December 29, 2009

Here's Sam's letter after Christmas. I love that they bought soccer balls for a couple of kids and played soccer with them. During our phone call, I misunderstood something he said and was afraid his french wasn't coming along as well as I thought. He was very offended that I would think he couldn't speak french which was why he bears his testimony in french at the end of the e-mail.

Hey everyone!

It was great to talk to all of you too! Loved hearing your voices! And it sounds like you had a really good christmas! Did jackson get like 10 more presents than everyone else like usual? hehe :) Mmm fondue that sounds sooo good. Be sure to eat extra for me!

My christmas went really well! Me and Elder Halterman woke up and left pretty early to go buy some treats and a couple soccer balls for christmas. We gave the first one Mama Ahoefa's sons and their friends. It was so cool to see...when we got there they all started cheering and jumping up and down and were just so excited. Here people can't really afford gifts to give out for Christmas so hopefully we made theirs a little better. Then we went over to an investigator named mawussi's house and gave her little bro and his friends a soccer ball too and then played some soccer with them haha. It was a lot of fun.

Then we went to a members house and he fed us a really good christmas dinner (hes a little more well off for africa). We had rice and chicken and french fries and shish ca bobs it was delicious. Then we went over to our branch mission leader's house and ate a little more. I was very full by the end of the day.

The next day was the baptism and we went into it having four canidates but one ended up not passing her interview. But three baptisms still felt pretty good and we also had two investigators come to the baptism as well. The one that didnt pass the interview will still be able to get baptized the 9th and right now it looks like we could have another 6 or 7 baptisms that time too which will be awesome. Just for fun i will list their names: Pierrette, Veronique, Esther, Beta, Joyce, Pauline, Fofo, Yve (his dads back so we're talking with him so i'm hoping he'll agree), and Tchabiou. That'd be great if we got all of those! I'm just hoping I'll still be here, that'll make over 5 months that I've been in this area!

Anyway, this week we should be pretty busy getting them ready which will be good. I always love coming back to the appartment exhausted at night cause that lets me know I'm at least doing something right. I now that as we work hard we will always be blessed.

Well, I think I'll finish in french just to prove I can speak the language.

Je sais de tout mon coeur que cette église est bien l'église de Jésus Christ sur la terre. Je sais que Joseph Smith, sous la direction de Dieu, a retabli la mème organization que Jesus Christ a établi lorsque il est venu sur la terre. Je sais que cet message va beaucoup aider les gens ici au Togo et c'est pourquoi là que je veux que chaque personne aie cet evangile. Je travaillerai chaque jour afin de les aider.

Je vous aime beaucoup! à la semain prochaine!

Elder Bertoch