Sauron Strikes Again! Week 11

Excuse me for the title this week, but the Mordor sauce I had in the MTC? Yeah, I had another experience with that again the other day.  But anyways, bonjour from Côte d’Iviore1 Week 11 was great! The weather was really good this past week.  My French is coming along bit by bit.  I think in French throughout the day, and I can hold a semi-constant conversation.  The gift of tongues is so real.  I wouldn’t be anywhere near where I am now without it.

A soeur in our ward is really nice to us and gives us food sometimes.  One time she gave us spaghetti with sardines, another time she gave us plantains so we could make aloko, usually normal stuff like that.  On Vendredi, she made sauce graen with futu banane.  Futu banane is pretty much just mashed up bananas, and it’s really good.  Now the sauce, that’s another matter.  I took a picture of it, but it’s not in my camera roll somehow.  Anyways.  The sauce was dark red with chunks of who knows what in it.  (Do you know those toys for little kids that are bags with tons of small beads in it and random small objects in the beads so you have to move the beads around and find the objects and press them up against a little window to see what the object is - an I-Spy bag?) Well the sauce was just like that.  We had to fish around in the sauce for mystery chunks to eat with the futu.  Is it poisson? Poulet? Porc? It was near impossible to tell, everything was the same color.  It was like roulette, but you didn’t know what your prize was until you had already eaten it. About halfway through the meal, I pulled up this brown wad of something out of the sauce.  I asked Elder Kalala what he thought it was.  He said, "Eat it, it’s good."  As I was putting it to my mouth, he said something like, "Wait, actually don’t eat it."  I asked why? I couldn’t understand what he said after that, so I ate it.  It actually wasn’t meat at all, it was a pepper of some sort.  I didn’t think much about it, so I finished chewing it and swallowed.  Ohhohohohhh.  But then.  Guess what it was.  It was a Mordor pepper.  Approximately 15 seconds after swallowing it, my tongue, throat, and entire mouth started tingling, and then burning.  It felt, once again, like I had drank molten lava.  My face was red, I was sweating and crying, and I was trying to cool my mouth off in any way I could.  It was painful.  Now that I know what it’s called (pimant), I can hopefully avoid it better.  Do NOT eat the pistachio ice cream.

On Samedi, we attended multiple activities with the different wards at the paroisse.  At the Vridi Canal ward activity (a baptism), they gave out sardine sandwiches and soda at the end, which was pretty cool.  At the Vridi 2 activity (a lesson on The Plan of Salvation), they gave out attieke avec poulet.  Elder Kalala and I had already started our fast by then, so we brought it back to the apartment.  On Dimanche, after our fasts were done, we ate it, along with bags of fruit juice that came with the attieke.  I drank the purple one (bissap), which tasted AWESOME.  It was so so good.  After I finished the bissap, I thought, “Oh the yellow one (gnamakou) must be just as good.”  I have no idea what fruit it was.  I took a sip and thought, “Hm this is pretty good.”  Swallowed.  Yeah nope now my throat is on fire.  They added pimant to it! Who adds mordor pepper to fruit juice!? So much for avoiding the pimant, haha.

Anyways, I don’t have any other wild stories from this week.  To end, I’ll talk a little bit about my area.  The places people live here are teeny in comparison with the houses in America.  The best abodes I’ve seen in my area are small 2 or 3 room concrete structures, probably the size of half of a small trailer home.  They generally have a bathroom, tile floors, 2 or 3 lights, a table and a few chairs, and sometimes a couch of some sort.  People rarely have a tv, or any appliances.  The people that live in houses like this have running water, electricity, a small propane stove, and a decent amount of clothes.  They do okay, but they’re not super well off.  The other sectors near us are better off.

At the other end of the income spectrum in my sector are the people that live right next to the edge of the water.  They have literally nothing.  They have one, maybe two pairs of clothes.  To cook their meals, they make little fire pits in the sand because they don’t have a stove.  Their homes consist of a couple wooden poles, sheet metal for the roof, and black trash bags for the walls.  That’s it.  And it’s not like they’ve done that to themselves or that they’re lazy. They work hard all day.  They look so tired and beat when they return at the end of the day, it’s so sad.

But, despite their trials, they’re very selfless and kind.  I love the people here so much.  They’re the nicest people I’ve ever met.  They always find something for us to sit on, even if that means that they have to sit on the ground.  Sometimes, they’ll try to feed us, even if it’s at their own personal expense.  It’s both heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time.  They frequently readily accept the word of God with open arms.  Even if they’re not interested in our message, they’ll listen, just to be nice.  There are many scriptures about people that are humble and selfless, but I’ll keep it short.  Here is one of the things that Jesus said about it:

“Yea blessed are the poor in spirit who come unto me, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Mattieu 5:3, 2 Nephi 12:3)

The people here are blessed.  Everywhere I go, I can feel their compassion for each other.  Despite all of their circumstances, they are loving and kind.  It’s amazing to me to see and feel their selflessness and compassion, despite their circumstances.  If anyone deserves the kingdom of heaven, it’s them.

Donc, nous sommes à la fin.  The mission is wonderful, and my throat has almost recovered from the pimant.  I hope y’all are doing well! Until next week!

-Elder Lyman

Aloko, attieke, a hardboiled egg, and random sauce that’s a bit spicy. 

Elder Kamara and I changed the water filtration system à l’apartament on vendredi.  The yellow was soaked all the way through.  I am SO glad that we have that.  If not, all that stuff would be in my body.

This is where the photo of sauce graen and futu banane would be, but it’s missing...

The bags of water and fruit juice.  The purple one is the bissap (dried hibiscus petals), and is probably one of the best things I’ve had here so far.  The yellow one is the gnamakou.  It’s like someone took mild mango juice and dumped buckets of ginger into it.  Would not recommend. (Elder Lyman didn't realize gnamakou IS ginger)

While we were at the paroisse, Elder Kamara took a ton of pictures.  Here’s one of Elder Kalala and I.  We were quite unprepared for the photo.

Elder Kamara really likes to use my camera and take a lot of pictures. Here’s one he took at the church of the pavilion. It rained the day before, that’s why there’s a pond to the right.

Elder Kamara and I at the church. I have no idea what he’s doing with his hand.

 

 

 

  

My scriptures were getting damaged, so I bought cases for them.

More info from text chats...

•Elder Lyman now teaches full lessons, but his companion takes over when they veer off on tangents.

•The crazy guy in the last email is usually drunk, so the brochures the missionaries give him are the Word of Wisdom brochures.

•Soeur Cynthia is interested and believes in the Book of Mormon, but has a strong attachment to her current church.

•Souer Christelle wants to be baptized and accepts every engagement, but isn't legally married. (Many couples are not legally married because there is a tradition of "la dote" - basically a fee a father charges the guy that want to marry his daughter. Like a reverse dowry. Or like Jonny Lingo. And the father decides how much the guy must pay. It's often too much so people live in "common law" marriages.)

•Elder Lyman and Elder Kalala had a great lesson with Frere Michael yesterday. Elder Lyman said he "could see the light of Christ in his (Michael's) eyes."

•ELder Lyman now eats breakfast. A banana with nutella. He will no longer be able to use not eating Nutella as one of his "Never Have I Ever".

•The homes in Elder Lyman's area are tiny. One could fit inside his bedroom. There is usually no furniture and dirt floors. But the people are happy.

•A good way to show friendliness is to accept water if they ask you if you want some. It's almost always the bottled type 

•Elder Lyman and Elder Kalala have about 4 lessons a day, and that sucks up all of their time. 

•They don't really tract, they just talk to one person and that person gives them 3 or 4 numbers to call.

•Along with Le Blanc, people call Elder Lyman the "baoule". It’s like "gringo" in Spanish.

•Elder Lyman now feels that military time and metric are far superior.

•Elder Lyman's companion is 26 years old and has finished college. Or is close to finishing.

•Elder Kamara used Mackinnon's camera to take photos to send home to his family, so Elder Kamara sent us Elder Lyman's most recent photos from his own email account because he had the SD card at a different cyber cafe. So I emailed him back and thanked him for the photos and for being a friend to my son. He responded with, "Sorry to say we are not friends", which shocked me for a split second before I continued reading... "but brothers. he is good brother. he shows people that it not about colour but we are all one we are children of our Heavenly Father and am greatfull to  be with him in the same apartment."
Elder Kamara and Elder Lyman are not companions, but have grown close despite this, and reading his response to me brought tears of gratitude to my eyes.