May 24, 2010

Salut ma famille! Great to hear from you all! Had another great week this week. First, Adele is all set for her baptism this saturday. She's super excited and so are we. Her interview is on wednesday. She will be a good addition to the branch, shes from benin and works in a lab doing medical tests (hiv, malaria, etc).

Less good news is that our investigator Carine (the one with the broken leg) was finally going to have her cast removed last wednesday and be baptized next time, but when she went to the doctors they said she has to keep it on for 45 more days. We went to her house wednesday night to celebrate with her (shes been stuck at home in the cast for at least 2 months) but when we got there she was just sitting there crying. We shared some scriptures with her and tried to encourage her. Shes feeling better now. We even felt prompted to tell her that if she has faith they well be able to remove the cast early.

Easily the best news of the week is that my recent convert at Gbejromede (Victorine) is going to recieve her first calling this week. She will be...drum roll...RELIEF SOCIETY PRESIDENT! The old one was not exactly magnifying her calling so Victorine is going to take over. Shes only been a member for like three months but I know she will be able to handle it. Wow, hearing that made me proud.

Jessy is kinda up and down right now. She didnt come to church yesterday (it rained a little so she used that as an excuse). We went over there after church to see what was up and we had a very good lesson. We shared a scripture in Alma 5 about there only being two shepards, and two folds. We are either the sheep of Jesus Christ or the Devil. We asked her which one she wants to be in. We went over the restoration again. She knows she needs to join the church. The problem is she said it will be complicated get permission from her husband. Hes actually a nice guy, we say hi to him every time we see him, but everytime we try to fix an appointment with him he says he is never at the house, waaaaaaaaay too busy. Mais ça va aller.

Migan (the guy from benin who lives with the member but needs to get married to get baptized but according to his family needs to have two children to get married) is a little on the downside right now. We had a very direct lesson about the law of chastity...but couldn't get him to make a decision. We'll keep trying. We actually are having a lot of success with another man from Benin right now (his name is vincent). Hes older, already married with a 18 yr old daughter and a son that has already moved out. Hes definitly not lacking money either which is good. He came to church yesterday and loved it so we'll go ahead and commit him to baptism tomorrow.

I'm enjoying being with Elder Yapo. Hes been a member for 12 yrs (since he was ten) and his whole family are members too. Like I said last week hes like 6'5" 220 lbs so i look pretty small next to him. We working well together and will baptize a lot.

Being District Leader is going ok. I do my first baptismal interview this week so that will be exciting. Nothing has really changed that much from before.

Yep, I've given lots of blessings as a missionary. To other missionaries, and members, and investigators. I love giving blessings. That is really cool about Dean Cook. 84 yrs old! Wow. Thats awesome.

O yaaaaaaaaa, i remember Ameritowne! I totally did go there. I remember interviewing and being like president of some country or something. That was really fun. I really hope you get to go, Jack! I'll pray for ya!

OK well thats about all that happened this week! It did rain a lot more, got to go "swimming" to our appointments which livened things up (for a country where it supposedly rains a lot, they do not have good drainage...everything was flooded after like five minutes of good hard rain). I have more pictures to send so i'll try and get those to you! Love you all!

Elder Bertoch