Month: October 2020

An Abobo Neighborhood

During the wedding celebration today in Abobo, I slipped out into the neighborhood for a wander.  This is one of my favorite things to do in places I visit.  I love trying to understand daily life in places different than my own.  I love it here.  I love these good happy industrious people.  I think they do magnificent things in hard places.

Here is some grilled chicken for sale.

The neighborhood popcorn popper!

Attieke and a bucket of popcorn balls!

This woman was selling hot lunches.  She had a huge pot of boiled yams that you could top with some fish in a sauce or other toppings.  It smelled good!

Cooking plantain.

This young man was frying chunks of fish dipped in flour.

Hot local peppers for sale.

Here’s a beauty parlor for fingernail painting!

Here’s a display of fabric for sale, kept dry under a sack.  It was rainy today.

This cute gal was cutting ripe plantain to make aloko, a favorite dish here that is simply fried cubes of plantain served with a sauce.

I was intrigued by the tally marks on the table legs.  I wonder what this vendor is counting.

This is the orange juice lady!   Juice oranges here are prepared in a special way you can watch in the video below.  The oranges are peeled to make it easier to squeeze the juice into your mouth.  A delicious treat!

Hair products at a beauty parlor.

This lady was selling beaded necklaces or waist beads.  She had quite a display!

Here is one of my favorite vendor ladies!  She was right across from the school yard where the wedding party was taking place.  She could hardly keep herself at her stand.  She finally came to the party and joined in the dancing!

My young friends!

A heavy load of goodness!

Beautiful faces.

And I’ll end with this photo of a shy young girl who had a well-beloved doll in her hand.  She was pulling her little puppy dog down the street.  When I asked to see her doll, she was frightened and thought I might take it.  It must have been my struggling French!  She was beautiful and I loved her beloved toys.

A Wedding Party in Abobo for Seraphin and Cynthia

Today we went to a beautiful wedding celebration for Seraphin and Cynthia near their home in Abobo.  Seraphin is one of our guards at the Mission Office.  He and his wife were married a few weeks ago before their baptism.  They have 4 beautiful children.  Seraphin is always happy.  And with these wonderful life changes, he is even Happier!

This morning when we arrived in Abobo, the tents were set up and decorations were hung.  Family and friends were gathering to celebrate this beautiful family.  Come take a look!

Many of our Sister missionaries have been involved in teaching Seraphin’s family and preparing for this celebration.  Here are the sisters serving here now.

Family and friends came beautifully dressed in party colors.

This fete was held in a local school yard and these music makers filled the entire neighborhood with music and festivity.

The people in the street came to see the fun.

We all celebrated family–theirs and ours.

A feast was prepared and served for the family and friends after lots of dancing and greetings.  Unfortunately we had to leave before the feast began.

At about noon, we went out to wait for the bride and groom to arrive in their decorated car.  There was so much excitement in the air!

The bride and groom had a special place in their own tent.

Here are their beautiful children.

Spectators from the street continued to watch as we left.  We all love celebrating family–God’s eternal unit.

Preparing for Emergencies

This morning we went to Socoprix, our neighborhood warehouse store, to buy a few emergency supplies for our 30 missionary apartments.  Elections are approaching in Cote d’Ivoire and you never quite know what sorts of disruptions that will bring.  In order for all of our missionaries to be prepared in the case of lock downs, we’re outfitting each apartment with a 72 hour supply of essential foods.

Interviews with the the Dokui Zone

We had a fun day today with missionaries from the Dokui Zone filling the office.   They came for interviews.  Yesterday Pres Bendixsen traveled to Grand Bassam and tomorrow he’ll interview our Cocody Zone members.

Here are some of the happy faces we saw today!

After the missionaries had gone, Pres Bendixsen met with his APs and Elder Koame.

Abidjan West Mission Office Staff Meeting

This morning we attended our first Abidjan West Mission office staff meeting.  They hold these meetings every Monday at 9:30 and they review the upcoming week and coordinate their activities and schedules.  It was a great meeting, well organized and everyone played a part.

Sis Lewis greeted the 8 office Elders with hot pancakes to thank them for coming on their P-day.  I think this was something new for most of them!

Each Elder reported on their stewardship and plans for the week.

We talked about the upcoming departures, COVID testing, and an arriving missionary.  We also talked about emergency plans in case things get tense during the upcoming elections here.  Each apartment will be receiving a box of food to be kept in case of an emergency.

This is a great group of missionaries and we are excited to get to know each of them better.

We will miss the Lewises when they leave on the 13th.  They are great mission leaders.

Here are the emergency food boxes with a list of their contents:

Each box contains a 5 kg sack of rice, a bottle of oil, a container of tomato paste, beef paste, 2 cans of peas, 10 packages of spaghetti noodles and 5 cans of sardines.

 

At the Abidjan Temple This Week

We learned a fun story tonight from the other Lewises.  His Executive Secretary in the West Mission Presidency is a man named Br. Yai.  He’s Ivorian and joined the church here as a young man.  He had an impression to move to Nigeria so he did.  He found a place to live with someone who had a view of the Aba Temple spire from their home.  He was drawn to it.  He went to the temple (as a new member) and volunteered to work there.  He was put to work on the grounds.

In the next 3 years or so, he worked his way up to being noticed and apprenticed by the head temple engineer, who oversaw all of the temple maintenance.  He learned everything about the temple.  After a year, he was endowed and he also became a temple worker.  One day he met a young lady in the temple.  She spoke French and he learned she’d served a mission in the Ivory Coast.  They fell in love and married and how have a child.

He felt compelled to move back to the Ivory Coast.  They came.  Then a temple was announced here.  One day he went to the temple site and volunteered to help.  He told them what he could do.  He was hired to help as a consultant, overseer-type worker.  He makes sure things are happening as they should.

Pres Lewis is always asking him about the progress and what’s happening at the temple.  Last week in their Presidency meeting, he asked and Br. Yai told him he was excited that they are starting to plaster the rooms in the temple now.  But, he said, they weren’t doing a very good job.  He said that at the end of the day, it wasn’t as perfect as it needed to be.  Br Yai sleeps in a trailer on the temple site.  In the morning he went to inspect the plaster job and he found it was done perfectly.  He truly believes angels come in the night to fix what they aren’t able to do perfectly themselves.

He also told Pres Lewis that the animals know the temple site is a sacred place.  A mother dog came and has had puppies under the trailer and a pair of pigeons built a nest there.  He said they know it’s a safe and sacred place because animals know those things. He is convinced there are angels working with them and around them.

This is the new Distribution Center:

 

General Conference October 2020

Church members asked to seek unity, heal political division, root out racism and champion faith over fear

‘Life without God is a life filled with fear. Life with God is a life filled with peace,’ said President Russell M. Nelson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

President Nelson encouraged regular immersion in the Book of Mormon: “No other book testifies of Jesus Christ with such power and clarity. Its prophets, as inspired by the Lord, saw our day, and selected the doctrine and truths that would help us most. The Book of Mormon is our latter-day survival guide.”

He said he was not promising the days ahead would be easy, but he said: “Turbulent times are opportunities for us to thrive spiritually. They are times when our influence can be much more penetrating than in calmer times.”

Here is a wonderful short summary of each speakers’ comments:

A Temporary Change of Assignment

In Africa you learn to expect the unexpected.

Last March, remember how the travel lady here booked our tickets to Mali, but she did it in the names of Pres and Sis Lewis of the Abidjan West Mission (we’re the East Mission) instead of for us?  And we missed getting back to Mali by hours because the next day the lockdowns happened?  And then we ended up being here to help with all of the mass evacuation of all the missionaries in March and April and May?  Remember how good it was for us to be here to help the Binenes finish up their mission and then to welcome and help the Bendixsens settle in?  Remember all those reasons we needed to be here?

Another reason has been added to why we are not in Bamako right now.

We’ve been asked by the Area Presidency to be interim Mission Leaders for the Abidjan West Mission.  Pres Lewis has some health issues that need to be addressed at home in case surgery is needed.  They’ll be returning home for a time on Oct 13th to have things checked out.  Sis Lewis will also be able to have her knees scoped and their daughter has rescheduled her marriage so her parents can attend.

The hope is that they will be able to return after 6-8 weeks where John will be an interim President until Pres Lewis returns.  This assignment has come from the Area Presidency in Accra and has been approved by  Elder Suarez and Elder Vinson and by Elder Nash in the Missionary Department in Salt Lake City.

So while they are gone, our assignment will switch over to the West Mission.  Our offices are side by side and the mission homes are side by side too, about 5 min from here.  We’ll get to stay in our little apartment in the same area.  I think they picked us so our nametags would match!

This evening we joined Pres and Sis Lewis in their home as they informed the missionaries of this change in an online mission-wide devotional.  It’s a hard thing to step away from missionaries you love.   We will do our best to keep the work rolling forward while they are away.

Our love and prayers will be with the Lewises these next few weeks and we hope they will be able to return to us soon.

 

 

General Conference October 2020

This is the First Time Ever that French-speaking Saints here in the Ivory Coast have had General Conference broadcast on a local TV station with the ability to watch it in their own homes!  It’s a huge blessing for everyone.  Imagine that–the first time ever to watch and listen in their homes!

Last April the members here didn’t talk much about General Conference because there was no way to watch it.  They just had to wait for the magazines to arrive, eventually, and most don’t have access to the magazines.  Some buildings have wifi and some figured out how to broadcast it later, maybe one or two talks, but nothing like the entire conference.   Only if members had wifi and computers,  could find conference online.

This is a first for this country.   This broadcast arrangement is out of France and I think it’s going to all of the French speaking countries here in West Africa.  What a gift!