Prosper's questions and the healing power of a priesthood blessing

Hello all! Unfortunately today, I’m not feeling too well at all, but I’ve had a great week!!!  We have a few investigators that are progressing well, and one family that’s getting ready to be married and be baptized in August!

For this past week, we had a Sacrament meeting with President and Sister Morin for all of the missionaries in Benin on Thursday.  It was an interesting tactic to get to know us, but I loved it!  They have been doing apartment interviews this whole week, and ours were after the meeting.  Pretty much just filled out a paper with a few questions and such to get to know us better and then every district had about a 30-minute interview with both of them.  Also, as we were eating lunch after the meeting, I saw two very familiar faces: Elder and Sister Stagg!!!  They had come over from Togo for a CES meeting and happened to be there at the same time as us!  I went outside to meet them when they were leaving and was greeted by a great big hug from Elder Stagg and an almost-hug-then-slightly-awkward handshake from Sister Stagg!!! Haha it was great to see them again!

Friday was an absolutely awesome day, but as I’m not feeling well, I’ll just share my journal entry from that day.

Vendredi, 25 juillet 2014

I apologize for the handwriting, but my day has just been so good that I had to write about it, even with my slight handicap.

Our last lesson tonight was absolutely fantastic, thanks to the Spirit.  It was with the father of the Nigerian family that has been to Church a couple times with Sophia Taylor.  He finally is back from traveling and has wanted to talk with us.  We spoke with him yesterday (thank goodness he speaks French so Elder Sahue can participate), and he was interested and had questions about our doctrine.  We left him a Restoration and Joseph Smith pamphlet.  He said he also wanted the Book of Mormon, so we fixed an appointment for tonight at 7.

   

This time, it was just Elder Sahue and I (the Taylor family was there with us last night).  We opened with a prayer and got talking.  In essence, his main question was, “What is your church’s mission?  Some churches heal, others deliver, others promise eternal life, etc.  So what is your church’s role in all of this?”  I almost jumped for joy at this question, because it is a PERFECT opportunity to explain and testify of the apostasy cycle.  I think I might’ve jumped the gun a bit because when Elder Sahue gets going, he doesn’t stop for 20 minutes often times.  But we were able to explain together that Christ organized a Church to carry out the gospel to the whole world, but then the Great Apostasy came.  I then used the mirror analogy, which he understood well, but his question after was “How did the apostasy come?”  Elder Sahue then explained, with a personal story form the civil war in Ivory Coast, that after Christ’s death, the Church was still persecuted and forced into hiding.  When opposing forces came to the door, the saints (disciples of Christ) were either courageous or not.  Those who were courageous were put to death, and those were not denied their faith, thus losing the Holy Spirit and the authority of God.

   

After Elder Sahue explained that, Prosper (the investigator) took a couple moments of reflection, and then said, “So when the mirror broke, many men essentially came and took a couple of pieces to create a church.  It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not complete. So this church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has been restored to be how the Church was during Christ’s time?”  Elder Sahue and I made eye contact and smiled as he spoke.  After he finished, we both said simultaneously, “EXACTLY!!!”  We then shared with him the Articles of Faith (putting the focus on #6 and #11), and he absolutely loved it!

What I love about this man is that he has a great religious knowledge (he’s a non-denominational pastor), but he’s humble.  He’s curious, but he’s humble.  And it’s amazing for me to see the difference that humility makes.  He was willing to humble himself before the Lord and seek for the truth in curiosity and humility.  In return, his eyes were opened to the truth and he understood.  As I handed him the Book of Mormon as we left, he said, “I have a good feeling about what I will learn from this book.”  As he travels often, we exchanged emails at the end so that we can keep in touch and check-in with him often.

   

Secondly, my slight handicap.  The eczema has really worsened on my right hand, especially on my ring finger.  About a week ago, blisters started to appear on the back of my ring finger.  When I did laundry, those blisters burst, leaving some open wounds.  I didn’t think much of it until Sunday when I realized that it wasn’t healing at all.  In fact, it was worsening and starting to infect.  On Monday, I went to the Mission Office to have it looked at, and Elder Christensen just gave me some rubber gloves to finish my laundry and said that Sister Morin would look at it Thursday.  The problem was that my finger was too swollen to fit into the glove!

   

On Tuesday, I finally decided that I needed to bandage it.  When I changed the bandage for the first time on Wednesday (it had become covered in not-nice-looking stuff [I refrain from the actual term in fear of a rather revolting image appearing in the reader’s mind]), I experienced some of the worst pain that I ever have in my life (yeah, sorry I’m a wuss).  On my ring finger, I would say that 15-20% was not covered by skin, and the new skin seemed to have formed into the bandage, so when I took the bandage of, it was like I was peeling all that skin off again.  Not fun.  At all.  Thursday morning after our sacrament meeting I showed Sister Morin the pictures I had taken when again I had changed the bandage with similar results.  She told me just to continue doing what I’m doing and be patient.  I decided after that instance (and another painful bandage exchange last night) that I was in need of a Priesthood blessing.  After my finger was all wrapped up last night, I got the apartment together and asked for a Priesthood blessing.  A blessing was administered, and I went to bed with hope that all would be well.

   

I decided to wait until this evening to change the bandage, and it was an absolute miracle the difference.  Taking off the bandage took about 30 seconds instead of 15 minutes.  Cleaning it was still quite painful, but it was much more manageable.  I then dried it, put Neosporin on, and rebandaged it.  The whole process took about 30 minutes (including drying time) versus the hour and a half yesterday.

The Priesthood power is real.

Well, that’s it for this week.   We have Family Home Evening at President Kazotti’s tonight.  He’s hosting his employer from Canada who came with a BYU student (both members of the Church) with whom I had the occasion to chat with last night after our last appointment at President Kazotti’s house!

I love you all so much!  Have a great week!

Avec amour,

Elder Jenkins

Meeting President and Sister Morin and Independence Day

Our district with President and Sister Morin

Another week gone and so many more experiences under my belt.  It’s been a great week here in Fidjrossé.  Lots of things going on.  Well ok, not really, but there’s been a couple of cool things.

First off, President and Sister Weed left last Tuesday at about 9:45 p.m., and since we’re right next to the airport, I was able to go up on the roof (about 4 stories high) and film their airplane taking off.  President and Sister Morin got here about an hour and a half before (they all used the same airplane).

Then, at about midnight, we got a call from the Assistants that we would be having a district meeting the following morning at Fidjrossé with President and Sister Morin.

So, the next morning we got up and got all of our stuff ready and were at the branch building with the Aïbatin sisters at 9.  A few minutes later Elder Ritchie and Elder Kognani (two of the Assistants) showed up, and then a few minutes later again Elder Rybin drove up in President’s car with President and Sister Morin.  We greeted them and got right into our district meeting.

It was kind of fun for me to see how different people were holding themselves in this situation, hahaha.  But President and Sister Morin are both very nice and friendly so it was all good.  After our district meeting President Morin wanted to go out with one companionship, and since I had mentioned President Kazotti (our branch president) in our area report, President Morin wanted to go with us to visit him.  So we did! We had a great visit!

Family Home Evening at Presdent Kazotti's

What was weird for me to think was that President Morin hadn’t even been in Africa for 24 hours!!!  Haha but I remembered at the end to introduce him to bissap (my favorite drink here, made from a flower-Sister Kazotti also makes a KILLER bissap), and he fell in love!  Haha. So yeah, that was that and then we went back to the branch for a type of mix and mingle with our district, the Assistants, the office elders, and President and Sister Morin.  It was a blast!  We had some delicious chawarmas and got to know President and Sister Morin better.  They’re from Quebec, Canada (their accents are a bit interesting, especially Sister Morin’s-it’s very strong).  I’m pretty sure he’s been in business his whole professional career.  I believe they said that they have 8 kids, but I’m not sure (I didn’t take notes).  So yeah that’s about it.  Oh yeah, they’ve had kids serve on every continent except Africa, so they figured they’d eventually end up here, but they’re so grateful for it and so willing to get started with the work here.

We decided to have 4th of July grill party and it went splendid!  Elder Silvas and I started preparing as early as last Monday.  We separated the work into two parts, each of us on one: the kitchen and the grill.  I took the role of wife in this situation and got to work in the kitchen while Elder Silvas was on the grill (well, that's at least how it is in my family).

After getting the potatoes boiled, I got to work on mashing them.  MY whole life, I've had a Kitchenaid at my side ready to help me.  But not now.  And boy do I have more respect for Kitchenaids.  It's hard!!!  I broke into a good sweat.  But that's kinda how food is here, if you don't sweat hard and have muscle aches after making food, you haven't merited a real meal.  Adding in butter and milk made it a bit easier, but they turned out delicious!  I then got to work on the garlic cheese bread and the gravy.  Both were easy and done in minutes.

Mashing potatoes is very hard when you don't have a machine to do it for you!

Meanwhile on the grill, Elder Silvas was tearing it up with those steaks.  They were soooooo good.  The chicken was not bad at all either.

The 4th of July grill!!!!!

Look at dat STEAK!!!!!!!

We had some chicken, too. (Mexican style thanks to Elder Silvas)

The Grill Master

After everything was ready, we set the table and brought everyone out.  We started with the Nathional Anthem and a prayer and then got our chow on.  It was a very satisfying meal.  Unfortunately it was already late, so I didn't have time to make green beans and a salad, but oh well, I made up for that last night for dinner.

Our dinner: steak, mashed potatoes, gravy and GARLIC CHEESE BREAD!!!!! (We got REAL cheese from Erevan. It was delicious)

Our apartment together.

That was my last 4th of July as a full-time missionary!  Wasn't bad either.

Anyways, it’s been a bit of a normal week until today!  Several missionaries all went to Tokpa (the huge market, like in Togo, but this one had a different feel about it.  Not as crowded).  So I took the liberty today of buying two new pagnes to be made into outfits and a new tie (for a dollar)!  We had a fun walk around that area and then kind of a hang out at our apartment with several of the missionaries who are going home in less than two weeks!

Two new pagnes from today!

  

I love you all so much, and I hope you all have a great week!

Avec amour,

Elder Jenkins

Sweetest feeling to see and feel how He helps me every day

Well folks, it's been one interesting week.  Six of the past seven days have been kind of down.  Both Elder Sahue and I fell sick (nothing major), it's rained everyday, and we don't have any phone credit, so we haven't been able to call and make appointments.  That's just a few things.  With the pouring rain and being sick, there were two days this week where we were confined indoors.  After a whole week of feeling a bit down, I really needed (and was praying) for something to help lift me up.

Then, as i was playing prelude music for Church yesterday, President and Sister Weed walked in!  And I was like, "Wait! This is their last Sunday in Africa!"  Anyways, it was an answer to my prayers, their visit.  After sacrament meeting, I was able to talk with him. Afterwards, I again felt the power of the Atonement work in me.  I felt the burden that was on my shoulders lighten as I realized, once again, that this is the Lord's work, and He is capable of doing what He wants to do.

As it was the 5th Sunday, we were all combined for the 3rd hour. President Kazotti (the Branch President) gave the lesson on how our homes can be a reflection of heaven on Earth.  This lesson was one of the best lessons that I have ever participated in the Church.  There were so many good insights and experiences shared about how each member of the family has their own duties to make sure that the home is a safe place in this unsafe world.  What I took specifically was that the father is not a dictator in the home, rather, he is the guardian.  President Weed shared a wonderful story of the transforming power of the gospel in families' lives.

Afterwards, we received word from two of our appointments that they would not be there.  We still went out to our first appointment and decided to go to see if the last appointment we had scheduled was there.  He was, and we had a great lesson with him.  We had trouble finding a next appointment, so we went to go looking for one and found someone we had found the previous week who is very interested. Unfortunately, he is not in our area, so we had the member that was working with us go with him to find the house so that he could go there this next week with the other companionship.

We still didn't have a last appointment, and we didn't feel satisfied. Having no phone credit, we weren't sure what to do.  Then, I just decided to try sending a text to one of our recent converts to see if he could meet us at the church at 6 o'clock.  I didn't think it was going to go through, not having credit, but then it did!  I was so amazed, but I recognized that the Lord's hand was 100% involved in that.

We went to the Church and waited for him (he was a bit late).  We had planned to talk to him about personal strength in the midst of persecution because he and his family are undergoing a lot of persecution right now, but he brought up a problem that he and his wife have had with a couple branch members.  We then completely switched modes.

Trying to talk calmly and lovingly, we both talked quite strongly with him that we should always be ready to forgive others of their faults. When we had finished talking, there were a few moments of silent reflection, and we had started talking, the Spirit filled the room.  He demeanor had completely changed, and he thanked us for having spoken with love but still showing him that what he was doing wasn't good.  It was a good experience for all of us about forgiveness and D&C 121:43-45.

Anyways, last night, as I laid in bed reflecting on my day, I was amazed at the turn around that had happened during my day.  After a week full of slight depression, my mindset was completely turned around after two things: 1) the Sacrament (others call it communion), and 2) speaking with my priesthood leader for counsel and direction. It was another testimony for me that these things are very real.  God lives and is watching over us.  God DOES answer prayers.  And He has provided us with everything that we need in order to make it through this life to eternal life, but it is up to us to choose to accept His plan.

I hope that each of you have been able to feel the Lord's hand in your lives as I have in mine.  I think that I have barely begun to feel how deeply Heavenly Father is involved in my life, but it is still the sweetest feeling to see and feel how He helps me every day.

I love you all so much, and I hope you all have a great week.

Avec amour,

Elder Jenkins