Monday, February 27, 2012

City Living, Cooking Companion & The Power of Prayer

Hello family,

Well, my world has changed quite a bit in the past week! Yes, I am indeed serving in the city now. It's very different from my last area. It's cool though. My area is called Hill Station (I think I said that last week) and I think it's where all the rich people live. Well, half of it. One half has all these ENORMOUS houses, and the other half is a bunch of small metal houses all crammed together on the mountainside. The U.S. Embassay is in my area and there's a member family that works there. So we have a white family in our branch. It was pretty weird seeing this little happy American Mormon family walking into Church on Sunday. Also, in our area is St. Mary's, the most legit supermarket in the whole mission. Seriously. I felt sooooo uncomfortable the first time I went in there. Like I hate feeling like I'm some rich guy who can shop in supermarkets when so many other people have to buy their stuff off market stands on the side of the road. Maybe one day I'll get used to it. It was weird because there were so many white people there. Man I see white people all the time now. Before I was like the only white guy in the whole village. Now those people are everywhere. It's strange. To describe kind of what it looks like, the area we are in is at the top of the mountains on the coast overlooking the city of Freetown. Sometime this week I'll try and take a picture so you can see. You can see big ships coming into the coast and you can see like the whole city in the place. It's pretty cool. Freetown is crazy CROWDED though. Man, so many people are in this small place. It's pretty different from my last area. So that's that. The people in the area are amazing though. We have met so many new people and we have been able to teach a lot of people in just the short time I've been here. The cool thing is that the look of the area is very different, but the gospel and the work are the same. And in case you're wondering, yes, I did notice how crazy fast the time has gone by. Which scares me because I feel like I just got here!

So my new companion is stinking awesome. He cooks!!!!! And he loves the gospel like nothing. He's been out for 3 months now but I swear he's passed a year. He's a really cool guy and I'm really looking forward to getting to serve with him. He's great! I've been eating a lot more and stuff so now I'm going to be super fat. Can't wait for that.

Mom, please. Please, please, please do that weird raw chicken dancing thing for the talent show. It blew my mind even when I would just look at that strange picture. Man. So.... weird. Oh and yes, I will get mail like as soon as it gets to the mission. So that'll be different.

Everything has been going really well in the mission. The guys living in the apartment are really cool and we've been able to meet lots of new people in this past week. Even today we were teaching this one guy who I guess must be a pastor or something in his church. He kept trying to argue with us about all kinds of stuff and try to scripture bash with us, but we were able to answer his questions and concerns. The best way to describe this man was that he had an open mind but a hardened heart. It's like he wants to listen to everything we're saying, but he doesn't want to pray and try things for himself. We never try to convince anyone of anything. We could open scriptures all day and contend with people about how this church is the true church, but the thing is that that won't make the difference. I can't remember where but somewhere in Luke (I think) someone is talking about seeing miracles and signs as their witness of Jesus being the Son of God, but Jesus basically tells him that a sign or miracle will never convince a person of the truth. It's only someone who prays and finds the answer for themselves. I mean in the Book of Mormon, think about Laman and Lemuel. They saw angels but still they apostasized and left their generations to kill and fight. But never once did they pray and ask for the truthfulness of anything. They prayed for forgiveness, but never to know the truth. Anyway, there's definitely power in prayer. There's a lot of things I'm learning here, and as I feel like I always say, there's nooooooooo way I'd rather be anywhere else right now. The one thing I do seem to be failing to learn though is to cook. Man that's depressing. I'll get around to it... haha.

Anyway, I'm glad everyone is doing well. That picture of Sav totally loaded. Feel free to attach pictures anytime! Just try to make them smaller if you can. Big ones can take a long time to load. I love you and miss you all. Talk to you next week!

Love,
Elder Stewart



 Hill Station will have it's very own chapel in about 10 months! So this is what the chapel looks like so far. Haha.



 My new companion Elder Asiedu! He's really tall.

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