Baptism, Zone Leader & Transfers

Hello people!

Well, it's been a pretty crazy week this past week. I liked that email you just sent though. There's always a work to do! Like setting up a lot of fans to blow out the linger longers... man I was pretty much about to crack up really loud around all these people. Then I would be a crazy white man with a devil inside him. That would be weird.

Anyway, this last week saw some pretty crazy stuff. We'll start with last Saturday. Saturday Elder Richards and I woke up feeling good and starting the day off with a nice baptism. The guy was really excited and he'll be a great member of the church. He even did everything in the face of opposition. Pretty sweet. Saturday afternoon we swung by some investigators houses and invited and reminded them about the Book of Mormon class we were starting up that evening. Five o'clock came and we weren't met by people but instead by a torrential rainstorm. Well it started up around 3 and was still going on. Around 5:30 it had died down small enough and about 4 people showed up- 2 investigators, a recent convert and a member. about 20 minutes later we got a phone call from the assistants and, since I was the one teaching the class, Elder Richards grabbed the phone and went outside. Suddenly I heard him from outside going "WHAT???? NO WAY!!!" I tried to keep my cool and finished the class around 6. Turns out we had gotten small of transfer news early and it was just to tell us that he and 2 other people in our district were all getting transferred to Freetown. He packed all his stuff up that night and we celebrated his last night in Kenema. Sunday the guy showed up on time and was confirmed no problem. At the end of church Elder Richards bore his testimony and the couples came and picked him and the other 3 people up. So it was left with me and two other guys, Elder Mills and Elder Weller. We were now all waiting for the evening time to come so that we could hear who our new companions would be. The phone call came and I was told that I too was going to be transferred to Bo and would be the Zone Leader for the Zone. What?? I was pretty surprised and actually kind of sad about it. Haha. I've only been in this area for two transfers and so I was still looking forward to a lot of good work and experiences here. The district is also receiving SIX people to the apartment so they'll be eight. They'll enjoy doing lots of dishes. Haha. Today the three of us went crazy and completely cleaned the heck out of the place though. Like Mom, you would be so impressed. Like I know how my cleanliness standard and yours are very different but I promise it would have passed yours. We all just kept sitting there saying "holy cow this place is so clean..." Anyway, so I'll now be living in Bo and my new companion's name is Elder Dyngee. He's Liberian and I've gone with him on boku exchanges because he was the zone leader and I was the district leader so it happened a lot. I'm looking forward to working with him though. I'll be coming back to Kenema every two weeks to do interviews and trainings and stuff so I don't have to completely kiss this place good bye (I'm so relieved). I think I'll be leaving here on Wednesday or Thursday so we'll see how it goes by next week. I feel better about it all now and I'm looking forward to all the new learning experiences (I'm so cliche)! Oh, and Elder Richards got transferred to Hill Station! So he'll enjoy that place. And Elder Symons got transferred to my zone so i'll see him around now. Also Elder Asiedu (my third companion) is coming to Kenema. So I'm getting to see lots of old faces. Anyway, I love all of you and am happy to know you are all safe and well! We'll talk again next week!

Love,
Elder Stewart

  Conversion!

 This random huge empty place in the middle of our area. So much grass!

  If you look off in the background you can see a mosque with blue tops. I always see this place and imagine it being like the sickest paintball course ever. That's about it.

 Dae sabi pak pak motocar dem

Zone Conference, Highest Baptisms & If you lack wisdom, ask of God

Hey Family!

The week has been pretty great as always. No take the chicken episodes this week, we've been trying to avoid that place as much as possible. Haha. Don't worry, I know these people so well now it's kind of ridiculous. So I wasn't nervous or scared or anything. But like really. I know these people so well now it's crazy. But what's even more crazy is that story! So nuts that those 10 minutes on the street led to so many things and how many more it could lead to. It kind of makes me want to make a movie about it. Haha. Keep me updated on that one for sure. Who knows, it could be a sweet opportunity some day! That would be pretty cool. I never imagined myself going to Denmark one day but hey, I never saw myself coming to Sierra Leone either. Well that's mainly because I had never even heard of this country, but still.

Anyway, this week was pretty normal. We traveled to Bo for a Zone Conference where one of the Seventy, Elder Sitati, came to instruct us. The instruction was pretty good and he talked a lot about our purpose here on this earth. I talked about it a little bit more in the email to Dad but we also found out that we're the highest baptizing mission in the world! But I won't let that get to my head because there are SO MANY people here that are ready so we can't slack off. This upcoming week is the last week of the transfer so next monday I'll be telling you what happened. I'm thinking Elder Richards will be going so there's a good chance I'll be getting a new companion. We'll see though. Something sweet this week was with this one kid we've been teaching seemed to be really struggling with the decision to be baptized. The reason he was struggling with it is because he is scared what his dad would think if he was baptized. His father is Muslim and he's not sure if his dad would approve. It was something he was bringing up when we first started teaching him but we continued to tell him to pray and to read the Book of Mormon and the pamphlets we gave him. The thing that made him different is that he read EVERYTHING we gave him. Like that never ever happens. This last time we saw him he told us that whether or not his dad agrees he knows it's the right thing and is going to do it. I mean obviously it's preferred for the dad to be happy for him, but it's cool to see the change that happened within him. I know it's because he was reading and studying and searching for himself. He's a great guy and is supposed to be baptized next Saturday. Should be a great day! So the moral of the story is if you lack wisdom, ask of God. Seek and ye shall find. Pretty simple! Anyway, I'll talk to you all later! Have a good week!

Love,
Elder Stewart

  Playing around with the focus. My tag has gotten kind of dirty

  Do these guys look familiar? When we took this picture it was EXACTLY one year later. I haven't seen them since I left the MTC! (Elder Liufau- the one i met through that guy who's hair Breeann cut in the MTC who is his best friend- and Elder Nickle. They've been in Liberia this whole time, just came to Bo)

 Our latest friend.

 

  The front of the Simbeck chapel

  The back of the chapel

 We looked sweet for Zone Conference

 At the back of the IDA chapel. (I'm in Simbeck)

 One to make your hearts melt

 Jersey fever caught on in this apartment too...

Take the Chicken!

Hey family!

Everything is going pretty sweet, as always. It's got to be getting pretty boring to hear me say that every week but it's true! The good news of the week is that I got the tie and wedding announcement! I wore the tie to church last Sunday. I stuck out quite a bit wearing such a nice flashy tie, but it's all good. When you dress up really nice people here call it "bluffing." So a lot of people at church were like "Ayyy elda stewat! Yu de bluffo!" Yeah. Anyway, I dig the tie and will be wearing it to the Zone Conference we have this Thursday. Elder Richards will wear the pink one. We'll look pretty sweet. Gotta say I loved the pickle story. Man that kid is funny.

Anyway, you were asking for a cool Africa story so here's something pretty exciting that happened. It's not very spiritual but it's pretty funny. Just try and picture it in your head. So a few days ago my companion and I decided we wanted to go and buy some chicken to fry at the market. Now, you need to be reminded that going to the market and buying chicken is very different from driving to wal mart and going to the frozen food section. Basically the place that we buy chicken.. it's like a really big warehouse filled with a HUGE amount of people with lots of tables with fish and chicken on top of them. It stinks like fish and there's flies and dirt and all that nice stuff everywhere. People are shouting and the area to walk is so skinny you're just brushing against people trying to get to the place you want to go. There's little kids weaving between you trying to sell plastic bags and other random objects on their head. Anyway, we made our way to a lady selling chicken and told her we wanted 4 legs. Four legs costs 10000 leones and we said that before she began to cut them. There's no like official prices of anything so you kind of have to talk all of it and negotiate a price to get it. People always try to charge us missionaries ridiculous amounts for things because they think we have lots of money. We usually have to always talk plenty to be able to get it down to the right price. Anyway, we had already settled on the price with this lady and she started putting everything into a bag. When we went to pay she saw we were only giving her 10000 and said that we were supposed to pay 14000 for everything. We told her that wasn't right and said we knew the price and wouldn't take it if she wouldn't give it to us for that price (this happens like every day) she refused to bring it down so we just told her we wouldn't take it. I guess she really didn't like that so she started yelling at us and saying we had to pay for it because she had already put it in the bag or something. A lot of people started staring and it was making a big commotion so we started to just walk away and leave it. About 10 seconds after walking away we heard a scream and turned and saw the lady SCREAMING and running after us shouting "TAKE THE CHICKEN, TAKE THE CHICKEN" (this part doesn't happen every day) We walked out of the place and the lady kept yelling and was trying to grab us and force us to pay for them. By now we had gotten onto the main street and the lady was standing in front of us yelling and shouting and refusing to let us pass. Being a white guy in Africa makes me stick out a little bit so when everyone saw something going on literally 50 people came out of nowhere and surrounded us. The lady was going CRAZY and shouting and saying we're terrible people and everyone around was saying they wanted to settle the dispute. Some guy told us we were rich so we should just pay the lady the amount. We said no (if we took it then everyone would rip us off and we'd have no money... they all think we get paid to do missionary work.). People flipped out. We finally managed to push our way out of the crowd and just walked away. I don't know what the big ordeal was about but it was kind of exciting. But we had no chicken. So the next day we sent some other missionaries and they got it no problem. Anyway, I guess you kind of had to be there but it was pretty crazy. Anyway, I'm out of time. Love you all!

Love,
Elder Stewart

Pink Tie, Obnoxious Music & Eternal Marriage

Hello family! And newly extended family!

Glad to hear that the wedding went so well! I enjoyed that quick recap very much. Haha. Definitely was a miraculous week for sure. I'm very happy for the both of them and can't wait to meet everyone and see ALL the pictures from the day. I wore my pink tie because I know Breeann likes pink and that tie I actually only wear it for special occasions. So this totally counted! Anyway, there's this super obnoxious music playing in this internet cafe, pretty much just imagine the same song being played over and over again for an hour. That pretty much sums it up. I don't have a lot of time though because their computers had some major problems and now we don't have time to go do a lot of stuff. So here are some pictures. Also, on September first we taught someone about eternal marriage and how families could be together forever! In honor of the special day. Everything is going good though!

 

 We somehow found ourselves walking up this dense forest trail and found a waterfall hidden up in the mountains! We took some sweet pictures. That place was so cool!

 



 Super dorky picture but CONGRATULATIONS to the Allen family! Still sounds weird. Sorry

 

 

More sweet pictures. Africa is sweet!



I love all of you and can't wait to see more pictures from the wedding!

Love,
Elder Stewart

One Year Mark & The Best Sunday Yet

Dear family,

So glad to hear the news! I guess Lafayette will just have to get used to us! I'm pretty grateful and can definitely see the hand of the Lord in it. The timing is pretty interesting! I can't believe the wedding is this Saturday! So soon. Hopefully the hurricane won't mess anything up. I'm definitely going to be expecting lots of pictures! I haven't gotten the tie yet and won't get it until September 12th because I'm so far away (sidenote- all you people who have been writing me letters, I promise I've been writing you back, it just takes an insanely long time for them to actually get sent out because I'm in the middle of nowhere). But I'll wear it and take a picture next to a calendar and just pretend. I'll even shine my shoes and wear my tailored shirt and pants (yup, I did that). It'll be sweet. Be safe in the hurricane! Don't let any runaway trampolines come and UFO themselves into the house. I'll be happy to hear how everything goes though!

This last week has been pretty good for me. We had another baptism and are pretty much just enjoying the work and having all kinds of sweet adventures (like killing that chicken). Tomorrow we planned a celebration for my one year so that'll be pretty nice. This last Sunday was pretty much the best Sunday I've had on mission because one, our candidate from baptism showed up on time (the sense of time here is pretty much nonexistent. When we plan to start our baptisms at 11 we tell everyone to be there by 10. Sometimes they're still late. So when church starts at 9 we usually have about 15 people in the building, 60+ by the end of sacrament meeting), and two, EIGHT people we recently started teaching showed up to church for the first time. It was pretty exciting. I mean we usually have around eight investigators at church, but they have usually been coming already and come like one at a time. But it was crazy! So many new faces, I was pretty excited. I definitely felt good because working so hard all week to see none of the people come to church stinks. So it was a nice one year gift. Sounds like this weekend was a pretty great one for everyone! I'm excited for all of you and can't wait to talk next week! Love you all!

Love,
Elder Stewart

  Our neighbor boy who likes to speak mende and be annoying. But we like him for it.

  A members fat little kid. But he's pretty sweet.

 Baptism!

Binaway! (Sorry, yeah?)

Birthdays, Service Projects & T-shirts from Home

Hello Family!

Glad to hear everything is going along smoothly! I've never been to the Games of Acadiana... people always talked about it but I never went. Sounds pretty cool though! Too bad I couldn't be there to see Ms. Hebert though. She was a nice lady. Haha. That 17 points of the true church thing I'll write it down and take a picture of it. Speaking of pictures, I'm on a computer that works so I'll just talk about a bunch of pictures! The week was pretty sweet and we've been meeting tons of cool people and have pretty much just been enjoying like nothing. Anyway, here are some pictures!

  We played football at the nice big district center in Bo. I scored lots of goals and our team never lost. It was pretty nice.

 The baptism from a couple weeks ago! Those people are super sweet and the guy standing next to me got to baptize his wife! Pretty cool.

 We had two birthdays, Elder Otubu from Ghana and Elder Richards turned 26 and 20. So I whipped out those plates and things you gave me and we had a big party for them

 As you can see we pretty much enjoyed like crazy and bought some cheap ice cream and little sweet debbie cake thing. You have no idea how much fun all that ice cream was for my stomach the next day (it's been awhile with the dairy products).

  Yup, that shirt is exactly what you think it is. A university of Louisiana shirt. And in tiny letters underneath the word "Louisiana" it says "Lafayette." I freaked out when I saw that shirt. So shout out to all my friends at UL. Africa knows you're there. This is the third picture of sweet shirts I've taken, and they've all been at the same house. I should just go through the guys dresser.

 All-African Service project! We "brushed" (did yardwork) for the local prison.

  Kenema District!

 Simbeck branch!

 This is what happens when you don't wash your hair.

Dinner! (but seriously. We'll kill it after we've fattened it up small.)

So everything has pretty much been going great here! Time is flying by and this week I'll hit one year! I miss and love you all!

Love,
Elder Stewart

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