Week 6,853 or something like that...

Storm rolling in

Tuesday. We started off the day with District Council Meeting led by Elder Asumani. The meeting started a little late, around 10:30, and didn't end until after 12:00.  We got ready to go but just as we walked out the door it started to rain on us pretty hard. For those who haven't experienced rain in Africa, a normal storm here would be a heavy rain back home, so when I say pretty hard I mean you can't see the bottom third of your bike tire when you are riding around. President Hill has asked that no one goes out when it's raining because of the danger so we stayed in and waited it out. It wasn't until later in the afternoon that the rain let up and we could head outside again. We got out and did some good work in the late afternoon and evening, though we didn't have much time to work with. I felt satisfied with what we accomplished though. 

Tracting with Hayford

Wednesday. Elder Martineau and I were together for the day because Taylor and Uzoho went to a different district council meeting in our zone. The weather looked bad when we started the day but we were hoping it would just blow over without too much damage. We were out in a really far portion of my area for the day and by the time we got there the weather was looking better. We picked up the member we were taking teaching with us and even asked him if he thought it would rain. He said no so we continued on with what we were doing. Not 20 minutes later it started to pour on us and we were stuck in a shop that was a 45 minute bike ride away from the apartment. We were stuck for quite a while but when it finally broke up a little, we rode as hard and fast as we could for the apartment. Just as we walked onto the front porch it started to rain again. We were trapped for the rest of the afternoon while the rain continued to come down. It stopped in the evening just enough for us to go to coordination and have Taylor and Uzoho steal our bikes to go out and teach more. That left us to walk home which took up another large portion of the evening. Because of the tough breaks we had, we decided to treat ourselves with pancakes and caramel syrup for dinner. They were absolutely amazing and well worth it. 

Thursday.  That evening we had a program at the church and President Hill was speaking at it. It was a fireside for all the recent converts and investigators but most of the members showed up too. We got there early and President Hill wanted to go out and contact with us just on the street corner. It was awesome to see him out there contacting and to be able to learn from him. At one point, Martineau and I ended up together to do some contacting which was really fun since we both don't know how to contact at all. The program was really great and we had an awesome time joking around with President Hill afterwards. We didn't leave the church until late so it was just back to home for the night. 

Martineau and Goodrich

Friday. Once again I was back with Martineau for the day. I'm beginning to believe that he is actually my companion and not Taylor. We decided to try again out in the far area so we went out there fairly early. We picked up Hayford on the way out to take him teaching with us. We were able to teach a few lessons but a lot of the people we were supposed to see backed out on our appointments or suddenly became busy when we showed up. We didn't spent nearly as much time as we would have liked out there and we were forced to come closer to the apartment than we wanted to. We tried to find a few people to teach during the evening but we were running out of people to see really fast. We had to turn in around 8:00 which is earlier than we had planned or wanted. To make ourselves feel better we decided to cook some spaghetti and perfect our recipe. I wouldn't say we perfected it but we definitely improved it. It was nice to have something productive to do in the evening and we were quite happy with the outcome of our labors. 

Baptism: Elder Goodrich, Martineau, Taylor and Uzoho (L-R)

Saturday. It was baptism day for us. Uzoho and Martineau had three people that were getting baptized. Taylor and I went to support them and help them if it was needed. It  was a good thing we went to help as many trials started popping up that we hadn't expected. The font wasn't filled, the bishop and ward mission leader weren't there, and they had lost the baptismal clothing. We were scrambling like crazy to get it all figured out but we were able to get it and the baptism went down as a success. I don't know how we were able to get everything figured out but we were definitely blessed with a few miracles that morning. 

Sunday. Church in the morning was about as normal as it can get here. It was a regular morning of getting up, getting ready, and biking to the chapel. Once there we just sat and waited for everything to get started and then we attended all of the appropriate meetings. The highlight of it was that Martineau and I got access to some of the church magazines from throughout the year. We enjoyed reading articles out of the few magazines we had. After church Martineau and I decided to cook up some more spaghetti. This one was our best batch yet, even though that would be every new batch we make. We were mortified to find that 3 hours after we ate, we would be going to dinner at a members house. It wasn't as much food as we thought it would be which was good but still we were stuffed. After dinner I got a phone call from Elder Kamisese saying that Elder Reeves, one of my closest friends here, was hospitalized on Friday evening and they were going back in on Monday morning so we couldn't come hang out with them like we had planned. That was pretty hard for me to hear that one of my really good friends was going through such a tough time and doing it 8,000 miles away from home. 

Monday. The day started off  when I was woken up by a phone call from McConkie (my trainer). We had a chance to just talk for almost an hour which was just what I needed. After talking to him, Barr jumped on the line and I got to talk to him for a while. The day got better when Martineau came outside looking for me so that we could get in a solid workout. We worked hard for almost an hour and then just sat out on the cold tile of the porch and took a break. Breakfast was an amazing breakfast of french toast that tasted exactly like it had been cooked back home. We topped it with caramel syrup and ate until we couldn't eat anymore. After that it was just a bunch of sitting and talking and enjoying a lazy pday for the first time in a long time. We weren't doing anything so we decided to come down and hit the cafe early so that we could do something later this evening.