Your question about Thanksgiving... yeah we had a sweet feast to celebrate it. A picture is attached. So how money works for the mission is that every month on the 28th we go to the bank to pick up money for the 4 weeks. Meaning that around the end of those weeks we are very low on our money. Hence, our delicious thanksgiving dinner was a bowl of rice, baked beans, and chunks of Zowa (Spam) in it. Oh, in case you look at the picture and are wondering if the spam box is written in Arabic, yes, yes it is. Pretty much all the the food products here are labeled in Arabic on one side and English on the other. I'm assuming it's because of all the muslims here. It's kind of funny though. So that was a poor man feast. On the actually day of Thanksgiving it decided to rain (weird because we are in dry season, so I didn't have my umbrella) and so we walked back to the apartment through mud and rain. We get soaked a lot here. The rain isn't really an excuse to not go out. It's just nicer when I remember my umbrella. Anyway, our district decided that we didn't want to have Christmas be like Thanksgiving, so we're going to try and save money and buy a goat to slaughter and eat for Christmas dinner. We'll see how that one goes.
You're right, no one in Africa knows Thanksgiving.... in the way we know it. They have Thanksgiving here but basically what that version of Thanksgiving translates to is the pastors of the churches steal a bunch of money and food from people. In all the little churches around here the pastors teach the people that around this time all the people in the church are supposed to bring money, food, all kinds of things and give it to the pastor to pay him for doing God's work. Mannnnnnn so corrupt. I feel bad for those pastors when they die and meet God. Using the Bible to steal people's money. Yikes. There are places in the Bible where people try and offer the apostles money and they always tell the people no. There's nowhere in the Bible where people are paid to preach the gospel, the whole big thing is how Jesus was a servant to the people, not the people to him. So funny how that worked out in our day.
Yes, my shoe size is the same so if you wanted to send shoes to me I would be a happy boy. Oh and the Christmas package, I got it. Oh, and I got Grandma Semmerling's package. Thank you so much! I think there's only like 5 oreos left. Haha. But man, let me tell you how jealous everyone was of my sweet family when I opened that Christmas package and showed them. Elder Taylor was looking at it and was like "What? And they put scripture references as clues?? Your family is creative AND spiritual?!" Yeah, you guys are the stinking best family ever. As you can see by my extreme enthusiasm in the picture. Also, I don't know why I'm doing so many thumbs up. I guess I was just really excited about sweet packages and crappy Thanksgiving "feasts." Ah, either way the gospel is so true.
Man, you guys were on a beach. Whattttt. Supposedly there will come a time where on a P-day we will go to a beach here. No idea when that one will happen. I'll be sure to take pictures though, no worries. Haha. They sent out a text to all of us the other day talking about calling home for Christmas. It's weird to think you guys have voices. I ate ice cream for the first time (since coming here...) today. And OH MY GOSH. It was amazing. It was like real ice cream. Man, thinking about it makes me feel like I'll go crazy. I can't even describe how good it tasted. I might have a new addiction when I go home. Transfer news is next Sunday, which is always super exciting. It's impossible to tell what will happen but I'm sure it will be interesting to see nonetheless. I'm going to send you guys a Christmas Present. Well, it's not really a present for you guys because it's all pictures of me... but anyway, I'm going to put all the pictures I have so far and put them on a flashdrive. And then this week we have to go to Belliar Park for an interview with President, so I'll give it to Sister Patterson to give to Grandma to send to y'all. And then you can see all the pictures and videos that I've taken since I've been here. Yay. Oh and I have to give a quick shout out to Lexi Hayob because she sent me a sweet letter and talked about shout outs. Yeah, my shout out is really that lame Lexi. Sorryo.
Okay, so spiritual story time. So this one lady we have been teaching and is set to baptize on December 3rd had her interview this past Saturday. This lady is very very uneducated and cannot speak any English whatsoever. She can barely barely understand my Krio (most people can understand me completely now, it's pretty exciting) and sometimes doesn't understand Elder Pabie when he speaks Krio. Her original language is Mende, another dialect that doesn't sound anything like English, I've learned a couple little phrases of it but I don't understand anything. She lives in a one room house that is probably about the size of the shed we have. It's also made out of the same material but not quite as nice. She has two sons, a twelve year old and a 3 year old, and her husband was killed a few years ago in a mining accident. She doesn't know how old she is or when she was married. The point is, her life is not easy. We would teach her very slowly and very small, just enough so she could understand. I think she understood everything we told her, but it's tough to tell sometimes. The thing with this lady though is that she knows that getting baptized is the right thing to do. She has the desire to follow Christ and she knows that she can do that by the steps she's taking. She is so humble and is so willing to do what it takes to make it back to the kingdom of God. We were sitting with her waiting for the Zone Leaders to arrive to interview her and she was sitting very quietly talking to herself. I could hear her going over the interview questions like it was going to be a test. I could tell she was very nervous and told her that it wasn't a test and that everything would be okay. She seemed to calm down small and waited. What I was thinking about though is how there are people in this world that are super educated, have tons of money, nice cars, have so much going for them, but they completely overlook the eternal perspective. This lady who has nothing will feel more comfort because of the decisions she made on earth than any of those rich, educated people. Seeing this lady being nervous and waiting for her interview just made my heart do flip flops and punch my brain and tell me that this is what it means to truly be humble. Humility can be a tough thing sometimes but we all need to try our best to put ourselves aside and focus on the most important things in life (Like our families!).
Anyway, now that we're all crying, I'm going to go fight giant hordes of people all trying to get inside a hot and sweaty van and take the 30 minute drive back to our apartment in the outer villages of the mighty metropolis known as Freetown. Hopefully the tire doesn't blow up like the first poda poda (van) we got in this morning. Happy late Thanksgiving! I love you and miss you all!
Love,
Elder Stewart
P.S. Jordyn Ingram- Happy late late Birthday! Yes, I remembered it all by myself.
Love him! :)
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