Elder Ethan May's Missionary Adventure

Bonjour amis et familles! I've made it through a month here in Yaoundé. Honestly, this has been the hardest stretch of my mission for multiple reasons. But I'm looking forward to another month! And this week had some pretty cool moments.  WHEN IN CAMEROON  There's a real catch-22 with the money system. Cash is king, and people don't like when you don't pay with exact change. But the only way to pay with exact change is if you have it. I ran out of coins that I'd saved from my time in Gabon about a week and a half ago. So the only way I can get more coins is if I don't pay with exact change. I've ended up getting jipped 350 franks at the supermarket because of this phenomenon. Luckily, that's only 70 cents.  MISSIONARY MOMENTS OF THE WEEK  One big thing this week is we helped someone move. And it's kind of needless to say that this wasn't no 'pull up the U-HAUL' event. The path (not road) to this famliy's new home was all downhill,...

  Bonjour amis et familles! This week just flew by. It feels like just yesterday I wrote one of these emails. But here we are again. Here's what happened this week: WHEN IN CAMEROON   One of the stereotypes of Africa that's 100% accurate is that people carry things on their heads. It's mainly buckets and other containers of whatever they're selling. But what was an interesting sight was this guy who had a giant teddy bear on his head. And nobody batted an eye. There was a point this week where the 4 of us I  this apartment had to go do something with the Mimboman Elders, and we were able to get a taxi who would take all 6 of us. So here were 7 people in this relatively small car. Then, the taxi driver decided to try and scale this unpaved, ruddy, rocky, steep hill. It was the bumpiest ride I've ever been on and it felt like we were going to lose control about 3 times but somehow, we made it to the top. It shouldn't have been scientifically possible. MISSIONARY M...

(translation: hills and traffic jams) Bonjour amis et familles! I had a really good second week here in Yaoundé - a lot of super awesome stuff happened so I won't waste any space and get right into it: WHEN IN CAMEROON Yaoundé is so darn hilly. Hillier than Seattle, or San Francisco, I'm sure of it. Our church building is at the bottom of one and it's so long and steep that I dreaded going to church for fear of having to climb it afterwards (not really tho). Also every weekend night we get stuck in traffic. It's turned a 20-minute taxi ride into a 2-hour ride on multiple occasions. MISSIONARY MOMENTS OF THE WEEK  First off: We found 4 new people this week! The first one was this lady we met on the street that we later set up a lesson with on Tuesday. We taught her the plan of salvation. At the end of the lesson, when we asked her if she had any questions, she thanked us for teaching her all these things she hadn't thought about before, like the premortal life. It wa...

  Bonjour amis et familles! Well, I've done it. I've gotten through my first week in Cameroon! And, all in all, it was good. Here's some details: WHEN IN CAMEROON    New segment(ish)! Cameroon has a lot different of a feel to it than Gabon. It's a little less green here. It is more urban (Yaoundé's population is over 2.5 million) but it's also a little more brown and dusty. Still beautiful. There's a bunch of hills so there's a lot of fun vistas.  There's a higher population here of downed wires and cockroaches. So that's fun. Taxis are yellow and are in a bit better shape than the taxis in Libreville. Also, they love to fit 5 passengers in a taxi (so there's 2 sharing the passenger seat).  One last thing: 'mototaxis'. Motorcycles that also function as taxis. They're everywhere and I've seen very few helmets being worn. You do you, Yaoundé! MISSIONARY MOMENTS OF THE WEEK A lot of the week was focused on some orientation stuff:...

  Bonjour amis et familles! Do any of you remember how I put 'secret reasons' somewhere in last weekend's email? Well, that reason was I was signing a document to go to Cameroon. And that ended up actually happening. I am now in Yaoundé, the namesake of the mission.  I am sad that my time in Libreville has come to an end. I hope I can return sometime within the next 16 months. I actually had a really good, productive last week. Let me tell you all about it. MISSIONARY MOMENTS OF THE WEEK I found out I was going to Cameroon last Saturday, but I wasn't going to let that hinder the work in Libreville this last week. Elder Zoller and I made the most of it by finding 2 new people! One of them was this guy from Nigeria who works at a messy auto shop. We had a first and second lesson with him on Tuesday and then on Friday. We were able to teach in English, which was nice because I was able to find some cool ways to teach some points that I could translate over to French. And w...