June 28, 2010

Sam mentions Elder Kouakou at the end of his letter - he was his first companion, and, of course, trainer. Here are some pictures he sent as well:

Branch President and his family (Akpakpa Branch)

District Awesome (the 4 roommates - Sam's companion is the very tall African standing next to him)

Elder Geisler in knee deep rain water

At the beach for the second time

Python Voodoo Temple in Ouidah

Weird tree in Ouidah with crazy carvings

At Adele's baptism

Me and Elder Geisler in our boombas

African Boomba

Hey family!

Anyways, just wrote most of my email but the computer crashed. Oh well. Starting over now.

Yup, took plenty of pictures with pythons. I'll try and send some, we'll see how that goes.

I just where my Eccos in the rain. They're still goin strong so no worries there.

It was good to hear that you had a good time at camp, Jack! Even if i had to hear about it from mom and dad!

Well it was just another amazing week to be a missionary. I have many amazing investigators and i still love this branch. The missionaries and the members get a long great. As far as investigators go, Vincent and Raul werent able to get baptized this month. We're hoping and praying that things will work out in July. Carine gets her cast taken off the seventh so as soon as thats off we're going to throw her into the font and shes pretty excited about that too. We also have some new investigators that came to church this week- two ivorians named Pierre and Elodie. They loved church and they are both really awesome, the only problem is that they live together and they are not married (just like everyone else in Benin). But we'll work that out with them. I have high hopes anways.

The rain has also lightened up, which is sad. It made things really exciting haha.

Today we got our prize for winnin the apartment inspection. The couple drove us out to a gigantic super walmart-like supermarket and gave us each 5000cfa to spend. It was pretty cool, for about an hour i felt like i was back in the US!

Have a good time in the mountains this week! Let me know what you end up doing!

Also, there were officially no transfers this time so its pretty sure i'll be leaving in August. Probably around the 20th, thats when i think the next zone conference will be.

K well it was great hearing from you all! I love you and have a great week!

Elder Bertoch

PS Elder Kouakou finishes his mission this Friday. Weird, i remember when i got here he only had like 13 months!