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Hello My People

Hello my people,

This week was pretty good no complaints here.

My new companion Elder Glou and I are doing pretty well and we're getting a good teaching style down so things are working nicely. I still need to learn a little more French from him so I'm going to have to focus a little more on that one in the future.

I always forget the cool stuff, but the presidential election is coming up here in Liberia and it's a really big deal. There is a guy named George Weah who is running and a lot of people like him. He had a little campaign thing on Saturday and people were going crazy. I'm not exactly sure what we are going to do during the actual election because everyone just dances in the street and stuff. I think that guy will win but who knows. I think it is still safe for us but who knows?

Besides that we had a pretty normal week. Went out and taught and shared the gospel with people. One of the members in our ward has her niece living with her and she said that we should start teaching her. She's a really smart girl actually so I like her. Her name is Marolynn. 

I don't have a show this week! Sorry, hopefully next week I will come up with something because I'm blanking right now. Love you all!

Oh yeah, I have 6 months left. Cool stuff.

Elder Bush

If It Moves, Don't Stop It

Well my people this week was not bad-o, tell God thank you. First week with my new Ivorian companion and things were alright.

Since a few Elders recently went home (yes apparently people in this mission actually do go home after 2 years because I wasn't sure) and no one has come to replace them yet, we had to take over some other missionaries' area. Sooooo, our area is super big and our time was pretty limited this week due to some meetings and whatnot. We still gave it our best effort of course and tried to visit the people that the other missionaries were teaching in that area. We'll continue to manage it. 

 So yeah that's how the week was. We had a little training meeting on Tuesday that was pretty good. Learned more about how to help others make good choices and stuff. Saturday we had a meeting with the Stake President so I went with my Zone Leader companion Elder Silvis who is from Idaho that day. We got some ice cream while we were in town before returning to our area. I miss ice cream. It was good. 

So this week my theme is the auto shop, the car dealership, the car salesman. I want to see if I can sell you one of the cars that we find here in Liberia, namely, a taxi.

Cars in Liberia are really remarkable works of God. I say that because by some power not known yet to man, they continue to move. Despite all odds and proper judgement that should be taken into account when handling heavy machinery, Liberians seem to get their cars to move. So this is the thing, cars here are not maintained at all. I'm sure if you asked someone when the last time they put oil in the car was they would ask you if you were talking about gas. If it moves, don't touch it and just let it keep moving until it breaks down. 

There are a lot of yellow cars here, majorly Nissan's and nearly all are manually driven. Often times the floor of the car has some holes in it or at least parts where water can get up through to get a nice damp floor mat. I was once in a car that actually had a large hole at my feet. If I would have tried I could have touched the pavement. YABADABADOOO!!!!! Oh good times. Many cars have broken windshields, or extremely dirty windshields that are very hard to see out of especially when it is raining. Door handles are often broken off, ceiling has had the carpet removed, seats with almost no padding anymore. When you get in a car each person does not get their own seat either. With 3 seats in the back you squeeze 4 persons and sometimes two persons in the front seat. 4 in the back is okay but apparently 2 in the front is illegal. Sometimes I'm not even sure if the clutch is even used I don't even know how they do it I just know they are not very good at driving either. Not to mention, they make sure to only get one gallon of gas right when they are about to run out so at least they just fill up the tank a little, but I guess they can't ever afford to fill it all the way up, or maybe that's jsut too big of an investment. Not only that, but they need to buy it from some people on the side of the road who put their hands into the gasoline from a large gallon mayonaise jar and put it in your car rather than go to the gas station even though they are the same price. They can't see the gas at the gas station so I guess they can't trust that!  

The main point to remember when getting in a car is that if it will get you to where you need to go, then let it stay. It's alright. 

Well that's about it for my dealership show today. I hope I was able to convince you to buy a car from someone here but if not... Well I don't blame you. Have a great week!  

Elder Bush

You in Crih?

Well, I've decided that my emails are boring and people seemed to like my last email about the food here so I think each week is going to have a different theme about something in Liberia that I will help give you a little understanding on and just a brief update about my week.

This week was good, it was the end of a very long transfer. The transfer was two weeks longer than usual because of some people going home. I thought it might never end but I was wrong. I now have a new companion who is from Ivory Coast and speaks French. He came the same time as I did though so he speaks English at this point quite well. We are now also helping to cover another area that was taken out so we have extra work to do! I am still a zone leader, but they split almost all the zone leaders up in the mission to be with a companion who isn't a zone leader. So my companion is actually the district leader which is interesting. 

I'm excited for this new transfer. Things should be fine and people are starting to go home because the mission has been back open for 2 years now. It's weird.

Okay so the theme for this week is houses. I'll tell you about the houses in Liberia and what they are like…

Well, for starters they are not like home obviously. I have not seen a single house here that is made out of wood. I've heard that the reason why is because if you shoot a bullet through a wood house it would just go right through and kill you. I don't know if that's really the reason they use cylinder blocks or not but it is kind of funny... And sad. 

So you’ve got different levels of houses here. We'll start with zinc houses. Zinc houses are made entirely out of zinc. Generally they have a dirt floor but it is possible that they have some cement flooring. These houses often have trouble during the rainy season because there will be holes in the zinc roof and it will drip inside. I always feel really bad when that happens. 

Then you’ve got cement block houses. These are generally nicer houses; however they can still be looking sorrowful inside. Some nicer houses like this I've been to have some tile flooring and some decent walls and maybe a tv or something, so not too bad. Almost regardless of where you live or what your house is made of though, it will have a zinc roof. Even our apartment has a zinc roof. It makes the sound of the rain sound really hard when it starts to come down which is kind of fun. 

There is also a house that is essentially made out of mud. I don't think it is necessarily an adobe hut, but basically you take a certain kind of mud with water and put it in the form of a block and let it dry in the sun. Then you build your house with a bunch of them. A lot of people say this is stronger than a cement house but I'm not too sure about that. 

Generally houses in this nicer area that I'm in even have power pretty constantly from something called LEC. It goes off sometimes but it's fairly reliable. As far as running water goes though, it is pretty rare to find running water in someone's house. They have city water but it doesn't always come on and you most likely need to have a big water tank to fill up so that you still have water when the city water stops coming. We have both, so we usually have running water so that's nice.:) Most people draw water from a well and then store it in a barrel or big bucket in their house.

Okay so that's my housing show for the day. Hope you enjoyed it and let me know what else you want me to write about in the future! 

Love you all!
Elder Bush

The Seitua Fam!

FOOD BIDNEH

That is food Business but it is best pronounced food bidneh. Similar to car bidneh and money bidneh. All the above can be said to be har in the country! 

Ex: "Car bidneh har in dih country!"

It's not real English but it's close enough.

So let me tell you about the food I eat all the time. 

Casava Leaf:

I don't know if you know what casava is, but it grows in the ground in tropical places and can be used to make things like fufu. It is somehow similar to a potato and I think it is pretty good but Elder Young doesn't really like casava. I guess potatoes are better. So yeah, casava leaf is literally the leaves that come from the casava plant. No one else in the world eats them besides Liberians I'm sure. They pluck the leaf and ppound it until it is completely mashed. I think they boil it and strain it. Then, because the leaf doesn't taste that great, they put a ton of oil and seasoning and mashed pepe (pepper) in it to make it tolerable. I like casava leaf one one time but it isn't that great.

Potato Greens: 

Well, potatoes are pretty delicious, but you can't eat potatoes with rice so let's try something else. Okay the leaf that comes from the potatoes would be a good idea. Let's take the leaf, slash it into really small pieces and then fry it in oil with pepe and seasoning and oil on rice. Yeah that's basically it. This one is actually pretty good after a while. I like potatoe greens. 

Palm Butter (Palm buttah):

In palm trees there is something called a palm nut. If you take these, heat them up, ound them, strain them and then do something else with it you get palm butter. This one is actually really good if it is made well, especially if you eat it with fufu. But not Liberian fufu. Have someone from Ghana make your fufu. I don't really know how to make this one it takes too much work but I like it.

Pumpkin:

This one is really good but it isn't made from an actual pumpkin. It's actually made from squash but they call it a pumpkin. What you do for this one is cut open the squash and take out the insides. You cut up the fruit part of the aquash into small small pieces. With onions, you fry the squash in oil until the pumpkin gets soft and then you maybe add small water and pepe and seasoning and meat and you eat it with rice. It's actually really sweet. I'll probably make this one when I go home.

Tobogee: 

This is the absolute worst food in Liberia. I don't know how it is made and I don't want to know. This one and another one called bittah bowl taste jsut like that: bitter. People acutally like it and it's awful. It tastes a little bit like you're jsut eating straight baking soda because that's what they put in it. Also makes your stomach hurt. Stay away from this one at all costs.

Beans: 

I love fried beans. You take small beans and boil them (it takes forever) until they are soft. You then mash some of them and cook them in oil and pepe and seasoning and meat and stuff. Beans are delicious.

Oil: 

They use mainly two different kinds of oil in Liberia however one thing is certain: The food they cook will be swimming in oil no matter what it is. They have red oil which is pretty much terrible on anything you cook. I don't like red oil very much but a lot of africans do. They claim it is healthy but it is definitely not. The other one is basically vegetable oil but they call it like agra oil or something like that. That one is much better taste and I think better for you. Unfortunately, no matter what kind of oil you use is not good in that great of quantity. 

Dry Boney: 

This is a type of fish that is awful. It smells bad. Tastes bad. Looks bad. Everyone here loves it. I think they think that if food tastes too good then it's bad for you so you need to a little bit of bad tasting food to make sure that you remain helathy. I don't know. Never eat dry boney.

Sorry I wish I had pictures but maybe I'll try that next week. I hope you enjoyed my cooking show today! 

Oh, I can cook potato greens, a different soup called gravy that's good, fried rice (this is different from the typical fried rice you would eat at home) and then pumpkin. I'm going to learn how to cook beans soon. Okay that's all! Love you! 

Elder Bush

Miracle of Prayer

Hey Fam and Friends,

This week was dope. I felt a lot better and We had some good experiences and good lessons and stuff. It was wonderful. 

I'll just share two for now. We are teaching Brother Grant who has been promising to come to church for some time now. He's legally married and has a big family who are all ready for the gospel. He has come a long way with the teaching and loves everything that we talk to him about and wants to become part of the church. On Sunday, he got called into work so he was not able to attend service with us. However, we did get to sit down with him and his wife which is super rare because usually at least one of them is busy. We had a great lesson with them. His wife is a little bit more difficult to teach, or at least less readily accepting of what we teach but she's still open and very nice. We taught her about the Book of Mormon because she had some concerns about it. Most people here think that if you open The Book of Mormon bad things will start happening to you and you'll start going crazy. Someone told her that so she was afraid of it. I think her doubt is a little bit clear now... Brother Grant is encouraging her and tells her that they need to start going to the church so we hope that happens soon!

Now the next story is a little lengthy. Last week we were coming back from our exchange and we met two women. One had a bunch of crazy false beliefs about the Bible and some problems about The Book of Mormon. The other was totally accepting of us and seemed like she had an interest in our teaching. So of course because of pride or whatever influence that came over us we focused on talking with this nonsense woman in order to prove that her church is built upon the foundation of men that falsely interpret the Bible. Well, we didn't say it that way... Well we kind of did but that's not what we usually do! Anyways, it was foolish and I felt bad for doing that. Everyone has the right to believe what they want to believe and we shouldn't tell people if their beliefs are false or not. But she was kind of telling us ours were false so it made me vexed. Nonsense woman... ANyways! I felt bad, repented and asked God to help us find the other woman. In one our companionship prayers I felt prompted to ask that God would help us to find her. And we did! We were walking home the next day and my companion stopped and jsut kind of stood there for a while. All of the sudden this woman just started walking up this hill across the street towards us! We talkd to her and it turns out that she lives in the same place as a woman we baptized a month ago! Prayer it true and it works! Iwas so thankful and it made me happy. We're going to meet with her next week. 

I'm going to send another funny email about food bidneh... But that's all for this spiritual one. Love you!

Elder Bush