Not one, not two, but three

First off, for the church here in Benin, yesterday (Sunday) was an incredibly important day. The news...(drum roll).... the branch here was divided into three separate branches. I don't know if just saying that captures how important that really is. There has been only one branch here for 6 years or so, so this is the first division ever here. There are only around 200 or so members, so the branches will be small, but it is really awesome. Really, it was great, and I'm not really sure what to say to help you understand how important and how awesome it was. (Michael said that the Gbedjromede branch he will be in, has about 150 members. The other two branches (Akpakpa and Menontin) are further out and probably will have 30-50 people. It will be a lot easier for them to get to church having it closer to their home.)

It will be very difficult, especially for the first little while, but will help the church here so much in the long run. So, missionary work will be a little different because of the change, but not too much. This last week, and especially in a training meeting for the new leaders of the branches that the missionaries went to, I have really realized how much we have to build the church here. We do all of the stuff that all missionaries do as well, but here our real goal is to build the church, basically from the ground up. I think that I had realized that before, but it hit me again this last week.

Okay, so something else that I've been thinking about lately is how nice it is to have church buildings. Here, church meets in a house, which has been made into a building we can use for church. It works fine for the most part, but isn't ideal. (see attached picture, it is small, but will give you an idea about what he is talking about) But, we had a Christmas activity this last Saturday, and it would have been really nice to have a gym or something for that. We had it in the room we use as a chapel, and it felt kind of weird to me. The activity went okay, though it started like an hour late. Sometimes things are like that. We had an investigator come, but he had to leave before the activity even started. So, yeah, that was too bad. I could go into more details with this story of the Christmas activity, but I think I'll move onto other things.

I've heard people say that the church is the same everywhere you go. I don't think that is quite true. The gospel is the same. That doesn't change. But, the way that the church works is not exactly the same here. Not in a bad way or anything, or a lot different, just a little bit.