Bittersweet

Bonjour à tous!

I hope everyone had a great week, and is just doing great in general. My week was, as you could guess, bittersweet. 

So, to start out, we visited Sœur Justine just about everyday this week, leading up to her baptism, which was a good choice. She was always a little skeptical about baptism, but her family members are members of the church, so I knew that she needed to trust God and take this leap of faith. It turned out being super awesome! She fell super sick the day of her interview, with Malaria of all things, but still made it to her interview. Then, the next day she texted us about an hour before the baptismal service, and said that she was super sick and couldn't make it. I was super devastated, and was pacing around and everything. I called her, with no answer, and then I called the district leader, just trying to figure out what to do. Then, 5 minutes later, she walks in. Turns out she was just messing with us haha. She ended up getting baptized, and confirmed and it was super awesome. Then, last night, to add onto that, she called us and was just thanking us for being persistent, and baptizing her. That was a super awesome confirmation that what we did was the right thing!! 

OK, so that was what made this week super cool. Now, what made it suck. So right after weekly planning on Friday, we got a text in our church group chat that said the government of Togo is going to shut down all church services for a month, due to Covid, starting that day. Now, we can't have church as a large congregation at the ward building, but as small congregations in the homes of families. That makes it really hard to get our friends to church, or even know how many came to church. Also, normally we could have confirmed Justine on Sunday at church, but we ended up doing it right after the baptism. It sucks because I thought leaving the states would be leaving Covid behind too, and at first it seemed like that. The first couple of months here were no masks, and Covid wasn't a problem. Now the case numbers are rising, and it's becoming a problem. I just hope that it's really just a month, and doesn't turn into 2 months, and then 6 months and just escalate really quickly like that. I'm sure it will be fine though. We got to have sacrament meeting in a members house with about 6 of us there, which was a super neat experience, and that's how it will be for the next couple of weeks. 

Well, that's about it, and that's why I had a bittersweet week. I would say that the good definitely outweighed the bad though.

À bientôt, 

Elder Orchard