Carry it!

Dear family and friends, 

Elder Effiom and I had a tough week. I think it was also one of the hardest weeks I've worked on a mission. We had great plans to see a lot of people, but nobody answered their phones, and just a lot of appointments fell through. Also, the weather was absolutely scorching, so that didn't help much! Wednesday was especially memorable. Everything quickly fell apart, so I was determined to find some new people to start teaching. We walked all around in the heat and contacted for hours. It seemed as though we had walked 20 miles or so! Elder Effiom got wore out. It was the closest I've seen to a missionary collapsing on the roadside haha. I was very proud he endured and didn't give up on such a hard day. 

The rest of the week was similar. Fortunately though, the Lord answered our pleas and blessed us with 6 new investigators. We'll just continue to move on quickly from person to person until someone clicks. The hardest part of all the week was not seeing any investigators at sacrament, after all the commitments and work. Something I think I learned the other day is that maybe the Lord is showing us unprepared people so that we can quickly distinguish them and move on to those He's prepared for us. 

The whole week I decided to carry a copy of the Book of Mormon in my hand, so that if we're talking to someone, it's visible. Well, that turned out to be a really good teaching strategy. So many people came up to us and asked about "our Bible" and thousands of gospel-related questions opened up because of it. I love doing it, and it works beautifully. After all, it's the keystone of our religion! I think I will try my best to do that everyday if possible. 

Elder Effiom's training is going good. He led in a lot of lessons, and I'll have him do that more often until he's confident. 

The good news is is that we have a baptism on Sunday! Sister Francisca is ready to rock. She's a really nice lady and is totally prepared for membership in the Church and her baptismal covenant. 

Service Project for an investigator. We helped her make "chips" for like 5 hours haha. It was fun and a lot of work.
We rarely get opportunities to serve,
so I was really happy to do it for a change.

This is the investigator, Gispa. Really nice.

They just tastes like bland chips. It's mostly made of flour. 

We're still getting a lot of rainfall. It looks like we'll be close to the Harmattan season, where sands from the Sahara blow over. Today was a super hot day. 

Snake at the chapel.

Well, that's about it for our week. Thanks for all your unending love and support. 

Elder Nissinen