Week 15 - October 21, 2019 "Charity Never Faileth"

This week I was introduced to one of the best places in the world. In the Country of Ivory Coast among all the dirt roads and smelly streets there is a place far far away called... Cap Sud. Where the smells are clean, the floors are shiny and you can find Burger King. That's enough of that, but for real this place is super nice. It's this big shopping mall that we went to next to the Mission Office and it is sooooo nice. There were stores like Channel and Swarovski and all those fancy stores and honestly, not that this matters but there were more white people there than Africans. It was so interesting. I felt like I was a child at Disneyland is was seriously so fun! They had this really nice bookstore there and I went to find some French books to help me study and when I found the books that I thought were good and asked Elder Ayinde what he thought, he said they were made for Kindergartners. That one kinda stung not gonna lie. But, its ok, I still bought it, the first and second grade books too. They are just some children books that will help me learn basic pure french. They have actually helped a lot. But, I mean, I guess that gives a feel for where my French is. I feel like I can understand pretty well but expressing myself is still tough. 

We taught a lot this week which was super fun, still working on the 2 kids who are ready to get baptized. Hopefully they can get their parents approval soon! They come to church every week and are really ready. Besides that I would say we have about 18 people we are teaching and that keeps us really busy.

Last night, I got a call from some sister missionaries who said this active member keeps coming to their apartment telling them to let him in. They asked him why and he said, "Because Elder Freedman stole my wife." So, apparently I got accused by some guy that I don't even know of stealing his wife and now he is trying to take some Sister missionaries. Super creepy! I'm definitely going to call President Lewis tonight and just tell him if he hears anything, it is false. Things really are different here. 

 No really crazy food stories this week, thank goodness. It's actually interesting though because the same food that I did not like when Elder Ayinde would prepare food at the beginning in our apartment, is the same stuff I'm making now. I guess that's good. Just a lot of rice and noodles with fish that I didn't like and sauces that I wasn't too fond of. But hey I'm getting used to it! Elder Nokes and I also figured out how to make apple pie this week which was SO good!

This week I really tried to focus on having charity. It was honestly super cool. Walking around just looking at people thinking how each person I look at is a Child of God. It put things in perspective and definitely made me want to help everyone here more. Thoughts crossed my head like, "wow how is it even possible that I'm the one charged with the responsibility to help these sons and daughters of God return to him?" That's one of the miracles of the mission though. God promised to make the weak things strong and I can see that in action. Thank you all for your prayers, I write that each week but I still feel them all of the time. I know I can do this because I have the best team in the world helping me every step of the way!

I've been having trouble being able to upload pictures lately, so sorry about that.

Bisou,

Elder Freedman

As Andrew said, he was not able to send any pictures because of the computer. I took a screenshot when I was talking to him on Google Hangouts.