I am the Coconut Man!

Bonjour,

How is everyone doing? I am doing pretty well. A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks, so I'll get right into it.

My companion, who I am training, is doing well. He is learning a lot and making a lot of progress in the mission. The Africans that come on the mission are like pre-trained, so I guess that helps too haha. It's a little weird, because I am 19, and have almost a year on the mission, and he is 24  and just started. It's also kinda weird "training" someone who is 5 years older than me. However, we get along great and are doing a lot of work. 

Our week started out amazing, and then just kinda went downhill really fast. First of all, it started out great because we found 7 new people to teach this week. Some of them were people we found last week, and taught for the first time this week. But, we found this one family that we introduced our message too, and asked if there was a day we could come back, and they told us "right now" haha so we taught them right then and there. Also, earlier this week, we fixed a baptism date for someone we are teaching. She had accepted baptism with the last missionaries, but just before the baptism she got cold feet, and backed out. Over time, we were able to talk to her, and eventually fix a baptism date again!

So, those were the highlights of this week. That was the beginning of the week, and the week didn't end too well. To start off, on Saturday, we had 6 appointments scheduled for the day, and all 6 of them canceled on us. Some of them just weren't there, but some of them just straight up told us they were busy, after we walked all the way to their house. Then, on Sunday, after we invited all of our friends to church, not a single one came. We had 0 friends at church yesterday. And too add to that, all our appointments yesterday fell though as well. Those are kind of the lowlights for this week. 

Some other fun stuff happened this week as well. Like when we went to an appointment that canceled on us, we ended up playing a little soccer with these super nice kids across the street. They took a bunch of photos with us, and it was super fun. It was nice to meet with some kids that loved us, especially after an appointment canceled on us. We also have a coconut tree in our courtyard, so that's been fun to smash some coconuts and eat/drink them. 

Other than that, just living the life out here. I'm having a pretty good time, French is pretty good, and I'm used to living out here, which I never thought I'd be haha.

I hope everyone has a great week, and a great day.

Peace,

Elder Orchard