Africa and The Three Steps to Finding African Apartments

Africa:

Wednesday morning, approximately 9:30 am. After a gut wrenching car ride to Hurst I said goodbye to Mexia and Hello to 'Africa' the area where everyone wants to be assigned. 

Here's the low-down: 4 years ago an actual African (fluent in French and Swahili) converted a bunch of African immigrants and created a French/Swahili branch and lo' 'Africa' was born. The problem was that this Elders companion was as white as they come and spoke no French or Swahili and never did. So, everything fell apart when the African elder was transferred out and another white non-French/Swahili elder was transferred in. Since, neither missionary knew French or Swahili the branch stopped growing and soon most of the Africans went inactive. Even though the branch fell apart for some reason they kept Africa as an area and for years they kept putting non-French speakers in the area and none of the Elders that came into the area ever bothered to learn French. As you can see this caused a problem and for years little work was done in 'Africa' because no one in the area would bother to learn French or Swahili beyond what was on the fancy French and Swahili name tags they got. They only ever taught English speaking Africans which was a waste of time, talent, and resources. For whatever reason President Whitney was unable to dissolve the area and so he requested French speaking missionaries from Salt Lake: request denied.

Then one day there came Elder Dyer, he decided that if he had a French nametag he ought to learn French. So he ordered some books from the MTC and taught himself French. Then he trained Elder Alleman and taught him French and now I'm being taught French. Now all we have to do is learn Swahili so we can talk with the poor refugees and not the richer immigrants who went to school to learn French. But thats easier said than done because they dont teach it in the MTC and so the church can't give us any books on learning it.

The three steps to finding African apartments:

Step 1: Smelling

All African houses have one of two smells. Smell 1: Fishy or Smell 2: Vietmanese restaraunt.

Typically you can pick up the scent from about 20-40 feet away. 

We walk around apartment complexes until we can smell something, then we follow our nose until we get to step 2

Step 2: Looking

Africans cook a lot of fish (hence the smell) so they usually have grills outside their apartment. If we can't find one we look at the windows, the blinds are always, ALWAYS drawn but they are also broken. Finally we check right outside the door for flip flops, Africans take their shoes off before entering a home and flip flops are their choice of footwear. 

Step 3: Listening

If all else fails we'll just stand outside the door and listen for a woman shouting in Swahili or Lingala and the screaming of excited children. 

The city is different. I miss the country, the weird trailer parks, the country roads, the Judeo-Christian splinter groups, the open skies, but most of all the crazy encounters I have with people. None of the Africans are weird enough to write about. Probably the most interesting encounter we had was with one guy who let us in late at night because his sister had told him about us. He had a lot of really nice furniture and acted like he was a billionaire something. 

We sat down and he and Elder Alleman spoke in French for 5 minutes. Then he motioned to a wedding picture in the corner and mentioned he got married in April. We said congratulations but he quickly grabbed his remote and played his wedding video as if we didnt believe him.

We were then subjected to the wild world of Conganese weddings, it looked very expensive. 

At one point the bride and groom were walking down the aisle and all the women just started doing some sort of ceremonial shrieking where they screamed in the brides face and rapidly plugged and unplugged one nostril. After about 5 minutes of that I asked if we could turn it off. What a learning experience.

Love y'all,

--Elder Murdoch

(Sorry no pictures)