Hey family

How are you guys today? As for me, I am doing good. Not too many complaints.

Holy smoke - it is so crazy that Hintze is home. I am pretty sure that we went more than 2 years without writing a single thing to each other. Man what a crappy friend I am. That goes for all of my friends that are on missions right now. I am sorry I haven’t written you, I do have a small excuse. I am in the jungle and it is hard to write since I have no light and I can’t just walk to the mail box and send them. I would love to write people more but it is just hard. So I am sorry friends and family. I do love you guys though. Anyway, all these people that are coming home, could you please tell them hello and that I love them.

As for my week, it was filled with patience and learning. When you think that you have exercised an extreme amount of patience that is probably when you are wrong. This week we had a practice for our Easter program. It went well except I don’t understand why nobody will take you seriously during practice. During our practice, it was as if I was in primary trying to get everyone to be quiet so that we could do something. So what we did was just embarrass them so that they would practice on their own, ha-ha. We knew no one had practiced on their own so we made them sing in front of everyone. It was amazing how much better they sounded the second practice.

So this week was rough with trying to find investigators. I feel like sometimes I am just walking around trying to get anyone to talk to me. I don’t think I would do well in a stateside mission. I would get too angry when no one wanted to hear what I had to say. So we hope that the Easter program will help and we can start getting some referrals, just in time for me to come home. It amazes me how things in one area can be so busy and then the next area it is terrible. So that is the work. We struggled to have 20 lessons this week. I know that is crazy for some people but we can normally have like 25 or 30 in a week.

So we got our generator back!! Yea - that means we can charge things again and plan in the light. But the rather unfortunate thing is that something died in our well. I think it is a lizard. I really don’t think that I am meant to have good water on my mission. If it is not one thing, it’s the next. Dad you are lucky on this one because the hole on the top of the well is too small for me to fit in or otherwise I would be down there getting out the dead animal that is in there. Also the well is really deep so I don’t really want to go in there. Someone is going to have to get this problem fixed so we can take a shower (or what we consider a shower). Another one of those sacrifices we make as missionaries here in Africa.

Today was good. We got a bunch of missionaries together and members and recent converts and had a soccer game. It is so awesome when we can go have a clean match, have a prayer and see our converts become friends with the branch. Also, we got a referral today in an area where we need investigators so I know that things are starting to pick up. Sorry if I am too negative all the time, I don’t try to be!! Also, another thing that made the match great was we won! Today was good and things are getting better. I don’t have much else to say. We have this guy his name is Chris and we just baptized him. He is so good and he is also very good at soccer. He won the golden boot. He is practically a national player but he wants to go on mission rather than go and play now. Another thing that I love about this guy is that he really respects his mom. That is something that is big for me.

I am grateful to be here and to serve. I love you guys have a great week.

Love Elder Kev

Another Week in Paradise!

Hey family!

How was the week? How is life? Things here are rough, but whatever, thus is life. If I was to tell you all that is going on you here would really either laugh or cry, I don’t know. Our area, as you know, needs a lot of work but that is not the biggest problem. Our zone is slowly falling into apostasy so as the new zone leaders, we are trying to stop that as fast as we can. It was kind of like the missionaries that we replaced didn’t care too much about what was going on. So lucky for us, we get to fix it. The biggest problem is my companion doesn’t really seem to care. It is hard because I am trying to love him and get to know him but he won't open up to me. I mean it is so crazy. I don’t even know his first name or his age or anything about him. But I have been trying to look for the good. This week I have been looking for things that I am grateful for and it always comes down to family. I am so grateful to have been raised in a home that has moral values with parents who love and care for me. Can't begin to tell you how much a child here would love to have their parent say I love you or I am proud of you. I don’t think that I have ever heard a parent here tell their child that they love them. It isn’t fair to the children here. I just wish that things could be different. I guess that is why we are here.

This week has been really busy. We are starting the planning of the Easter program. We are combining both of our zones so we have to work with the other zone leaders which is fun and nice because it is Elder Stott and Bennion. They are good guys so it is fun. It should be a good program. And another benefit about planning it is that I don’t have to sing a surprise solo or anything!

We had an awesome baptism this weekend. I really liked it… probably because it was huge! I love big baptisms. I think it really brings the spirit. It had to be like 30 people. Wow, it was fun. I wish I had taken pictures but, unfortunately, there is no way to charge my camera on account that our generator is broken and also no power from the power company. Anyway, it was great. We had a fun time rushing around fixing problems like filling the leaky font, meeting with the district president and other things, like trying to get the branch to stop hating our sisters. Man, sometimes I wonder about those sisters. The comments they make to people. I would be ticked too if I was in the branch. They make comments like "this food is for goats or this is for monkeys. I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard such statements. I mean, in there defense, the food really is for goats but you don’t have to tell the people that. They are sharing all that they have when they give you food. That really hurt us because it loses the trust between missionaries and members. Which really sucks because, as it is, we are having enough problems trying to find people to teach.

 

 

One of our big focuses in our zone is to recognize the reality of the living Christ. It is something that I think can really help missionaries and other people outside of mission. As we realize that we have a living Savior, we can recognize the daily blessings that come into our lives. And when we see these blessings, we are happy. We know that someone is there to help us. Mission is great! Easy, most defiantly not! Every companionship is filled with love and sometimes hate trials, success and sometimes failure, good ideas and bad ideas. It is all about the attitude that we have during the experience. When life throws you lemons you can either suck the bitterness of the lemon or you can just make it sweet by adding sugar. Nothing comes easy in life. It always takes extra, it always takes a little more. Something that I have found is that the only time success comes before work is in the dictionary. The journey of a thousand miles always begins with the very first step. As most people know, in my mission, I have had to carry a fair share of trials but I don’t expect it to stop. When life gets to easy it means we are not learning from any trials and if we are not learning then what is our purpose in life? Everything is about our attitude. So I guess I need to put this out there. People keep asking me about the Sherissa thing, wanting to know if I am ok. Asking me why I am not complaining. The reason is because there is no reason to cry and there is no reason to look back. I just need to focus on what is ahead of me and not what is behind me. I am truly happy that she is happy. That is what I always wanted. For her to be happy. What kind of loser would I be if I didn’t want that. I know the Lord will work something out for me. My purpose right now is not to look for a wife but to bring families unto the gospel. To recognize that God is there and loves them. So thank you everyone for the concerns and the support. All is well in Africa.

Oh, I got the package today, finally. I haven’t really gone through it yet, I am really busy. I am trying to make sure lots of work gets done from generator repairs to the water pump installation and other things. Don’t worry, I will try to refrain from spending lots of time in the well. I love you guys have a great week!

 

 

Love Elder Kev

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