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
