Elder Ethan May's Missionary Adventure

Bonjour amis et familles! A lot of great stuff happened this week. Taught some good lessons, found some new people, and, as an added bonus, I got my COVID vaccine! MISSIONARY MOMENTS OF THE WEEK  Subject line time: So last week, we had a taxi driver introduce himself as a disciple of 'Kacou Phillippe,' the one true living prophet (this doubles as a 'When in Africa' story as well). He expressed interest in meeting with us, so we said, "Why not?" What followed was the most hilarious lesson I've ever participated in.  This guy invited 3 of his fellow 'disciples', we invited Fr. Samuel, and we had a 'debate,' where they kind of just told us we were damned if we didn't believe in Kacou Phillippe. Not sure what they actually believe. We're trying to set up another appointment but I think, as I've said in the past, we'll let them do their thing. The Assistants in Gabon all week for Zone Conference down there, we took it upon oursel...

Bonjour amis et familles! I'm happy to report that this week was much better than last week. We had some great visits with members, some great lessons, and Zone Conference! More details will be presented as follows: MISSIONARY MOMENTS OF THE WEEK   Chronologically, these were all the lessons/visits this week: We went to the apartment of this member named Patrick on Thursday. It was super nice. He fed us this nice authentic Cameroonian chicken dish with plantains as we talked about his conversion story. More funny details further down in the email. We had 2 great lessons on Saturday. The first one was with Rebecca, who is progressing slowly towards that August 21st date. We talked about tithing, which she was down for. Actually being baptized in order to start paying tithing, she's timid about. She wants to know everything before baptism, which is impossible. But we'll keep talking with her. The second lesson was with Huguette, who has reappeared 3 weeks after 2 great lesson...

Bonjour amis et familles! I'm not reqlly referencing anything with the subject line. I guess you could say it implies the passage of time and hitting milestones, the latter of which did happen this week. I hit 10 months on the mission and 5 months in Africa. So there's that. This has been one of the toughest weeks of my mission, if I'm being honest. I lost my set of mission office keys, one of my favorite American Elders had to go home for health reasons, and we were unsuccessful in trying to reschedule various baptismal dates. But not everything was disappointing. Such as: MISSIONARY MOMENTS OF THE WEEK   Although we were unable to reschedule any of our fallen-through baptisms from last month, we scheduled another one! We've been teaching this friend of some members named Rebecca, who I first mentioned about 3 weeks ago, pretty much every Saturday. We've talked about baptism a couple of times now, and she was ready enough to decide with us on a 'preparatory...

Bonjour amis et familles! It's that time of the week again where I give an update about my week to all you lovely folks! (is it too obvious that I'm stretching for a different way to start these?)  Without further ado, WHEN IN AFRICA I saw this giant animal that was just chilling in the back of a pickup truck. I say 'animal' because it looked like a cow and had horns, but I swear it had a pig nose. I  wish I got a picture but we were in a taxi at the time so it would've been awkward. MISSIONARY MOMENTS OF THE WEEK   We had a couple of lessons with some new people this week! That didn't happen last week! The first one was with this guy named Luc and it went pretty well. He had some reservations about the reality of Jesus and the historicity of the Bible, but that transitioned great into the Book of Mormon. We explained that because of the Book of Mormon, the Bible is true, and that Jesus is real and is our Savior. He took it well and said he'd start reading i...

  Bonjour amis et familles! This week went by super quick with the benefit of hindsight, which I find is actually quite often the case. We moved apartments, had a lesson, went to a fellow Elders' 'birthday party,' and still had time to make some super legitimate homemade fried chicken. Let's get to the details: WHEN IN AFRICA Something linguistically and culturally cool is this: when there is food served, a 'rendezvous' becomes a 'mangez-vous' (mangez and rendez rhyme in French, and 'manger' means to eat). We went to a family in the branch's FHE and it turned into a 'mangez-vous,' which was greatly appreciated. Directly translated, 'mangez-vous' means 'eat yourselves,' but I don't think they care. Also - I saw a goat riding a motorcycle.  MISSIONARY MOMENTS OF THE WEEK  We had another awesome lesson with Huguette. At the end of our lesson this week, she told us that often, we answer her questions before she even as...

Bonjour amis et familles! It's been a super busy week as we've prepared for the next transfer. The highlight of the week was that 9 Americans arrived here in Yaoundé on Saturday. I'm super excited and I've had a pretty fun weekend with them. We had Zone Conference back on Tuesday but that, a) seems like 2 weeks ago, and b) I got to play Catan for the first time in over 4 months!  So much happened this week so let's break it down: MISSIONARY MOMENTS OF THE WEEK  Not much in terms of proselyting this week, but we did find a super cool lady over Facebook named Huguette. She met us at one of the Branch buildings (which was all the way across the city for her) and we had an awesome lesson. When I talked about Joseph Smith and his question, "Which church is true?", she exclaimed, "I have that same question!" We're meeting again on Tuesday. FUNNY QUOTE OF THE WEEK "...So your companion doesn't rock your trash..." Elder Meyer told me th...