No Packages, New Branch & God loves you no matter what

Hello family!
 
Well, I guess I'll start with the bad news first. I haven't gotten any
packages... I talked to a couple of other guys and they both said
they've been waiting on packages since like January... looks like
there was a big thiefing festival at the post office in January or so.
I was pretty depressed to see people walking in with lots of packages
and letters on Sunday and not having a single one be for me! It's
alright though I guess. I could definitely go for some Oreos right
now, but I guess I'll just have to bear it.
 
Good to hear about the housing situation though! It's pretty weird to
have almost everything set in place now. Just have to find out when
I'll be getting home. I guess that one is pretty important. I thought
it was pretty funny that Charlie came back on his own. That old fart.
 
Wow, so this last week was pretty crazy. The biggest thing that
happened was this last Sunday. Like I said before, I'm serving in
Kossoh Town branch again. When I was in Kossoh Town the last time,
about 3 months after I had been on mission the branch split because of
the growth in the area. This last Sunday I was priviledged to see the
branch split again and see the creation of the Waterloo branch. So I'm
no longer serving in the Kossoh Town branch but the Waterloo branch.
It's pretty sweet because we got a new branch president, new
everything. It's all people from Waterloo running the show now. The
proselyting area of Waterloo was opened up a while ago but
missionaries didn't really start focusing on it until around August
2011, right when I came. It just goes to show the rapid growth of the
Church here. It also means that all of our converts are going to be
the big leaders in the branch! Pretty sweet. It also means that we're
going to have to be doing lots of helping to make sure there's correct
doctrine being taught! Haha. It'll be nice though. One neat experience
happened this week. There's this one man we're teaching who is around
30, lives alone, works construction every day, and has a pretty bad
smoking problem. We're were talking to him about his smoking problem
and discussing what he can do to help him quit. He's kind of one of
those guys that has like a really rugged appearance, gravely voice,
and is always wearing dirty clothes. We told him what he has to do to
quit smoking and he agreed to do it. As we were winding up the lesson
we asked him if he had any questions. He kind of thought about it for
a minute and said, "If I quit drinking and smoking....." We were
expecting him to ask about some material benefit or something, and
then he said "...will God love me?" Man! See our hearts melt like a
girl watching The Notebook. We were so shocked that my companion even
muttered a quiet "Wow..." after he said it. I told him he said that
later and he said he didn't even remember saying that. So that was
kind of funny, haha. Anyway, We told him that God loves him even
though he does those things, but because of that love He has for him,
He wants him to quit those things so he can bless him more. It was
pretty sweet. The guy came to church Sunday too. Things are going
pretty good, we just need more investigators. Small small. Anyway,
Thank you for everything and I'll talk to you all next week!
 
Love,
Elder Stewart