Back in the Flow!

Hello everyone how are you doing!?

Everything is going super well here in Cameroon and in Africa. The weeks seem to be flying by so fast now. The past few have been slow just because of Christmas and New Years, but now we are back in the flow of things and it feels really nice.

For mom, Elder West hits his 1 year mark in February and he has been in Douala for his entire mission so far. He was in town in Bonapriso for 7 months and he has been in Bonaberi ever since. There is a good chance that he gets moved very soon, but I think I might be here for a little while longer.

How do you make an Elder sandwich? 
With 3 Elders and some mattresses, of course!!

This week has been a good one as well as a frustrating one. One of our most progressing investigators named Narcisse moved to the south west for work and so we lost one of our favorite amis just like that. It is really hard because you form a relationship with them and you see them grow so much and start to understand things and then out of nowhere, people just disappear and it is really frustrating. This happens a lot; you will just go to someone's house and their neighbor will say "oh, they are traveling and they will be out of town for 2 to 3 weeks" and it really just stinks, for lack of words.
But, on the other hand, we are meeting with many, many people and it is just awesome. At church this last Sunday, we had 10 amis at church and the other companionship had 4 so overall, so we had 14 amis at church. There were so many people that came to church that they had to bring in extra chairs. I remember sitting there thinking, " this is so awesome!".  Here are all these people
who could be doing other things with their time, but they took time out of their day and came to give their day to God and to worship him. As a missionary, I can't describe the joy that you feel seeing these people do this. Also this week, one of our amis named Sonita finally came back to town as well with a woman named Linda, so Elder West and I are really excited to start teaching them.

Here in Africa, you run into the problem that peoples' brains here don't exactly work the way that our brain works and sometimes it can be very, very frustrating. When that happens, we say it is due to African logic. Well, we had a lot of problems with that this week, but I'll just give you one example. Julian, who one of our favorite amis, was meeting with us on Thursday afternoon. We were reading in the Book of Mormon about the resurrection of Jesus Christ and about His visit to the Americas.
Well, that is in 3rd Nephi and the first 2 books of the Book of Mormon are 1st and 2nd Nephi and those books are about events 600 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. Julian was really confused how one man lived so long and we explained that he did not live that long, but it was a different man and he just simply had the same name. But he did not get it, so we sat there for 20 minutes trying
to explain it and then after that, we went and got the branch president and he helped us explain it for another 15 minutes.  Fortunately, after it was all over, we got the matter resolved and that was what mattered.

Le Marche

Another lesson I want to talk about was with a member named Bayard and with his family. Bayard is the only one baptized in his whole family and he has a wife, Julie, and then 5 children: Willingston, Godlove, Issac Steve, Christian, and his only daughter, Fortune. I know the names are a little different but that is just Africa for you! Well, Bayard wanted us to teach the whole family and so we went over and asked them about themselves and one of them said that his favorite thing to do was to
"Precher l'evangile de Jesus Christ" which means "Preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ". Hearing that was so funny because he is only 9 years old!  So we had a lesson and they were all participating and talking and it was just awesome and such a fun lesson to be a part of. When we got to the end, we talked about the importance of family, of family prayer and of family home evening; it's incredible
how much they knew so already! As a part-member family with only 1 member, they still have family home evening every Monday and every morning they read together and they pray together. This really touched me, because a family who has only one member is doing all these things that many all member families struggle with. My goal is to challenge all those who can to have
family home evening and family scripture study and prayer to follow the council of the Prophet because it is truly something that helps to bring the family closer together.

My final thing for the day is to talk about the French language. I have been on my mission for just under 4 months and in the field for about 2 and a half months and I can nearly understand all of what people are saying. I can understand in lessons and I don't have to ask Elder West for clarifications all of the time. I can sit there and talk to people! Elder Larson and I talked to a girl in the Young Womans for about half an hour on Saturday night and it was a lot of fun and not only did I
know what she was saying, but I could say what I wanted to say as well. I have to give my testimony that the Lord's servants truly are blessed and that the fact that I can already speak and read and understand mostly everything is all because of the Lord.

Some one go have some chicken nuggets for me!!

Love
Elder Legerski