Unfriendly caterpillars :(

Hello everyone,
Well, today the eighteenth of May is officially my eighth month in the
mission. I am still in my first area and there is a great possibility
that I will be transferred at the end of the month :( I am thinking
that it will be a bitter-sweet experience. Somehow I ended up in the
apartment with the two American assistants and my Tahitian companion
who is pretty much like an American too. Fun times.

My companion was attacked by one of those caterpillars the other day.
He woke up with a huge rash on his shoulder. The caterpillars are not
friendly.

Here's a nice spiritual experience. The Relief Society president lives
with her mother, children and a sister. We spent one Monday at their
home for a family home evening and it was very special. We laughed and
visited and there was a good spirit there. After that time, we began
teaching the sister. She doesn't speak French very well so we visit
her with a member to translate Fon into French.

An interesting detail is that Sister Idah's (the Relief Society
president) mother is actually a voodoo/idol practitioner/worshipper
person, which is kind of creepy but she is nice to us. A couple of
days ago, we visited Sister Idah and she had told us that as she knelt
down one night to pray, her sister came over and knelt down next to
her to join her. It was the first time that she had seen her sister
pray. The next Sunday her sister was at church. She is very receptive
to what we teach and I feel that she is one of those who has been
prepared to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I'll have to call Elder
Teihotu to see how it goes if I get transferred.

Have a nice day!
Elder Archer

Oh no :(

Dear friends and family,

First of all I will begin by saying that there are presently for some reason or another many caterpillars in our apartment. Some are the little green inch-worm kind but others are dark and fuzzy. Hopefully they are harmless or do their metamorphasis thing into butterflies soon if they are not.

Here we go, first mission sickness experience:

Last week, a burning fever came upon me several minutes after entering the apartment Wednesday night. This also took place as we were experiencing a ... water outage? We hadn't had running water for around four days at this time. 

Anyways, I was feeling strange during our last rendez-vous and I began shivering while walking back to the apartment and my joints felt very achy and sore. During daily planning I suddenly got a fever and felt nauseous. I changed into some shorts, turned on the fan in the living room, threw the spare mattress down on the floor and layed down. I would shiver when the fan was on, but I figured it was better than overheating.Then, as if things could get any worse, the power decided to go out, which in this mission means that you're probably not going to sleep that night. (Unless you sleep in front of the open door like my companion, haha)

I decided that laying on the tile floor would be cooler than on the mattress that was now very warm. So I did for a while but then I went back to the mattress. I figured I had malaria because... I've never gotten so sick so suddenly before. So there I was, lying on the tile floor of our 88 degree temerature powerless and waterless apartment, probably with malaria, in the dark. The strange thing was that despite the fever and the heat, I didn't sweat. Then when I began feeling better, I would start sweating when I shouldn't have been. Weird.

Not one of the most joyous moments of the mission. I was worried at the time but I am now happy to report that I am up and well. I had taken a series of anti-malarial medications and gave my companion some extra p-days as I rested. I spent the last couple of days at Cococodji, a district in our zone, for a split and had no problems. I am happy to be back "home" in Cocotomey. We will be watching general conference next week!

Well, have a nice week everyone. More to come.

Almost 7 months.

Dear Friends and Family,
It has been a while since I had last written. Yes, I am still alive.
It seems as though time is accelerating and the days are flying by. I
can't believe it will soon be seven months since I left home.

Transfer calls were yesterday and I am still in my first zone and area
with Elder Teihotu our zone leader. He is not yet familiar with the
area so I'll be staying a little longer in Cocotomey to show him
around. It's funny to think that I know a neighborhood in a small
foreign country better than I do my own neighborhood at home.

Our branch president is currently hospitalized and will be for a few
months. He has an illness that requires him to undergo dialysis
treatments and carry an implanted device in his arm. Apparently the
device has become "irrecoverable" and he must stay at the hospital to
continue treatment until a new device can be placed. The absence of
the president seems to have incited the first counselor to suspicious
conduct, which is rather mysterious. To be continued...

This last week was easter and school was out for everyone. We were
able to teach with the young men from our branch. We were able to
teach many lessons as many of our investigators are women and require
the presence of another male to be taught. We also had an interesting
lesson with the jehovah's witnesses. (Yes, they're here too, I know)
Teaching is going well and we have some wonderful progressing
investigators. One example is the family of Joseph, his "wife" Cecile,
their daughter Eleine, their twins boys Isaac and Israel and their new
baby girl Matilda (held by my companion in the picture). I put wife in
quotations because they aren't actually married, yet. We are working
on getting their papers so they can marry and be baptised. They are
great people.

Just last week I had the opportunity to share the message of the
Restoration of the Gospel with a man in a taxi. This occurence
happened to take place in the front seat, occupied by both the man in
question and myself. As the principle of awkwardness doesn't exsist in
this land, the encounter was not strange or unusual.

I also had the interesting occasion of meeting an "apostle" at
Dantokpa, the huge downtown general market. There we were, my
companion, myself and two other missionary companionships. We were
walking down the crowded market road when a man approaches my side and
asks me if I speak English. I said yes in English and then became
hesitant when he asked for my name and nationality. Eventually I told
him I was American and showed him my nametag when he asked for my
name. He said: "you don't point to yourself like that when I ask you
your name, you tell me with words". I thought... okay sir, who are
you? He presented himself as an international apostle who spoke
French, English, Greek and Hebrew. He was tall, decently dressed and
was holding a red leatherbound publication with shiny pages, which I
assumed to be the new testament as the book was thinner than
reasonably possible to have also contained the old testament, which
doesn't, to my knowledge, mention the apostles just yet.

Anyways, he asked us if we knew what an apostle was. We answered that
they are special authorized witnesses of Jesus Christ and that Christ
appointed twelve during his earthly ministry. He indicated to the name
of the church on my nametag and said: "Is this what they teach you
here? This is wrong. This is not what the bible says".

At this point I determined that I had entered into one of those
discussions that can't be sensibly continued because the particular
person encountered out of the seven billion on earth has a pretzel
twisted idea of something so simple and general as the twelve and has
decided to impose their said non-understandableness upon me in the
marketplace, so, I began ignoring the guy.

He then decided to start speaking to the Nigerian companion of another
missionary about how the gospel can't be preached without the Holy
Ghost. He said it is necessary to have "THE POWER" which he had, I
guess. He kept talking about the Holy Ghost and how we needed to
listen to him even though we were standing in one of the busiest,
noisiest places in the whole country.

Finally, he said something like: "well, I see you are not yet ready".
Then, before walking away, he did a super creepy evil laugh that made
everyone turn. And that was how we met an "apostle", possibly sent of
the devil, at the market.
           " Written in the den of thieves "
Farewell everyone, til next time!
                                                         

Bonjour!

Well, so many things have happened since I last sent a letter for the
blog. I don't know what the next one will be. Maybe in a few weeks. I
am doing okay but there are several stressful things going on right
now. The work is going on.

I like French a lot. I have learned that it is one of the most
complicated languages. Mucho protocol.

My new companion is Elder Teihotu. Since the beginning of his mission
he has worked in Togo, but now he is working here in Benin with me. He
is the new zone leader but it's almost like I have to train him,
because I know where all the things are. He is from Tahiti and cooks
very well. He always makes a lot of food. I like teaching with him. He
is a good teacher.
Elder Amoah is happy at the bureau. He had long sleeves when I saw him
and he said it's because he "freezes" in there. Haha. Air
conditioning.

Tower of babel people

Well, I am now done with training. I have graduated from cadet to  I
also got to stay with Elder Amoah
after this last transfer! Things in our secteur are going well. One of
our investigators Sister Silvianne speaks very good French. She was
very happy last Sunday after being asked to orally translate the
lessons in the investigators class and in Relief Society. As there are
some people who speak very limited French, talks and lessons are given
in French and then repeated in the local language called Fon. She did
a very good job and she felt very included and supported from the
members which is very good. She kind of has a spontaneous-drinking
problem which we hope we can help her abandon. The thing is to help
her realize the importance of being free from that kind of influence.
Her baptism is scheduled for the 7th of February and we know that she
will be an excellent addition to the Cocotomey branch.

Speaking of language, language is a huge part of life in Africa. A
common question we ask new people we meet is: "which languages do you
speak?" ("Vous parlez quelles langues?") Usually everyone speaks their
native language, and then they learn the national language, French in
this case, at school. Therefore, everyone that has been schooled is
automatically bilingual. On top of that people usually know one or two
more languages. I would say that the average is around three. I think
this is where all the tower of babel peoples came to after their
dispersement and whatnot. So far I've learned one or two words in the
following languages from local people and from missionaries: French,
Fon, Italian, German, Chinese, Lingala, Yoruba, Zamelana, Malagasy,
Portuguese, Zulu, Swahili, Evé, Twi, Fanti, Mina, and today I learned
that "salam" is a general greeting like "hello" in Hindi! Crazy huh.
It is also here that I learned that the song at the beginning of the
lion king is in Swahili and that "simba" and "pumba" mean "lion" and
"hog" in Swahili.

Anyways, there's some good stuff that's been happening to me lately.
Have a good day!

Oops!

As many of you know, Ben ELDER ARCHER is a  perfectionist  and I love that, but  mama made a mistake in copying  the story of the older fellow, professor of international affairs. So Elder Archer said:

                                                     "We have a new investigator who is
an older fellow and apparently is an expert professor of International
affairs and of the globalization of democracy. Something like that. He
likes to take up most of the time to tell us about his life stories
and world events. One detail is that he is missing his left hand as it
was lost in an industrial accident. In our very first meeting, and in
the small amount of info that he managed to tell us about his
religious beliefs, he expressed that he believes in an afterlife but
expressed: "Will I have my hand back as it was?... probably not". His
comment made us excited to teach him about the résurrection. We gave
him a Book of Mormon in our next visit, and left him Alma chapter 40
to read. I'm excited to see what he has to say next."
  

   The picture above   was courtesy from a couple of missionaries serving with Ben. Elder and Sister Christensen. How Sweet!












And these pictures courtesy from Elder Amoah. Such a sweet Elder.

Bella, don't be jealous!

 

   Dear family and friends. This week had been very interesting. I'm happy to say that our recent converts are doing very well and are progressing quickly. it is wonderful to visit them and to do work with them in the church. However, there are some challenges with the branch leaders.  There are some challenges with the  "give someone a little power and they will start dishing out control" kind of a thing. In short there is some friction between the leaders and the members. It's frustrating because if things continue this way, it kind of nullifies our efforts as missionaries. We need to arrange things at home so we can invite people in.

   Other than this things are great. We have a new investigator who is an older fellow and apparently is an expert professor of International affairs and of the globalization of democracy. Something like that. He likes to take up most of the time to tell us about his religious beliefs, he expressed that he believes in an afterlife but expressed: " Will I have my hand back as it was?... probably not".  His comment make us excited to teach him about the resurrection. We gave him a Book of Mormon in our next visit, and left him Alma chapter 40 to read. I'm excited to see what he has to say next.

   As far as "extracurricular activities" (if you can call it that) today we traveled to a village called Quidah to visit..... yes, a voodoo python temple and the ocean. First the assistants drove us to a carved tree monument. I'm not exactly sure as to it's meaning but it seemed to be depicting something to do with slavery. After this we traveled on over the python temple where we were toured around and had interesting things explained to us. Far from doctrinally correct, but  interesting. Basically pythons are sacred and worshipped. After all the explaining, we entered into a small round and freestanding building that had  descended  in the center to a lower level. It was full of snakes. There were probably 50 pythons in there, none of them were terrible large, but there were many. We had the opportunity to hold them and take pictures.

   After the snakes we went over to the beach and walked along the shore. The weather was kind of hazy but it was a nice scene, there  were some decent sized waves too. This small activity took place during the morning and we returned to the apartment at noon. I will send some fun pictures for you to see.

   Have a nice day!                                      - Elder Archer -

                                                         - Voodoo phyton temple -

                         - We found and exterminated another mouse " dramatic mouse death pose". -