A Different Planet

This has been  the longest week of my life. It has single handedly been the best and worst. I dont know if that's good or bad yet. It has been so hard but the people and especially kids have made it worth it. The MTC feels like a lifetime ago and I miss all the friends I made there. One of the things that made me grateful this week was my mission president and all of the missionaries have met up to this point. Our first day here after the days of traveling, we met the mission president at the airport and had dinner at their house. The next day we had a short "briefing" and got shipped out. My area is about 45 minutes away from the main city and I'm learning to love it here. I try taking it one day at a time but pretty soon I'll take it one year at a time. The food isn't the best and it's the same every day and almost every meal. It's so hard here but I will survive. We teach 5-8 lessons every day and have 8 Baptisms this week. My companion Elder Ndjoku and I are the only elders in the area and we cover 2 areas so there is so much walking and preaching and sweating haha! Luckily this weekend two more elders will come cover one of the areas but sadly won't be in our compound :( when I say compound I mean it... we are surrounded by like 12ft cement walls and have a big metal gate that has 3 locks on it plus barbed wire on the walls and gate and motion sensing lights on top of the wall. looking at this from an Americans perspective who grew up in luxury, I could complain and been sad about this but when I walk outside and see people in a small shack with dirt floors I learn to appreciate my dirty kitchen and wired tasting food. Speaking of weird tasting food, I ate at the bishops home and long story short when I was eating the whole fish ( nasty fish ) I experienced the sound and taste of 2 fish eyeballs being smashed between my teeth. I really enjoyed the not so clean bagged water they gave us after so I could rinse my mouth out. The days feel like weeks here but elder Berry and I have this saying that is keeping me going "the days feel like weeks and the weeks feel like days and the months feel like years and the years feel like months and the decades feel like centuries and the centuries feel like decades" just brings back good memories of America and normal life. Last thing to say is my English is getting wack because I'm picking up on the language and accent here. Sorry if I come home African. Thank you all for the emails! They are helping me keep going! 

Love you all so much! 

-Elder Cam