I'm in Togo y'all!

August 13, 2018

Plane ride to Benin

Oh, jee it sure has been a long week! ( in a good way of course) but just a tooon of experiences so I will sum up as much as I can remember without making it to long. We left the MTC about 6 in the morning Tuesday and flew in this sweet double prop, four-seat wide plane to Cote d'Ivoire where we had a 9-hour layover until our plane left that night for Benin. I flew with 12 other elders going to Benin; a bunch from our two districts and from Utah. Once we landed we went to stay in some other elders apartments that night and my poor companion Elder Cullota had an entire suitcase disappear or just not show up at the airport so I sure hope they can find it. 

The next morning we went to the mission home and met with president Guerry and his nice wife where we got a bunch of information and stuff done and found out where we would go. Me, along with 5 others got sent to Togo so that day we got driven to our missions! And let me tell you the driving is INSANE! There are thousands of these little moped motorcycles things that everyone drives and sides of the road are just an option. It's mostly just the bigger car gets to go and there is no speed limit so most the time our driver was just laying on the horn and blowing past everyone inches away but that's just how it goes. 

My sector

I am in Ablogame, Lome sector which technically has the beach as part of it! The roads in our sector are all dirt and rock. You name it and it is in the street. People just throw it all out there (or relieve it all out there) and it's so awesome cause you never know what you're going to see each day. There are goats and chickens EVERYWHERE and I'm not really sure who owns them... there are also lizards everywhere and luckily we've only had a couple cockroaches so far but hopefully, a cleaner kitchen will help with that. Our apartment is nicer than most as I hear it from the elders and even though everyone here has wells we have this huge tank in our apartment that makes it so we can have running water which is super nice. And I have been blessed with an awesome trainer!! His name is Elder Bullock and he is from Lehi, Utah. We also share the apartment with Elder hall from Heber and Elder Manza from the Ivory Coast so they have gone easy on me this first week and Will begin to wreck me with the language this week by only French which will hopefully help because haha it's like they say "the language I learned in the MTC is not the language I'm hearing" haha but Elder Bullock has been nice and lets me bear my testimony at the end of lessons on whatever it is I pick up of what they're talking about and it is coming " se va venir" as everyone tells me. 

These cute members decided to walk us home after church.

Everyone here is so nice and the ward is awesome! I got to give my testimony in sacrament meeting hehe but from their looks, I'm not sure if they understood... They all speak this language called ewe (ev-ay) here so French is everyone's 2nd language too so most of the kids don't speak french and about 1/3 of our lessons we have a member to translate for us. The kids here are literally THE CUTEST kids I've ever seen in my life though and ah there just such funny kids. Every time we walk by almost ever single kid does this singing chant thing saying "yovo yovo, Bonsoir" which is a mix of french and ewe saying "white white, good evening". some are making fun of us but most are just so excited to see white people. Anyway, I could go on and on and on but luckily I have 2 years to do that haha. I love this place and I love these people!! (oh also another reason to love this place is that it is the only place in the world where you can walk down the street to go buy late dinner in your pajamas and it is above normal. How sweet is that!) Love y'all and love this gospel!

Elder Briggs