Pretty Fingers

Good morning brothers and sisters. I'm very grateful for this opportunity to write this email to you on this beautiful monday morning. For those who dont know me, I'm Elder Perkins and this is my weekly email.

I hope everyone had a great week! Things have been pretty nice over here. Mostly because it's been raining a lot more so it's been a lot cooler! Yay! It's honestly still pretty hot and humid but all the Ivorians think its freezing and are wearing hoodies and sweaters...if only they knew! 

Speaking of Ivorians, I dont know if they are just way too nice for their own good, very observant, or just plain creepy because it's happened multiple times where I've been complimented on my fingers...so maybe I should go into like hand modeling for men or something.

We had zone conference this week! It's super hype to see a wonderful group of missionaries ready to learn! My comp and I were in charge of getting food for our zone so we got tchep(basically just chicken with special rice and cooked vegetables) with fruit and soda and we dined like kings! We also learned a lot about consecration and Sister Lewis challenged us to find ways of how we can give EVERYTHING to the Lord!

Sunday we had ward conference for Andokoi and it was pretty neat because there was a lot more people there than usual! Most of them we stake leaders but a lot more members came nonetheless and a lot of amis were able to come, some for the first time! So it was pretty great! 

It was also pretty funny as we were going back out to sector after church with a member to visit her home. So a soccer player for the Ivorian nation team who is actually from Andokoi decided to come to town to play at the big dirt field in our area, which is also right next to the members house. So we tried walking by but the field was completely filled with people, including soldiers with AKs and tear gas so we were like NOPE and had to take the long way around. Pretty cool though!

Oh yeah funny thought I had yesterday. We watched the weekly missionary devotional(which are always phenomenal by the way) with Elder and Sister Christofferson. Sister Christofferson started and gave a really cool talk about how we need to unpack our bags and our hearts to fully settle into mission life and gave awesome examples of the saints in Kirtland, Ammon, and of course us missionaries! I really loved it but afterwards I had the thought "next time I unpack my bags, I'll be home lol" so that gave me a good laugh haha. I felt like I just got here honestly so it feels weird that I'm prepping to go home already. My fam got my flight plans last week so I'll be home Tuesday night, August 3rd! Crazy!

Sorry if this one turned a little long and I've been getting a little lazy with pictures so there's not even a temptation of at least scrolling through my email briefly just to look at my pictures haha but I wish everyone the best and to never forget that God loves you!

On est ensemble

Elder Perkins

Photos

We went by a part in our sector that we've honestly never been to before since it's huge and it was actually super pretty with lots of green and trees! So we decided to take some picture but none of them really turned out well but here they are nonetheless!

The Big 20

Heyo everybody! A lots happened this week and I honestly dont have the time to go over everything in this email but as many of you are aware yes today is my birthday and now I'm starting with the third decade of my life. The last two have been fun, and I can't wait to see how much my life changes in the coming years! I'm mostly just avoiding native ivorians today because the birthday tradition here is to dump a bunch of dirty water on the person whose birthday it is haha. Thanks everyone for the sweet birthday wishes!

We had a baptism this past Saturday! Frère Kouadio is an amazing person who could've been baptized a month ago but he's just been busy! I was able to baptize him and it was another great experience! He's already told us that he wants to share the gospel with his family! Which is great because he has like 8 kids who have children of their own! Pics below.

I also had interviews with President Lewis and Counseil des Dirigeants(MLC) this week! It was great to learn so much from such an inspired man and his completely amazing wife who are examples to me in almost every aspect of my life!

My day was mostly filled with shopping, talking with family, and meetings today so I wasn't able to really do anything today special. We're planning on going to a nice restaurant tonight so that's hype! 

That's mostly it for this week! My time here is still winding down and I'm excited and scared but it's all according to God's plan for me!

From papa: Today is Elder P's 20th birthday! If you have a minute, please wish him a happy birthday with an email to kartchner.perkins@missionary.org, or on Facebook.

Thanks for supporting him!

Mike

Ivorians Don't Yawn

*ding dong* Hello. My name is Elder Perkins. And I would like to share with you what happened this past week. 

First off can I get a Happy Memorial Day for my brothers and sisters in the states? Sadly over here in Africa we don't have that so there's no visiting cemeteries, backyard barbecues, or weird family reunions. Thanks for all the men and women who have fought and died to make our beautiful(maybe not perfect lol) country of AMERICA. 

Also also my sister had her baby shower last Saturday and I'm SO EXCITED FOR HER. Also for me to be an uncle because I think I'm definitely qualified to fill in the crazy uncle position. However the baby is due literally two weeks before I get home which is fine I guess..."'Can you try to hold it in?', 'Can someone slap him for me?', *slap*, 'done and done'" (Ice Age 3)

Okay now to actually talk about my mission lol so yeah we are set to baptize Frere Kouadio and Frere Willy on Saturday! And then we are also baptizing Soeur Aisha and Frere Richard the next week! So June is going to start off really well! Pray that it all goes smoothly but I feel like all of them are super prepared and ready so it should be fine! 

We also are starting to get somewhere with one of our amis, Soeur Delphi! She's one of our oldest amis since the middle of March and she's been taking the lessons super well and even reading the Book of Mormon(which she loves btw) She was sick for a couple weeks which kept her from really progressing but it's also that she's been at her church for a while and is kind of a leader so she's scared to leave. We're obviously not going to force her to leave her church but we also low key know that she feels the truthfulness of the church. It's just a matter of faith and courage! But this last lesson she completely opened up to us of how she feels and how appreciative she is of us and she knows we're servants of God! So we're crossing our fingers for her as well!

So we had exchanges with the assistants on Friday. It was pretty cool because we took a little boat to cross the lagoon into their area, so I was getting some mad Statten Island Ferry vibes. However, halfway through the day I started feeling pretty sick and fatigued. I don't know if it was the sun(because that's still a problem here ugh) or if I just caught a little thing but it wrecked me quite a bit so we had to call it short. I rested a lot and the next day I was feeling a lot better and today it's basically gone so all is well!

I've been reading again a lot of the church history stories and man it's always just a reminder of how much faith they had and also maybe a spiritual chew out of me not having the same faith. Their perseverance is incredible and it makes me not want to ever complain about anything ever really because my life is cushy compared to that haha. I was touched by one story of Orson Pratt and how prepared he was to receive the restored gospel as he prayed and searched earnestly for the truth as a teenager. And he eventually went on to be an Apostle! It helps me know that there are always prepared people ready to hear the good tidings!

Oh yeah so about the title. So Ivorians do yawn but I'm just confused because whenever I yawn, everyone freaks out and they think it's Corona or something. Even before corona people would think I was possessed or something and it would confuse me so much. One time we were waiting for a taxi and I yawned and as a driver drove by he just mimicked my yawn for just made fierce eye contact with me. Like it's funny but I'm so confused so I dont think Ivorians know that everyone yawns. Everyone also thinks I chew weird here for some reason so now I'm self-conscious about that as well. Thanks.

Anyways that's it for the week! If you take the time to read this then you're pretty cool I guess but I hope y'all love Memorial Day weekend!

Tot Ziens!

Elder Perkins

Heres some pics:

1. Picture from sports last week!

2. Random member stole my hat that I got to protect me from the cursed sun here. No there will not be pics of me with the hat don't even ask.

Idk titles are hard

...Oh hi didn't see ya there! Here's another weekly email in case you're really bored I guess...

This week was very weird but very fun as always! So this week marks 10 weeks until the end of my mission, or 70 days, or two months, or one and a half transfers(but who's counting?) Honestly though if there weren't p-days or other people reminding me, I would probably have no idea how much more I've got because it's honestly so easy to get lost in the work here. I can never say enough about how grateful I am to be here and to "just get after it"(as President Eyre from my States mission would say)

Well to kick things off with a bang there was a little bit of clashing happening between Ivorians and people from Niger throughout the week. Some random video popped up online showing some Ivorians(supposedly) being tied up and being tortured by people in Niger. So Ivorians seeing this and being the passionate and intense people they are decided to exact revenge of some sort. There's a lot of Nigeriens here that sell garba which is super popular here so it's not hard to find them and so people were pretty much hunting, beating up, and in some cases killing them even though they had nothing to do with it. Pretty wack stuff. Luckily we were able to avoid most of it even though a lot of it happened in our sector. We were with our Bishops wife at the time and she made sure we were out of danger and got home safe. The weirdest thing was of how nonchalant everyone was about it like it was a normal occurence...which it actually is when you think that this country was in political division a couple months ago, and a civil war like ten years ago.

Other than that the work is going great! We put two of our amazing amis, Richard and Aisha, on date this week for June 5th! We hope that the four amis we have on date can make it and not be pushed back anymore because we have people ready for baptism but things just keep getting in the way such as work, vacations, sickness, etc. But you know I'm just loving teaching all day. Like I said above, it makes everything go faster! 

The english connect class this week had an interesting start when the teacher played a movie in english which is a great idea(I definitely had no initial objections lol) but then he played a very Rated-R movie with lots of swearing and stuff which like for most of them they couldn't understand but for those who did, they were just laughing the whole time. Pretty funny but a little weird since we were in a church building so that's a first.

We got word that our mission was getting the COVID-19 vaccination! I was super hyped for it but then they said that the two doses would be three months apart to be the most effective, plus the certain vaccination isn't available in the states yet so just to be safe and certain with everything I just chose to get vaccinated once I got home. Not too bad especially since I had COVID in December and they say that you're immune for 8 months after having it so that takes me until the end of my mission.

Well if you prayed for rains...it kind of worked. It rained pretty hard for two straight days but then afterwards it's just been all sun all day and its killer. So keep praying please!

Anyway that's it for this week! I'm loving life and loving the work! And that's all that matters! On s'attrape!

Elder Perkins 

PHOTOS

1. Ange-Oh! One of my favorite kids!(Ange is angel in french and then Africans put "oh" at then end of names a lot)

2. Idk my mom asked for an pic with a kids hand in my hand. I'm so artsy

3. I honestly dont know the name of this game but kids play it everywhere. Hard to explain but basically they just dans around the two cords. I was standing on the other end.

Chinese Jumprope!!!

The Sun is a Deadly Lazer

Her everybody! Here's another weekly letter for all of you! Once again this week has been pretty interesting and still went by super fast!

So remember when I said that the rains finally started? Yeah I think I jinxed it because literally all this week the sun has just been blaring down without mercy and it's been kind of lame. Nevertheless we went forth! Lots of water was drunk, many shirts were sweated through, and lots of sunscreen was not really used...sorry mom...  Literally though one day the sun was out and boiling from like 7am all the way till around 5pm so basically sunrise to sunset over here. There's some token drizzles every now and then but definitely no rainstorms so those have been in my prayers and yes I'm actually asking you to bless the rains down here in africa because they aren't really a thing rn lol.

Some fun stuff that happened was that Ramadan ended this week so there was a lot of partying going on. For those who dont know, Ramadan is the Muslim fast that's held during the entire month of Ramadan of their calendar. They can eat after sunset during the month but not a whole lot so once it was over everyone was just eating all day. The day before we saw many many cows and chickens in the streets tied up just waiting to be slaughtered so that was fun and then we actually got a sense of actually how many muslims there's actually were here...and it's A LOT. Super cool though! They know how to party and dress super stylish so mad respect because food is good.

We started teaching is girl named Epiphany(no joke) who's just a little older than us as she's super intelligent and pretty religious! So it makes lessons go a little differently than usual because she can read and knows a lot about christianity already. So we taught her a little about the church and stuff and gave her the Restoration pamphlet. The next visit was fun because she definitely read everything and had lots of questions and doubts about Joseph Smith and his divine manifestations. Welp we trying to talk her though it of the doctrine behind the Great Apostasy and how God still talks to us today. Also with the Book of Mormon. We hope she gives it a try and over time she might be able to see for herself! So pray that Epiphany will have an epiphany(hehe) of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith!

I'm not gonna lie, I've been getting like many lowkey impressions and miny revelations about going back home which is still half exciting and half terrifying. One example is from the missionary devotional this week by Elder Lund from the Young Men's presidency as half of his talk was about keeping the habits after you return home. Ugh it's hard to accept sometimes but you know as Tony Stark once said, "Every journey has it's end." It's okay though I still have over two months left so I'm gonna live it up here as much as possible!

That's really it for this week! Nothing much else besides it being hot and all.  I love you and all and if you need anything dont hesitate to reach out to me and I'd love to chat with ya! 

Stay frosty my friends!

Elder Perkins

Lol photos kind of slipped my mind this week(sorry mom)

La Fête Des Mères

Heeeeeyyyy what's going on my favorite people?! Hope everything is going your way and if it's not then it's going the Lord's way so you dont have to worry too much! Here's just yet another weekly email for you!

Well yesterday was Mother's Day! Well for me anyway. Here in Cote d'Ivoire it's actually on the 30th but then that would clash with memorial day weekend for us and we can't have that. Anyway just a little bit about my wonderful mother. Kind, inspirational, dedicated, passionate, and FULL OF LOVE FOR OTHERS. If you haven't met her yet, then you're missing out! I can't wait to see her again in a couple months! Granted I've seen my mom probably way more than any other missionary, both by video call and in-person but hey I can still miss her okay?

We also just had transfer news and gladly Elder Owuor and I are sticking together! Again who knows what might change because we still have little transfers during the actual transfer, so things can still change but it's great we can still work hard together! I'm staying in the same area of Andokoi as well! Great people and now I'll be able to see some of the baptisms happen here! Super exciting. This being my second to last transfer, I dont know if this is where I'll be until the end of my mission, or if President Lewis will send me somewhere else for one transfer. I'm honestly fine with whatever happens. I don't think I can be picky about what area I'm in after I barely got back to Cote d'Ivoire anyways!

So we started teaching this mama named Mary Magdalene(no joke) and she is definitely one of those prepared and elect people. She stopped us in the road a couple weeks ago asking about the church and what we do because we pass by her house a lot to teach another ami. She showed interest but she said she works a lot throughout the week and didn't have her phone number on hand to give us. So we gave her a brochure with our number on it with some hope we could see her again. 

Luckily enough, we bumped into her again and started teaching her! She is super sincere in her search for the truth, because honestly she explained of how sick she is of all the churches around here and asked so many powerful questions! We answered as best we could while also teaching a bit about the Restoration. We also invited her to church to come and see how we do things around here. We'll she ended up coming to church yesterday and she LOVED IT. It really made me happy to see how happy she was about church! She even made a friend there which is perfect! We're super excited to help her explore and discover the truth and to really find the true church! Woohoo missionary work!

We had mission leadership council this week and a big part of it was about really knowing how to ask inspired questions. This is something that I'm terrible at and I know a lot of missionaries struggle with this. It's pretty easy to have the same questions to ask every time or not ask questions at all, but its essential to help amis discover the doctrine for themselves and then to also help us get a grip on their understanding. So if you're a missionary reading this or really anyone who teaches and you need help, read below from my amazing mission President.

There are Three Standards of Questions:

1. Understanding- what's the doctrine or subject of what you just taught/read?

2. General Application- how can this apply to everyone?

3. Personal Application- how can this apply to you?

Anyway that's it this week! Not too much going on besides you know, the greatest and hardest work that's ever been done on the face of the earth! And I'm loving it! 

Lahgbay-oh(goodbye in Attie, one of the many many native languages here)

Elder Perkins 

PHOTOS

1. We sadly had to move out of the White House apartment. No more rats, but also no more AC... but we took a quick picture to remember the short time we had there.

2. We believe in the Laying on of Hands(je vais te frapper eh)

3. MLC! I'll only have two more of these left if I stay zone leader the whole time.

4. English Connect class! Some of these people are honestly really good now and it's awesome to see them progress. Gift of tongues man is REAL.

5-6. Some light gospel memes that I have encountered in my travels. Enjoy.

Finishers Wanted

Hey everyone! Another week and another email! Missionary work and life is thriving here in Cote d'Ivoire. Our bishop asked us yesterday to start wearing our masks to church so I guess we have to do that. Ugh so hard😂

Well this day marks exactly 3 months until the end of my mission. It's definitely mixed feelings of excitement and dread but ça va aller. We had Zone Conference this past week which was amazing! I also became a sprinter. In this mission, once a missionary has 3 months(two transfers) left, they become a sprinter and they set goals for how they can sprint to the finish line instead of running out of energy and slowly walking till the end. So it's official that my mission is ending now and I'm going to sprint all the way to the end! 

I love the talk by President Thomas S. Monson, "Finishers Wanted", that talks about how important it is to keep going and "keep the faith" until the end. That's why as missionaries we teach about enduring to the end after baptism! 

Well as far as the work goes this week, we had a lot happen with a lot of our amis! I love when amis ask very interesting questions like, "can women wear pants?", or maybe have objections like, "Not everyone will be resurrected." And be able to be directed be the Holy Ghost of how to best help them understand the doctrine and most importantly, to feel God's love for them! We also ran into a guy who follows the antichrist here in Cote d'Ivoire and we definitely followed the Spirit by getting out of there chopchop.

That's honestly it this week! Nothing crazy happened this week but it's been fun living life here in Cote d'Ivoire!

Elder Perkins

PHOTS