Week 47

April 18, 2016

We took a plane down to Nigeria this week to teach... 

John has a baptismal date for May 7th! He is a champ, super ready and willing to change his life with no questions asked to live Gospel principles. 

Samuel still does not have his permanent documents, but he actually got a special exemption from the area presidency that allows him to be baptized without them! I'm not sure exactly what the Fitzners (a missionary couple) said about him to convince the mission president.  Next step... he has to want it too! He has committed to pray and continue reading to know if he needs to be baptized. In our lesson Wednesday he prayed that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints would grow, and I was thinking "Hmm... I wonder who we know here who could contribute to that?!" Ah… pazienza [patience]. 

We finally got to teach Ernesto!!! We taught him the plan of Salvation and will see him again this week. 

Yesterday church was pretty great. Ernesto and Mario couldn't come so we just taught gospel principles to a bunch of Africans. One of them, Emanuel, who struggles to come to church, was under the impression that someone had been baptized the day before. "No", I responded, "but Samuel should be getting baptized pretty soon". "Who is he?" Emanuel asked. "The fat one?" Basically from that moment I guessed what kind of gospel principles class it was going to be. I LOVED it.

Endurance was spouting a never ending stream of sincere though sometimes random questions "Are there big sins and little sins or are they all the same?" Godwin was dropping some pretty advanced stuff about how Abraham must have had a lot of faith to trust in the Lord's covenant with him.  Samuel was adding his own helpful truths about patience and faith in waiting for promised blessings, and they all enjoyed answering each other's questions, always punctuated by "You understand?" Meanwhile, I was sitting there wishing I had studied up a bit more on the Abrahamic Covenant. They are great and all have such a humble desire to do what's right. 

Saturday night was an awesome talent show organized by the bishop’s wife with tons of non-members. It went late, so we had to leave after the second act (a beautiful Mozart composition), which was good because I heard later on someone sang Coldplay. Good thing I wasn't there. 

Holy cow it was an emotional experience watching the talk by Elder Kearon during lunch the other day. It really is true – seeing and talking to a refugee changes you! It's hard for Americans to understand being so far away from it all, but please help if you can. 

Love, 

Anziano Cannon 

P day  

Picture from the Mostra [display] we did last week.  

The non-missionaries are our YSA (Young Single Adults).