12 Weeks Training

Well this is it my friends, my last 12 weeks in Liberia has begun!

I'm happy that I've made it this far, hopefully my body can make it a few more weeks. I believe it can. This week was good. We are struggling in our area a little bit due to a lack of investigators to teach during a regular day. Saturdays and Sundays always seem to be busy as well. We did a lot of finding to try to revamp the area. Hopefully a few of the people that we met with will progress. A few of them promised to come to church but none of them did unfortunately. 

We had a really fun Thanksgiving full of food and goodness. Thursday was Zone Conference so we went to the chapel in Tweh Farm and had a nice meeting there. We talked a lot about the Book of Mormon and the power it has in conversion. My testimony is strengthened each week in the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. We had lots of rice for lunch. I think it was turkey but it might have been chicken. Who knows. After the conference one of the members also had food for us (they feed us every Thursday). We went to the other Elders in our district's apartment and made fried chicken and fried potatoes for our dinner. Most of the good food here is fried... We were there till late so we just slept there and walked back in the morning. I hate sleepovers.

Sunday our Bishop gave us an big helping of potato greens. I like potato greens a lot. We are also beginning to teach two guys that are both from a muslim background that want to become christian. I think that is really cool. I'm excited to start to teach the two of them. 

Sorry, no pics this week, I will get you those next week! 

Love you all,

Elder Bush

Photos

Photos from my 21^st birthday…

 New teeth my mom sent us...

 This little guy loves us!

 Squished in a car-always 4 in the backseat

Calculation Givin me Har Time

So this week was pretty good. I can't believe that this transfer is almost over!! It's nuts! I feel like I just blinked and then it finished. Well, I guess it isn't over yet. These last 3 months are still sounding pretty long to be honest with you. I know that they will go fast though. Won't be long. 

Anyways, not much to say for this week. On Wednesday I went on exchange with Elder Olaoluwa so I slept in town with them in their apartment. They have a pretty nice apartment and they even have air conditioning. I tell you that air conditioning gave me a hard time. The next day I felt like I had a sore throat. I think I will die when I go back. But I'm ready to face it. Like I just feel so clean when I'm in air conditioning, it's amazing. I slept way better back in my hot apartment with my fan on though. I feel like I'm going to be like that missionary from the Other Side of Heaven when he goes back and has to sleep on the floor. Except I will need a hot room, a fan and a mosquito net. It will be so strange without it. 

So anyways on the exchange i learned a lot form him. He is Nigerian and will be going home one transfer before me. Everyone on this mission is going home it's nuts. Probably half the mission or more have only 6 months or less left. He is a great missionary and is still working hard. Trying to be like him :)

Sunday we had two of our investigators Confirmed (last week they were baptized). Very happy that they made that step. 

Sunday night one guy called us and asked us for money to pay his house rent. We asked him how much it was and he said he pays 120 for the whole year. My companion then asked so then how much per month. He was confused for a little and then said "I don't know the calculation givin me hard time!"

I love these people. I will miss them so much.

Bye bye!!

Elder Bush

Washing Bidneh

Alright this week was not bad. We were busy as usual with meeting and other stuffs so we didn't get to teach too much. We met one guy who really wanted to contend with us about our beliefs. I don't really have time for people like that anymore. Wo unto the wise. 

Sunday we had a baptism for Evelyn, Theresa, Mamee and Bishop! Mamee and Bishop have been investigating the church for about 2 years now but they haven't been consistent so no one has baptized them. They finally got themselves together though and we're all happy! Aside from that everything else is normal. Well, relatively.

This week I will talk about washing your clothes. According to Liberians you all are lazy because you use a washing machine. So let me tell you the real way how to do it:

So first off you need a few buckets. Preferably you will have a large tub that is wide so that you can put a lot of clothes in there. You can use a small bucket if you don't have many clothes. take the large tub and fill it maybe a little more than half way full of water. Then add some soap. Powdered detergent or liquid soap if that is all you have and bleach if you are washing whites. Mix the water around and then put your clothes inside. If it is whites, you can probably leave it in the bucket over night to let the bleach set in to help bring out the whiteness. 

Now here is the tricky part that is not so easy. Obviously you are going to use your hands to wash these clothes. So you will pick up one shirt and start to basically rub it against itself. You can also use a bar of soap to get it more clean since the powdered or liquid soap might not be enough. So use your two hands and begin to rub the cloth against itself in order to take out the dirt. Kind of difficult to explain. You especially need to do this with the collar. Continue doing that until you have scrubbed every part of the shirt and you think it is clean. Then squeeze it and put it in bucket of water to rinse it. Once you rinse it then you squeeze it again and hang it up outside on the line! Then wait for the sun to dry your clothes and you're done!

Thanks for all the love and support! Have a great week!

Elder Bush

Don't Be The Wild Duck

This week ended up being really great.

I will skip to Sunday because of time. Sunday we had our second counselor from the seventy come and visit our Stake Conference. He gave a story that I really loved. He said when he was growing up there were ducks all around him where he lived in Minnesota. During the winter they would migrate to another place. He said that he had some tame ducks that he would feed corn or bread or whatever to and they would not fly because they were too fat to fly. Well, one day another wild duck who was around the tamed ducks started to get closer and eventually started eating the food he gave them. Pretty soon the wild duck became very fat, so much so that he could no longer fly either. One day a man came and picked up all the ducks when it was getting closer to winter. His mother told him that the man was a farmer that would take care of them, but later he learned that the man was going to eat them. He knew that the tame ones probably would have that end but he felt bad for the wild duck. This was a duck that was free, but lost his freedom because he became dependent upon others. He talked about self reliance and how we should not rely upon others and become fat like the wild duck. We should work and gain our own money so that we don't have to look for others to provide for us. The wild duck chose the easy way... Work hard!

Love you all,

Elder Bush

TIA This Is Africa

Hello my people!

I don't really know who is still reading this besides my mom, but thanks if you are I appreciate it. I only have about 16 more of these letters I think. I had a pretty good week despite some few short comings. The Lord always performs miracles.

So like I said this week had some short comings unfortunately. Tuesday my companion and I walked out near hotel Africa which is so far away and no one that we hoped to see was around. We Walked!! We always walk a lot but that day just seemed to be extreme. We were so tired coming home but I always feel that the Lord blesses me for those efforts, even though nothing is going well, He recognizes my effort.. 

Wednesday I fell sick with a poor stomach. I was able to go out for one lesson to one man that we contacted. I just felt like I should force it to see the man. Turns out he is legally married, has a lot of children and even came to church on Sunday! That meant a lot to me.. 

The rest of the week went fine. The Bishop was supposed to go with us to meet a man on Saturday but when we called him he said he was in Nimba... About an 8 hour drive from Banjor. Liberia... He made it to church the next day and met with this family I was teaching a year ago in Caldwell who just moved here! They haven't been baptized because they are not yet married, but they should be soon. I was so happy to see them come to church. Small world right?

There is one woman we are teaching named sister Kona. This woman is very sweet and she loves the missionaries but she is incredibly stubborn. On Sunday we were talking to her about the Book of Mormon and she was not being humble at all. Trying to tell us she has read the book and knows it is all about the Americans and this nonsense. I thought of Abinadi when he asks the apostate priests if they had read the scriptures. They said yes. He said well, then you don't understand them. It was so difficult for me not to come back at her with fire. The Book of Mormon is something I have gained such a strong testimony of on my mission so when people attempt to condemn the book it takes all my energy not to give it to them... But I held my peace. Tried my best. It's not easy sometimes. Occasionally I just want to take the knowledge that I have and shove it into their brain so that they can understand. But that's not how we do it. Just try my best to be patient with her and love her but she is not yet ready to accept the gospel. She will need a lot more time but I have faith that one day she will and she will stop denying the truth. 

I know that it is true though and I can't deny it. I am thankful for the things that I understand and have learned on my mission. Helps me to understand so much more about what life is really about. 

So my mom asked some questions I will try to answer. The area that I am in now is pretty nice, I like it. It is fairly large and has a lot of dryness. The rain is slowing down so usually it will just rain for a few minutes during the day or at night. The people in the area are pretty nice, but I don't know where too many of the members live. It is a little bit far from the city, but I don't mind. Pretty quiet there. The apartment is nice. We have electricity at night and if we need it in the morning we can turn on the gen but we usually don't need to. I like the apartment a lot. It is only me and my companion who are in it so we each use our own bathroom. Kitchen is nice and there is always running water because they pump it from a well into a big black tank. So that one is not a problem. 

The election is not doing much right now, they have now gotten to the second round between two candidates. The second election is on November 7th so we might stay in that day I don't know yet. But no problems except for one of the candidates (who is now the vice president) came right next to the apartment the other day. That was cool.

Wanted to send pics but something is wrong.. Sorry, I love you guys.

Elder Bush

Transfer to Banjor

Sup people this is me.

So today I took my transfer out of Congo Town to Banjor. It is a little further out from the city than my last area. I'm not sure if I will end my mission here or not because I only have 3 transfers left. My new companion is Elder Udo M. and he is from Nigeria of course. My sixth companion from Nigeria. He's super sweet though and I think we will get along really well. 

Something interesting is that our apartment is only us. We don't have any other Elders in the apartment so that is the first time I've had that on my mission. The apartment looks pretty nice though so no problem there. 

Well I don't have too much else for this week because I haven't done anything here yet! So we'll see next week. I'm going to try to exercise more here. That's about it!

Love you,

Elder Bush