MAY 19, 2014 - Happy Birthday Mom! , Jungle, Bananas!!! Independence day of Cameroon, four new missionaries, "I have a great life"

Well, I thought today that I would write each of you at the same time and tell you about my fun adventures from this past week. Here is what has happened in my life. 

Monday: P-Day. We had a mangez-vous at one of the branch presidents houses this week and it was awesome. It was to commemorate the end of ElderLavering's mission. We ate great food, had a small family home evening,  and had a great time.

Tuesday was Elder Laverings birthday so we had a huge mangez-vous at another member's house this week. Her name is Martine and I love her. She cooked us fried fish, Folon, piment, and a million plantains. I love African food. We had a great day.

Wednesday I went on splits with Elder Lavering into his sector and I also did four baptismal interviews for a family that he is teaching. It was a pretty standard day, but I had a blast doing baptismal interviews and hanging out with Elder Lavering for the day.

Thursday was by far my favorite day this week for one reason and one reason only. I finally fulfilled one of my dreams that I have had before I ever came to Africa. Here we go.

Elder Naughton and I were heading to our last rendez-vous of the evening and we were walking through the jungle, literally the jungle, to get to their house. As we were walking I looked ahead and saw a banana tree that had fallen over and had a huge branch of bananas attached to it. I knew that this was finally the moment when my dream would be fulfilled.

I stopped on the trail and Elder Naughton turned around and asked what I was doing. I told him that we had to cut down this branch of bananas and take it home.He looked at me like I was crazy, but I had to do it.

Unfortunately I didn't have a knife with me so I told Elder Naughton to give me his pen. Ha ha. Well, I cut down this branch of bananas with a pen threw it on my shoulder, and carried it all the way home. Granted we took a taxi, but we still had a good walk before finding one.

One of my dreams was to come to Africa, go into the jungle, cut down a branch of bananas or plantains, throw it over my shoulder, and take it home. And I did it. One of the best days of my life. I felt like a boss and it was the coolest thing ever. That was the highlight of my week.

Just so you know, this branch of bananas has 124 bananas on it. I counted it. Ha ha. I love Africa!

Friday was pretty normal.

Saturday was also awesome, but not much happened.

After Thursday every day after that paled in comparison to the awesomeness of carrying a huge thing of bananas home. It was so freaking heavy too.

And Sunday we went out to our branch president's house to eat Ndolé and plantains, we watched a soccer game and then to end the night we had a small lesson/family home evening with a family that recently lost their father so a bunch of members were their to testify of the Plan of Salvation and talk about Jesus Christ. It was really cool.

And now it's Monday. Tomorrow is the Independence day of Cameroon and we are having a sleep over in Bastos so that we can make it to zone conference on time on Tuesday. We will be 12 missionaries total. Did I forget to mentiont that we got four new missionaries? Well we did. Two inYaoundé, one in Douala, and another going to Pointe Noire waiting for his visa in Douala.

I have a great life. I love you guys and I will talk to you next week!

Happy Mother's day and Happy birthday day Mom!

I love you guys!

Until next time,

Love Elder Massé