Hello family,

How are you guys doing today? I am doing alright. The week has been long and it has been short all at the same time. One, because we had some things we had to do and, two, just because it is dang hot so it seemed extra long. So for this week we had an open house at the church. That turned out good. We had some new investigators and we took them around the church and showed them what the church was all about. So that was good.

I got my valentines day package, need I say more. Loved the absolutely gorgeous picture of Riss. It is nice to get some sugar in my body again. I have been lacking on that lately to be honest, nutrition in general. The good news is that I have been working out and it is paying off.

So Sherissa you will be getting another letter from Elder Kote. He said that he promised to write her another letter, so he did. Man it was sad. This week was really rough for Elder Kote. He was feeling homesick like you wouldn't believe. Mission can be rough sometimes and most people just don't understand. But it was a good learning opportunity for me actually. He asked me to give him a blessing and I remember telling him that he needs to fight through and to realize who we are serving the mission for. It is for our Heavenly Father and it is for the people living here. But also it is for our families that we will have in our future. This mission is not about us. But if we put our all into it we will receive the blessings for our future and we will know what we are doing is right. But I am glad I got to be a friend to help someone. I am glad that I am living worthy to use my priesthood because it truly is a blessing for me and for others. Something I know is that I will always be worthy. You never know when someone will be in need or a family member will need your help.

This week we had some good lessons. We are teaching this boy his name is Jesse. He is amazing at drawing and he is only 12. This kid is so smart. He reads like crazy and understands like you would not believe. You would not even believe the answers that he gives me. Man he blows my mind because he is so smart. But since he is good at drawing I asked him to draw me a picture of Moroni but I didn't tell him what it was about. I just pointed to a picture of what it was. Anyway, he gives it back to me and it is amazing and along with it he studied on it. He wrote on the top, Moroni burying the Nephite record. Man, I was so impressed. Anyway, that's Jesse. His sister, Gladys, got baptized on Sunday along with Tom. They are both solid investigators. Now we just have to get the rest of both of their families. Talking of the baptism, holy what a hassle. Good thing I have some good mechanic genes in me. It is funny to see a white man running through the chapel during class. So I got to the church, we go to sacrament and I decided to check the font. One, it was dirty and two it was empty!! Two hours before the baptism. I was like ahhhh. So I cleaned it quick in my white shirt and tie and I start to fill it. Half way through investigator class, I get a prompting to go check the font. I go and the pump shut off. Pump because it comes from a well. Anyway, to make a long story short, after running around I got the pump going again. It was a breaker. But, of course, couldn't find the breaker box and when I did find it, they are not marked and half of them are off. Anyway, the baptism was still on. The font filled and it turned out very good.

I don't know if you have ever seen a missionary fall asleep during a lesson, but it is funny. I couldn't help but chuckle. Elder Kote, when I was on exchanges, fell asleep. Not like snoozing but snoring. It was funny. So as Elder Merrill and I were listening to Riss sing on the tape this morning, we decided that she is way better singer than the both of us. Oh also the pancake mix she sent me Christmas, I finally opened it. And it is soooooo good!! MMMMMMMMM I am spoiled. Other missionaries are jealous.

Oh yeah, well now our power use got cut into half. We used to be able to use the generator for 4 hours a day now they say we can only use it for 2 hours, so that's nice. I will just sweat forever haha. I love you guys. Have a great week.

Love, Elder Kev

Hello family,

Things over here are going great. The work here is going great. We actually got some pretty big news over this last week. We should be getting somewhere in the ballpark of 30-40 new missionaries in addition to what we already have so that we can move the work farther ahead. We are opening up a few new areas in our mission and when I say opening I mean not a soul in the area is a member of the church. So it is really starting from the beginning. So whoever gets to go there is going to be lucky and unlucky at the same time.  That is an awful lot of responsibility for a couple of missionaries. I don't know if I will be involved with that or not but we will see what happens there.

This week we had some fun, weird things happen. I can tell you I am kind of getting tired of going on exchanges but I have to get used to it. So while we were on an exchanges, my drunk magnet kicked in because so many drunk people were just trying to talk to us.  We sat down and started to teach this family and as we are teaching them, here comes this drunk guy.  To my dismay, he starts talking to us and wanting to get to know us better. Well as we were teaching he keeps on insisting that he cannot read but he keeps quoting scriptures from the Bible.  So we would ask him "are you sure it says that?  You said you can't read".   I kept joking with him, asking him to read stuff and he would start to read and then he would stop and say I can't read sorry.  This guy was so drunk I was getting drunk from him breathing on me so I had to leave so I would not get drunk.

We had another lesson this week which was really crazy and heaven sent.  We were having bounces like crazy and I didn't know what to do so I decided that I would pray. I had a little prayer in my heart and immediately after I looked at Elder Merrill and said call Hadji and see if he is home. So he calls Hadji.  To make a long story short,  we went to his house to find out that his dad had died and no one from the church had visited him. He said if would not have come to his house that day he would not have got confirmed and he would have found himself a new church.  So always listen to the Holy Ghost.

So we had a another funny thing happen. One of our recent converts informed us that she is having twins -  two boys.  She told us that she wants to name them Moss and Merrill.   I got it on video so as soon as you send my other card I will send this full one. So I have had a few more things.  You remember me telling you about Foley, I baptized him on Sunday.  That went well and then we had a gazillion meetings on Sunday.  Man I hope I am never a bishop.  Anyway, talking about the baptism, it is crazy how much of a hassle it is to get some people to fill a font sometimes. But anyways, don't want to complain too much.
 
I love you guys so much.  Have a great week!
 
 Love, Elder Moss
 

Hello Family,

Things over here in Africa are going great!  Well my Sunday was just dandy except like all of our investigators were late for church.  We only had three investigators in Sacrament meeting then we had eight in our investigator class.  I guess I can't complain.  At least they came to church.  It is frustrating though when you have some people that you are teaching and you are expecting them at church and there extended family comes but not them.  I am like "hey where is Chris?" And they say, "Oh, he wanted to go to the Holy Ghost Arena church".   I say,  "what the heck man why aren't you making him come? He lives at your house."   Of course he is going to go to that church.   They have dancing there.  It's like a party all day and they call it church.  People will go to the churches that are designed around what will get the most people to come. That is how they make their money.  People are really coming to church though.  It was packed, almost had to open the overflow.  Church was good.  We had some good talks on missionary work. I can't wait till I am on the other side of that when I am a member missionary and not a full time. Although the blessings come from being a full time missionary sometimes your mind is just boggled and you just want to sit down and be with the people that you love and care about so much. To me, we have an awesome set of young men and woman in this church. It is crazy that's we can have 50000+ missionaries out in the field. It makes missionary work look easy but it is not. I commend everyone that makes it to the end. If I ever become a boss or an owner of a business where I am hiring people, I will look for if they have served a mission or not because, if so, I know that they have been put to the test.  So after church we had a baptism, Edith.   She is young, like thirteen.  She was baptized by her dad. He did good.   I had to teach him how to do the prayer and stuff but it was good. It's always good to see converts baptizing family members. Afterward, he came up to me and shook my hand and said,  Thank you Elder Moss for helping my family follow Christ.  The baptism ended and we were told we had coordination which is pointless to me cause the Nancy missionaries can do anything but we went anyway. It started out good until all they wanted was us to do was buy them food.  That is when I laid into them. I was like we are teaching every day.   With or without you, we will teach. We need your help.  I want you to join us because you want to help your Heavenly Father. I was like we don't even eat ourselves why would we buy you food.  After that some we went to our first bounced appointment.  Man I hate those so much.  So we went to our next one and it was good. He is coming along.  We teach in Krio which is hard because I don't really know it. But it is coming along.  Well that was our Sunday.  We came home,  made rice (big surprise) and it was not that great but oh well.   Oh, and something that I have decided is that me and Elder Merrill can sing so good together.  We sound amazing, if I do say so myself.
 
What else happened this week?  Hmmmmm Nothing too exciting.  I did scare the crap out of Elder Marveh, twice, now I have to watch my back, haha.  So the other day we finished eating our lovely bread and egg again, yum, NOT!  I wish there was something else to eat but I haven't figured it out. That's all I can afford. I remember when dad was saying that you better start liking top ramen and macaroni and cheese because that is what you will be eating for two years. Oh how happy I would be for that.  What I would give for a fine box of Mac and cheese.  Oh that would be soooooo good. I would be a happy camper, no pun intended. So after my lovely meal we planned for Saturday and we talked.   We were trying to figure out how old Kobe Bryant is cause nobody knows for sure here.   I say he is much older than people think. Then we sat and talked about how the mtc was and how we wanted to get out of that place so bad.  It was like a joke how bad we wanted to leave and now we just want to go back there.  Life was so much easier there.   We talked about how we felt and what happened right as we left and after we got set apart.   Man, I remember that day like yesterday.
 
Well, nothing big today.   Just did a lot of work at our apartment and now I am here.  Hope you are all happy and healthy.   I love you guys loads. 
 
Love, Elder Kevin