Monday, August 13, 2012

Praying in a Loudspeaker, Walking to Church & Mowing the Lawn

Hello family!

All is well in the village of Kenema. We had transfer news yesterday and the big news is that nothing changed. I'm still with Elder Richards and I'm still in Kenema. One of the elders in our apartment received an American and so it means that we know have 5 Americans and 1 Ghanian. It's pretty crazy. I feel bad for our lone African brother. Haha, he seems to be okay with it though. Savannah is starting school already? Seriously, the summer's going by so fast. The past year has gone by pretty fast! I'm glad that I'm done with all that early morning seminary. Even though I wake up at 6:30 every morning, 5:20 sounds ridiculous. Even though I actually do wake up at 5 every morning. The reason being because the mosque down the road always has their prayer at 5 in the morning and they pray in a big loudspeaker. Like insanely loud. It's really annoying. I think there's actually a video I sent home on that flashdrive when I was in freetown and I'm just like talking about how ridiculous it is. Anyway, the tie hasn't come yet. I'm guessing it will arrive in Sierra Leone this week but the question then is when someone will come out to Kenema to drop it off. So we'll see about that one.

This past week was good because we had a baptism! I have pictures but this computer I'm on is dumb and won't recognize the camera. Sorryyyy. It was good though and everyone was looking good in their whites. It's true what you said about people coming long distances to church. When I was in one of the other Elders areas on an exchange I definitely saw someone who went far. We took a bike from their chapel for about 7 minutes, got down and walked about twenty minutes down a muddy path, and finally we walked up to a house in the middle of nowhere. I asked the girl how long it took for her to get to church and she told me she walks for about an hour and a half. It pretty much blew my mind. People really sacrifice to do what they know is right. It was a pretty big testimony to me about how big of an impact the gospel can make in people's lives. I've seen a lot of people change and it really has shown me why everything I've known my whole life is as important as it is. I've seen people who pretty much didn't want to have anything to do with God completely change their lives and talk about how much happier they've become. I never really fully appreciated everything when I was at home because I didn't exactly realize the difference it can make. Even people that were content and happy with the way their lives were. People who didn't even see a reason to change anything. They have accepted the message we shared with them and found more joy in their lives than the joy they already had. I actually find it really funny that I was like "I'd never walk to church!" back home. Because we walk so far every day. Haha. The church is such a short walk from our house. Oh, side note, we mowed the lawn today. Mowing the lawn means we took machete's and hacked down these big monster weeds and cut the long grass down. Pretty great. Some people on the other side of our compound wall cut down some bushes and said they found like 3 black cobras in the weeds. Unfortunately we weren't lucky enough to find any in our own bushes. Looks like we won't be eating tonight. Haha just kidding. Anyway, the church is true and the restoration of the gospel is true! One of the other elders showed me this list called "The 17 points of the true church" which has like a bunch of scripture references from the bible talking about the church Jesus Christ built back in the day. It was kind of interesting. Anyway, Hopefully next week I can get pictures and hopefully that package will come! I love and miss you all!

Love,
Elder Stewart

No comments:

Post a Comment