Hey family,

As you know, it has been another week. It was a long one for sure. Honestly, for the first time in my mission I sat down under a tree and did not know what to do. I was completely out of ideas. Every single person that I even knew in the area did not want to see us. On top of it, the people that I did not know, did not want to see us. It was the first time I had a "door" slammed in my face. So I just hung my head for a minute trying to get my brains to stop frying and I decided that I just needed to pray. Wow ~ that was a good idea. It was like someone turned on the fire inside of me and I got up and told my companion "let's go and find some people". So we did and the best part is we just went looking and the first person I decided to talk to will be getting baptized on March 31st as well as the second person that I met. Talk about inspired ~ it was cool! I don't know if you know, but the crap really hit the fan these last couple of weeks. Our generator is broken, our water pump is broken, me and my comp are new in the area so we had no investigators and, man, we are in the thick of dry season. So it is not easy but the church is true. We are having problems a little with the members liking the missionaries because of our sister missionaries. I just don't know what to do with them. They are prideful and the members hate it, which doesn't help us elders much. Anyway, we will try to work it out.

So the last week was a grind and it was long and filled with contacting and teaching trying to build a new area so sorry I don't really have much to say. The missionaries here are great. We went and played some football today and that was fun. It has been a while since I have played so it was fun to get my mind off things and go and have fun. Unfortunately, I am competitive so I got a little road rash and skinned up a little but it is not bad ~ just a flesh wound.

So this last week I decided that I need to step up the exercise a notch but I swear I can't lose weight. I have been running 3 miles every day and nothing happens. I am down to 225. I swear I just can't get it to go. I did surprise myself though. My African brother and I ran 4 miles in 28 min. I was impressed. It really helps that we are at sea level though. Anyway, that's about that.

My comp is a little guy and his name is Elder Essel. He is really quiet and he is from Ghana. Like so quiet that I don't even know anything about him. I don't even know how old he is. He is kind of stubborn but I will learn to love him. It's funny because he won't tell me his age or anything about him. He says it doesn't pertain to my salvation so I don't need to know. Sometimes it drives me nuts but mission has taught me to deal with all sorts of different things. I think that the whole girlfriend thing was good. If anything I am just a better person now because I choose to grow from it. I know God won't fail me. I just need to turn to Him. I pity the people who turn away from God in their times of trouble or when they curse Him for their trials. That's the time when we most need his help, in my opinion. So thanks for the support. I am good and all is well and my luggage is much lighter too since I have a whole lot less pictures in there now haha.

Have a great week. Remember always Christ loves you God loves you and there is no alternative to happiness except to love them back and to love others as God loves you.  Love ya all.

Love Elder Moss

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

Hey family,

How are things this week? Here in Bo, they are the norm - nothing to new to talk about. I am going to do my best to give the details of what might be interesting. So this week started off a little rough. To make a long story short, I think I broke my hand. Luckily, it was on the punching bag and not on a wall or a table or someone. After I relieved my frustration on the bag, my hand hurt but I went back to work and all is well. So in the wonderful words of the prophet, choose to be happy.

On a more positive note, the work is pressing forward here in the small village of Bo. Lots of people are ready for the gospel and lots of people are really, really naïve. I have come to find that here I spend so much time just trying to get people to understand the concept that there is only one true church on this earth and not all churches are going to get you back to heaven. So many people here love the church and they just think that the church is wonderful but they think that the church that they are in is good enough. Which honestly blows my mind because I don’t know how people can believe that God is two faced and he doesn’t care what we do here as long as we call his name and go to church. People are blinded by the ways of the world. Satan has such a tight grasp on the hearts of the people that it is truly sad and yikes, the things that people believe. Every mission has their own challenges and I know that one of the ones here is that the people completely disregard the law of chastity. And it is terrible. I would say that probably the average age to be a mother here is 15 years old, maybe 16. The problem is because of the societies and the traditions of their forefathers. People completely forget about the Lord's commandments and do whatever they think is right. And when they are living in sin, they wonder why they are also living in poverty. When the light of knowledge comes to you and you completely reject it, that is his condemnation. People are digging their own graves. They wonder why they live in trial but they neglect to do the things that the Lord requires of us. So remember, remember always follow the commandments and reap the blessings from heaven.

Well the week continued on and as usual, we have been focusing on teaching families because it is the best thing to do. The problem with that is that families here don't live together. People just sleep wherever there is shelter from the world. Some homes are filled with people from different tribes and countries. So what we do is call the people living in that house a family. Anyway. we have been working with brother Patrick and his family. He is doing great and I love talking with him. He and his son will be baptized on this Saturday. Hopefully, his wife will follow shortly.

We did lots of contacting this week but I am getting tired of these crafty people always leaving me hanging. We found some good people. Unfortunately, our turn out at church was not that great. We only had 4 investigators on Sunday. So we will see what we can do to get that turned around.

So we also had interviews with president. Which went well. I was supposed to get a new temple recommend but he forgot his book so it will have to wait. I don’t ever want to not have it. I always want to be ready to go even if I don’t have a temple. Can you believe it has been two years since I got my recommend ~ man that’s crazy. Anyway, he talked to me about splitting the branch because the building doesn’t have a big enough capacity. Uh, so that makes lots of work for us. He wants us to draw up some new boundaries and look for people that could be leaders and yadda yadda yadda. Overall, the interview was great. He gave me some good info and I think that he doesn’t really want me to play football and I don't know what is up with that. I want to play football so I guess I will take his advice for what it's worth - what is it worth?

But anyways mission is good. After the interview we got a freezer!!! Ya ~ so sweet ~ no, not really! It is a nice storage unit because we have no power to turn it on unless we use the generator and we use that for important stuff. I guess beggars can't be choosers.

So after interviews, me and my companion wanted to get some food so we went to, what used to be, one of our favorite places. Cheap and good. Until this particular day, when we found some kind of animal teeth in our food! Luckily, I didn’t find it in my mouth but my companion did. So I think since we found bush meat in our food, we are going to limit our eating there.

My week was good so if you have questions feel free to ask. Love ya all!

Love Elder Kev

PS Caden, Justin and Cody ~ love ya too! Keep the faith

Dear family,

How is life? Things here are still going great except I think that I am getting fat again. Unfortunately I am around 230. But I think that I am gaining my weight because I am getting pretty strong again. I am lifting boku!!! (That means a lot) I am thinking about just going on a orange diet because I have really come to love oranges. It isa food that I can buy most anywhere and it is relatively cheap. I can get three for just 1000 leones. It is nice and economic.

So the work here is pretty great, nothing to really complain about. The actual work is so awesome. It is the living conditions that takes a toll on your life. It's no wonder that people don’t live to be very old here. It is because of what they do to themselves just to live. But the work is so sweet. Strict obedience brings forth the blessings of heaven. It really does. I would admonish all missionaries to check themselves and see if they themselves are worthy of the blessings of heaven. If we are not doing our part then we cant expect others to do theirs.Something that I have learned this week is not to fear that we are inadequate but rather that we should be powerful beyondmeasure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us. The Lord gives us power to overcome any obstacle. This week in my studies I was reminded of something that Nephi saw. It is so cool because most people only describe how the Holy Ghost feels but Nephi describes how he looks. I think he is the only one to describe seeing him. That is in 1 Nephi 11:11. It is interesting. You should go look.

This week at church was great for investigators. My district blew the doors off the charts - not really - but for six people we had 50 plus investigators at church. We are really trying. We are making it a point to be the best. The motto that we have had or that I have carried around in my mission is to work smart. I always tell missionaries to work smart. I love when people catch on and they start to see success. My other motto (thanks dad) is "People honestly don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care". It is one of the truest statements that I know. This week we met the Misale family. There is this old guy, his name is Patrick and he is a stud. I think that we will baptize his whole family here soon. Every time I turn around, there is another child that he has. The count now is like 6. I don’t talk about people much because I leave people out and then I feel bad or it is just personal, but this guy is awesome so I thought I would let you know about him. He is a retired military man and his wife is a cook, and defintely one of the best herb/ plant cookers I have ever eaten from. They say that by their meals you shall know them. The problem with teaching lots of people and becoming good friends with them is that the food becomes very abundant and that is not good for my diet. It’s a sacrifice I will make for the work! I bet the food would not be to bad for you here because it is all plants but the problem is that it is soaked in oil. When I come home I am going to have a heart attack because of the good food, but like I said before, it will be a happy sickness.

I don’t know what really to say and it seems as if you have heard it all before so if anyone has questions please ask me and I will do my best to answer. Sorry I haven't written as often but I am in the bush and it is hard to send mail. Oh yeah, I almost forgot to tell you (maybe I shouldn't tell you) but this week when I was brushing I got bit by some bug or something because I developed this gnarly infection on my leg. But don’t worry dad taught me well. I took alcohol and a scrub brush and even bleach. Wow, it reminded me of laying on the counter while dad scrubbed the stones out of my back. But don’t worry it is clearing up now so no problems and no worries. I have had survived so many life threatening diseases while being here - it is quite the accomplishment! I can say I had malaria twice and typhoid and some other crazy diseases. Ya I am proud of it. When my football pals complain about joint pain or anything else I will just say hahaha try having malaria and typhoid then tell me you feel sick. Anyway, I am healthy and strong and working hard. Sorry for rambling on and on. Have a great week!

Love Elder Moss