Just Another Statistic!

Hi Family,

Not the greatest day. Got the dreaded email. I am now among the DJ statistics. As for the week and the new area, well - no water in the apartment and or power, no Americans in the area or in the zone for that matter. I was white washed into an area so I have to find all new investigators and learn all the members plus everything else I have to learn about the zone. Oh yeah, and teach the new district leader in our district. Hey, it's all good. This is the beginning of a new day. God has given me this day to use it as I will. I can waste it or use it for good. But what I do today is important because I am exchanging a day of my life for it! When tomorrow comes this day will be gone forever leaving in it's place something that I have traded for it. I want it to be a gain and not a loss, good and not evil, success and not failure, so that I shall not regret the price that I have paid for it. The highest possible reward for my toil is not what I get from it but what I become by it.

The week was great filled with lots of learning!! Thanks for the support have a great week. Love you all.

Love, Elder Kev

Elder Holland is Amazing!

Hello family,

How was the week? Mine was pretty good, just seemed kind of unproductive. We had a good week before our long trip down to Freetown. We really did not get much accomplished except we had a few lessons and I got our distribution all figured out, it had been screwed up from previous missionaries that did not care. As you know, we started our journey to Freetown Thursday. Unfortunately, they let us know our travel arrangements on Wed. night at about 9:30 and, even more unfortunately, president wanted me to be in charge of the group of 6 missionaries that he wanted to take travel on the government bus at 4 in the morning. It was rather enjoyable trip and the other missionaries got a kick out of the lady that was hitting on me on the bus. Lucky for her she got my number (the number I gave her was the mission phone in the area she lives in haha). Man I feel bad that I kind of lied but I really don’t cause i am a missionary and it is weird that she was trying to hit on mean. She said she wanted to add me on facebook but she will find out quick that I won't add her cause I don’t get on facebook! I think these African women are looking for a white man to get them out of her because this is a regular thing. Now all I have to do is figure out how to get the woman to flock to me like this in America! Not only am I an African chick magnet but I think I am also a drunk man magnet too. I am always having problems with drunk people wanting to fight me and telling me to go back to America. I think it is funny but my companions get scared when they get all up in my face. I have learnd to stay very cool. I just walked away. I know, I know you are very impressed. Anyway, back to the trip - after we arrived in Freetown, we met the assistants and they took us to Godrich mansion!!! Holy smokes - those people are enjoying American luxury. That is where elder Andersen stays. He is a good guy. He is from Bloomington and lives in Grandma and Grandpa's ward. I spent the weekend with him. He really has a good attitude about the work. I love when people are here to work and work hard and not just because the are a missionary but because they love the gospel.

Soooo, as you know, Elder Holland was here in Freetown. Man, I never knew he was so funny. He was making us laugh the entire time. It was interesting because he was here along with the African west area presidency and Elder Snow and others. It was a big weekend. One of the things he said was so true. He said, "the road to salvation always goes through Gesthemene." I love that one. Ir is one of my new favorite quotes. He told us that we have a “real” mission here in Africa. I am sure he tells everyone that but it was cool. He commended us for our obedience and success. It was a good conference. Look out for me in the Liahona or Ensign or something. I had lots of pictures taken of me and was with the camera men helping them carry stuff (one of the joys of being big). So Saturday was a free day - well not really. We went and had Elder Andersen looked at (he was not feeling good). It was lots of traveling to see this doctor. Anyway,he seems to be fine (tell his mom not to worry). I just think the problem is that he is just not used to the fact that this is Africa not America. It is going to be strenuous on your body. Anyway, Sunday was good. I was in the main hall with Elder Holland because I was the usher at the main door into the hall making sure no crazies did anything. Just kidding. I was just trying to direct the mass flow of traffic. So I was standing at the door for a few hours listening to the apostle and it was so sweet. I decided that it would be so awesome to be a bodyguard for an apostle so I am going to have to figure out how to get that job! After the conference, we went back to Bo and here I sit. Oh, how could I forget that when I got back I had to pack because transfer news came early. I am going to Njagboiama branch (which is still in Bo) with Elder Essel. It is going to be interesting to say the least. Busy busy busy. We are both new in the area. He pulled Elder Essel from Freetown and me from another branch. We are whitewashing the area so I have a lot to learn In the next few days before the missionaries there leave. But I am happy cause I am not a district leader any more. Man that is a headache being a dl. Alright, now I am a zone leader - we'll see how that goes. President said he wanted me to "help the elders to see the face of god" and to teach them the fundamentals of teaching. We shall see . . .

So I had good studies this week. I learned more about my father in heaven. I made an interesting connection about how much Heavenly Father knows us. I never thought about it like this but when ever Heavenly father appears to someone or Christ he calls them by their first name. I thought that was cool. It just shows how much he loves us. Another thing I thought about was what really makes heaven, Heaven? I think what makes heaven is eternity with my wife and family. That is heaven all in itself and with out that heaven would cease to be heaven. I love you guys. Have a great week!

Love Elder Kev

Preparing to meet Elder Holland

Hello family,

How was your week? Mine was another good week. We got a lot accomplished. The beginning of the week started out great. We got the whole apartment clean, spic and span, on Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday were great and then there was Thursday! What a good morning, not! The generator broke, the toilet broke and a sink broke. So my morning was busy. Luckily, I am pretty handy so I got it all fixed. It is just not something I like to do in a white shirt on a proselyting day. I had the toilet all torn apart and the sink was broken and the generator was apart and the senior couple wanted to drop off some stuff, like tracts and, lucky for me, they decided they wanted to do an apartment check. I was like "oh come on. This place is normally the cleanest place in the entire missionand the day you come check everything, it is destroyed." Anyway, I got it all fixed, after running around Bo trying to find the parts. It blows my mind how everyone has a generator but no one sells parts for it. And when they do have it, they try to charge me an arm and a leg for it because I am a white man. But then I start talking boldly in Krio and they shut up real quick and give me the real price. I have to be really careful on what I spend money on because they just gave us a lecture on wants and needs, which kind of blows my mind because we are in AFRICA. It's funny how sometimes they think we want too much. I don’t know what else they want me to give up. I think I have given it all. I guess I could eat nothing in the day and wash my cloths by hand with no soap - no, it's cool. I understand that I can live pretty cheaply now. Missionaries here do kind of take advantage because there is this Americana restaurant and they sell real American food so every once in a while they go and eat there. So they told us now that we have to record every leone we spend and what we spend it on. We have to be careful how we spend our “consecrated funds”.

The weekend was busy. I did a lot of interviews which results in a lot of baptisms. The problem is the branch funds have had a hold on them because the old branch presidents liked money too much and they thought they needed it for themselves. So the church stopped that. So the crappy thing is we have to fill the font by hand because they don’t have money to run the generator and the pump. The font is probably only around 6-700 gallons when full and about 100 yards away from the pump. That was fun. The way it works is a hand pump and buckets. After about four hours and lots of sweat, we got probably about 500+ gallons in the thing. That was good exercise. I pumped for 2 hrs without stopping. Then I carried lots of buckets. Needless to say, it was a humbling sacrifice for our beloved investigators. We had a beautiful baptism consisting of 23 souls coming into the fold, followed by their confirmations on Sunday. The happiness you feel when all is done really cancels out all of the suffering that we have to go through.

As for the mission work, things are going great! We have some good people preparing for baptism and lots of paperwork and other things to do to try to keep the church in order. I am hoping the church doesn't go up in flames considering we wont be there Sunday because we will be in Freetown with Elder Holland. They will probably start the service sometime around 10:15 when it is supposed to start at 9. They will do what they want because we won't be there. Right now all the missionaries are gearing up to meet Elder Holland. We have been cleaning our dirty yellow shirts as white as we can get them, getting our hair cut ~ you know, the whole shabang! We are hoping to get him to talk about us in the next general conference! It is pretty funny to see all my “Nealehle” brothers gearing up to see their first general authority. Myself, I am getting pretty excited too. We are going to have a big break from mission work this week since we will go to Freetown on Thursday morning and come back on Sunday night. It should be fun to see all the other elders in Freetown and see my old converts. Anyway, things here are great - no complaints really. Just kickin' along trying to finish with my foot on the gas.

Happy Valentines day tomorrow. I hope Brooklyn will be my valentine! Love ya guys!

Love Elder Kev

Hey family

How are you doing? Things here in Bo are going great. In all honesty it was kind of a hum drum week, nothing really exciting happened. Except one of my favorite investigators was baptized this week along with his son. It was another good baptism. I am getting pretty good at putting baptisms together.When were were at the baptism this week, we ran into Elder Mensah. I don't know if you know him but he is a 70. It was fun to talk to him. He was pretty angry at the time though because he had just come all the way from Ghana to have a meeting with the district presidency and none of them showed up to the church. When we tried to help him get them to come, they tried to cancel him. Wow, that was a bad idea on their part. He was pretty heated when he got on the phone. It all ironed out I think.

My weekend was really busy, our district has been killin' it in the mission work. We are an example to the mission. I love it but the problem for me is that it makes me super busy haha. This week I did over 20 interviews in one day so needless to say my Saturday was pretty long. My Sunday was good, fast Sundays are always a good but a challenge. It is not easy to go 24 hours without water here but the sacrifice is worth the blessings from heaven that's for sure. Even though we don't always immediately see the blessings I know that they will come some time or the other. Testimony meeting is always good. It is much different than home. No one ever cries!! The reason being, if they do cry then others make fun of them later. We will see how I do when I get home. I think my tear ducts are all dried up but I do love to feel the spirit. The only major problem now is that we have our church is not big enough. We cannot fit everyone inside of our classroom. I know woe was me - but it is such a headache.

For the mechanical part of this week, I had the privilege of fixing our well. The genius that did the plumbing did it during rainy season when the water table was up so when the water table dropped the pipe for the pump was no longer in the water. Luckily I have a keen ear to hear when a pump is sucking air. I heard our pump outside sucking air and turned it off and went to work. We had a length of pipe so we made it work. Nothing like hanging upside down in a small hole above a 25 ft well. It was nice to have the knowledge and my head light. Oh the joys of Sierra Leone Freetown mission. Really don't have much to say except that I am doing great and I am back on the weight loss program and I am down to 223. I just need to keep it going so that my return will be triumphant. I love you guys. Have a great week.

Love Elder Kev