Week 34-8 months! 🎉

Best birthday present ever to talk to my boy! 

Elder Mayele with the two hats, Elder Staker from Colorado and Caleb’s companion Elder Motingoe tying his shoe.

They were going to go out on a boat for P day as a district in the lagoon but the sisters had an issue with their lock on their door and couldn’t get out. They called the handy man and he came and fixed it but it was too late to go on the boat then. Caleb said maybe there was a reason. So they went to this super nice restaurant instead. 

He went on exchanges with Elder Staker. 

More Pagne! He is splitting them with Elder Staker. He wanted a white tie for the temple, and pink ties are very popular among the elders! 

Water in a cup, a member gave it to him and it was just so interesting it was packaged like a yogurt. 

Dude. So much walking. 

Another baptism! The husband baptized his wife. 

This little guy is the one who peed on Caleb’s sandals! 

His email for the week:

Bonjour

This week flew by but it was a solid week. So last p-day I said we were going to take a boat to the lagoon as our activity, but that didn't happen. The sister missionaries went to leave their apartment to meet up with us, but their door got broken and wouldn't open. They had to call the handyman and come fix it. It was super weird so I'm taking it as a sign we weren't supposed to go. Instead we went over to Petit Paris which is a super nice bakery with a restaurant on the top floor. We got some ice cream, burgers, pizza, ivorian burritos, etc. It was a little expensive but so worth it.

Monday night we went out to sector. We didn't have anything planned so we walked around. We ran into a member and he took us to this friend's house. He has been taught everything and used to come to church often, but he can't get baptized because he lives with someone and isn't married, so he stopped coming to church. We read Moroni 6 with him, and told him why he can't get baptized and then next steps he can take. He asked a lot of questions about marriage. I promised him that if he came to church every week, read the scriptures and prayed everyday, he would get married. I told him he just had to use some faith and act.

Tuesday morning we had district council. The sisters missionaries were 50 minutes late. It wasn't their fault though. They are in charge of getting the key for the church that we used and the person with the key was shopping. So they had to wait for the guy to come back and give them the key. It was alright though. 

Wednesday we did exchanges. I went on an exchange with Elder Staker. He is in my apartment and got here at the same time as Elder Motingoe. It was fun being with another American even though he also doesn't speak much French. In the morning we were walking around and saw this Pagne shop. We stopped and looked around. We ended up buying two things of pagne. In the evening we went out to sector with Frere Ezekiel and Frere Steve. They are a couple young men in our ward who are getting ready to go on missions. They also don't work so they are available most of the time.

Thursday we headed to the Selmer Stake center to do interviews with President. We talked about knowing when to drop people. Kouté has a lot of friends that don't progress, and he helped me a lot to know when to drop them. The main thing was we cannot baptize someone if they do not come to church and read the Book of Mormon. If they aren't doing those two things they are not progressing, no matter how interested they may be.

Thursday afternoon we had no appointments which is super rare for Kouté. So we just walked around and contacted for the whole evening. It wasn't great, but we still found a couple of people. 

Friday we did weekly planning. We started marking people as not progressing to thin out our friends and see who is actually progressing. I realized we really don't have many who progress, but we have a lot who like listening to us. A lot of people here also say they will be available at a time but when we show up they are sleeping or shopping. We had so many appointments this week that didn't happen because when we showed up they disappeared. 

Sunday we had a baptism. It was Sœur Laurence. Her husband is a member, but now she finally got baptized too. Her husband baptized and confirmed her which was cool. 

This week we had a challenge in the mission for everyone to find 7 new friends. That would have been 518 friends in the mission. This week as a mission we found 599 friends. It was crazy thinking we found basically 600 people, not including the other recent weeks. The reward was that the assistants and president were going to get ice cold water dumped on them, and they were going to film it and send it out. I haven't seen the video yet, but I assume they'll send it out today.

This week should be another solid week. I'm excited for general conference, and we should have transfer news this Saturday which is crazy.

Spiritual Thought:

This week in Come Follow Me we are studying D&C 29. As I was reading the first few words of verse 32 stuck out to me: “First spiritual, secondly temporal…” It is talking about God's work and how he created everything spiritually before temporally. But I think we can apply those four words into our own life. We need to be prepared spiritually before we get prepared temporally. We don't know exactly what will happen before Jesus Christ comes again, but we know a lot of things will happen. If we are prepared temporally, we will be ready for the things that will happen here on earth. But that doesn't matter if we are not ready to leave this world spiritually. As we get prepared spiritually, the Lord will bless with the things temporal (Mosiah 2:41). 

Thanks for your prayers and I hope you guys have a great week!

Elder Robinson