December 13, 2010

Sam was sent to Togo again last week. It's good to know he and the other missionaries are safe and sound.

Alright, well an interesting week has gone by. Very eventful. So on Wednesday we had a special mission conference in which President (he finally got back into the country Tuesday) announced that things had calmed down enough to start to move back to our old areas little by little during the weekend which got us all pretty excited. The next day we went to a second mission conference again and during the conference President got a phone call that America was about to step into the whole election mess so there were going to be anti american feelings in the country. So the interregion decided it was best to get us out (the us embassy workers evacuated too). So thursday was spent running back to our old appartments and getting our bags and then Friday morning they flew all of us out. I ended up in Togo and President totally granted a favor that I asked him and put me with Elder Starita!!! After the conference on thursday I had realized that that would mean that Togo and Benin would have a lot of Americans so i went and approached President and requested to be companions with Elder Startia, promising that we would be the best companionship ever. This is going to be awesome. Our new branch is called Ablogamé, is just got created last week so we've already started to contact a bunch of people to get investigators. I'm super happy, we are going to work like crazy here and I know that we will see miracles here. It was really hard to leave Cote D'Ivoire, like I was depressed thursday night, but President made the transition a lot easier with this transfer and i have already loved seeing a lot of the old members i knew from a year ago, soon im going to try to visit people in Hedzranawoe.

So in our appartment we have us two, Elder Zufelt (was in the MTC with me), Elder Winter (french), Elder Geisler and Elder Shaffer (newer american missionary). We are going to have a blast. Our appartment is huuuge and really nice compared to my appartments in CDI. We have running water now which im really excited about. We already have seen like four mice and a bunch of cockroaches in the appartment so last night we went hunting (killed one mouse) and this morning cleaned like crazy.

Im not exactly sure how long i will be here though. President talked about in CDI that very soon he's going to start sending missionaries to start brand new branches from scratch, like in areas that have no members our investigators. The missionaries would run the church and everything and slowly grow the branch in that area. I think that sounds hard but would be suuupppper cool too. I really hope me and Starita get sent somewhere like that. Like reallly wanna open a new branch from scratch to finish my mission.

So i never did get those packages unfortunately. I guess its possible that President could send them over but im not sure. Its pretty sad but i'll survive. I'll be able to survive the next six months without new shoes or garments though, dont worry about me. I'm still excited for christmas though!

Ok well i better go! I hope I answered all of your questions! I love you all!

Elder Bertoch