Week 56 Aug 25-31st 2025

Elder Kahn was Caleb’s trainer when he first got to Côte d’Ivoire and it’s fun the picture he has as his profile picture is one of the baptisms they had together. 

These dogs are the patriarch’s dogs and they are so cute! Caleb got to play with them while he waited for his companion to meet with him. 

The view on the way to the Pisam hospital. 

Nice Ford truck, Caleb always notices the nice vehicles!

I love that Caleb takes the pictures and makes them look so much cooler!

He got to ride on the cool bridge. 

Caleb went on an exchange with Elder Houmeau he is from France. Caleb loves to hear his French. 

Monkey!

Pres Vore got to fly on a chartered jet with Elder Stevenson. They were talking about the mission. This is him showing the picture to the mission leadership training Caleb was in.  

Frère Alex got baptized. His older brother, who is the elders quorum president, baptized him. Caleb started not feeling well today and yet he got blessed to feel good at the baptism but then came back to apartment and did not feel well again. Blessings of being where the Lord needs you to be.

Sunday Caleb continued to not feel well but was able to go to church. When he called Sister Vore and told her his symptoms she told him he should take the malaria medicine they give to all the missionaries when they come into the field because it sounds like malaria. She said if he did not feel well by Wednesday to go to the hospital but the medicine helped thankfully.  He was able to be there for church and the confirmation on Sunday as well, tender mercies. 

Bonjour 

This week was a crazy week, but it was awesome. Last p-day was chill, nothing crazy happened.

On the other hand, Tuesday was a crazy day. We got up at 5h30, because we had to be at the Selmer Stake center before 7h. My companion needs his patriarchal blessing so we had to go meet with the Patriarch. There were other missionaries too, so we met up there to take the mission van. We went to the Patriarch's place so he could interview the missionaries. Once we finished we took a very expensive taxi over to Pisam, which is that really nice hospital. We went there because my companion needed to pick up results and talk with the surgeon. Nothing's wrong with my companion which is great.

Once we got back to our apartment we ate and then tried to have a really important member lesson. We tried to meet up with the relief society president at the stake center, but she didn't show up. We called her several times and she wouldn't answer the phone. So we called the bishop, and told him to call her and have her call us. About 2 minutes later she called us and then started lying about some things. It was annoying. It was important because we were going to ask the parents if they would be okay with their daughter's baptism. Luckily they were okay and there were no problems, but it was still annoying.

Wednesday I did an exchange in Lokoa with Elder Houmeau. Elder Houmeau is the only Elder from France in our mission. We had an amazing exchange, and I loved listening to his French.

My favorite part of our exchange was when we went and visited a partial member family's place. Most of the family are members, but not all of them. We went to teach a new member there. As we were talking I noticed that her sister sitting next to her wasn't a member. All of a sudden the Spirit took over and I started asking if she had come to church, if she had been baptized, etc. I told her that her sister would be able to enter the kingdom of God, but that she wouldn't be able to. So then I asked her what she was going to do to be able to return to God's presence. She said, well I need to be baptized. I said great, where are you going to do it? She said, chez vous. I was like great, when? It was so direct, but I loved how the Spirit led us to ask her to be baptized.

We were also at their place to teach this guy. This was his first lesson with the missionaries. He has been Muslim his whole life, and recently got terribly sick. Nothing was healing him, and one day a lady said that he had to believe in Christ. As soon as he did he became healed and decided to become Christian. This lady was the mom of this family who served a mission in the 1990s in Côte d'Ivoire. He shared his story with us, and then we had an incredible Spirit filled lesson about the Book of Mormon, God and his love, the church, etc. He accepted to come to church, read the Book of Mormon, and get baptized. It was incredible. After we left this family's place, I felt so grateful to be a missionary, and was like this is why I came on the mission.

We took a taxi back to our apartment. As we were negotiating the taxi guy said he didn't have 500f for change. I knew he was lying but we accepted the price and left. Once we got to the apartment I saw he had a lot of 500f and had the change. I told him how he lied, how God told us not to lie, and then said “faut te repentir” haha.

Thursday was a good day. We had a lesson with the relief society president. This time she actually came. We went and taught a lot of ladies and had a long lesson about baptism and the Holy Ghost. It was a little rough because all of the ladies, except for one who is also the only one who comes to church, think they've already been baptized and received the Holy Ghost. It took a while and at the end we just said, pray about it and come to church. Well they didn't come to church, so we'll see if they prayed about it this week.

Friday we had MLC. We talked a lot about how we can better work with the members. Doing missionary work is very difficult if you don't work with members. Anyways we had a great time and had KFC which was heavenly. 

Saturday we had a baptism for Frère Alex. His older brother, who is the elders quorum president, baptized him. As always Ivorian baptisms are so complicated, but it all worked out and it was a great experience. 

Saturday night I didn't feel well, and Sunday I didn't feel well so Sister Vore told me to take Paluva. (if you know you know)

This week should be a chill week, but we'll see what life as a missionary in Africa brings.

Spiritual Thought:

Alma 26:22:

“Yea, he that repenteth and exerciseth faith, and bringeth forth good works, and prayeth continually without ceasing—unto such it is given to know the mysteries of God; yea, unto such it shall be given to reveal things which never have been revealed; yea, and it shall be given unto such to bring thousands of souls to repentance, even as it has been given unto us to bring these our brethren to repentance.”

This was a scripture that was shared during MLC that I really like. As we repent, exercise our faith, and prayeth continually, we will be able to know all things and we will be guided to those who are ready to accept the gospel. 

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

Elder Robinson

pictures:

baptism, Elder Houmeau, puppy, a monkey that we saw during one of our lessons that really made it feel like I was in Africa