some awesome food (pat) when we got there, got to talk to her family, and teach a couple lessons to her friends.

Biking back to Tsevie might have been the hardest physical thing I've ever done in my life. We were both dying the entire way because we were already dead tired and somehow both ways became uphills. At one point I got pretty far ahead of Elder Bracken so I waited for him well I clenched my side cramp. We decided we didn't know if we could physically make it so we decided to pray. I basically prayed for God to send us a truck to pass by or give us the strength or a way to make it back before I had to had to some baptismal interviews for them.

Then on the horizon I saw a car moving towards us, I waived him down and thought we were saved. He slowed down and I thought to myself "wow prayers are awesome I totally need to do this more when we are out teaching!" and then the guy in the car looked me square in the eyes flipped me off and drove away. We kept going for another half hour and then stopped to drink our last water when I saw another dot on the horizon, Elder Bracken thought I was messing with him when I told him but it kept getting closer. Turned out to be a tractor moving at like 3 miles an hour but they let us throw our bikes in the back and we took a nap on the rice bags that he had in the back.

Moral of the story: "Sometimes You Pray For A Truck... And God Sends A Tractor"

Love you guys and hope you have a great week.

Jeremy But With a Cool French & African Accent

This week I had to stay in the apartment for 2 days because one of the other guys thought that he had malaria (turns out that it was just a common cold).

On Wednesday we got to go see some of the younger kids and talk to them. So after we were finished teaching them about Jesus I taught them how to play tag. The attached photo is of one the kids and his name is Jeremy, so that's cool, and they say it with a cool French and African accent. After we took a picture together he decided he wanted to be a photographer rather than play games with us (attached some of his photos).

Despite nearly everyone here practicing voodoo they don't really care about the cleanliness of cemeteries here so I decided I'd take a picture just cause it makes me laugh a little. They got tons of trash, goats, and a guy drying his pants on a tombstone.

Hope you guys all have a great week.

VooDoo Mask

Not a ton of exciting things happened this week, I worked a lot with other missionaries in their areas.

This week a member gave me a voodoo mask that he carved that is supposed to counteract the voodoo curse that the lady gave me. With the doctor last time and the infection or rash or disease or whatever it is I'm ready to try anything so I've been sleeping with it tied up near my bed.

Today we had a zoomba activity with my district and the district of Kegue so a bunch of African kids got to see me bust about my mad dance moves and workout at the same time, also bought some fabric to make a traditional costume. I'm hoping that it'll be done around next week.

Also I attached a photo of my thermometer. It's the even hotter season right now and so it was a nice 95 degrees and humid last night at 10 pm 4 hours after the sun set, so it was possible for it to get hotter. I stand corrected.