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

Election Bidneh Har!!!

The way the country har! That how the country lookin. So the election in this country is not a small thing. This place is so busy and jammed packed all the time now it's hard to go anywhere. The country's election is tomorrow the 10th of October. They have a ton of different candidates and they all have campaign rallies at different times and people just lose their minds. In the states we mainly have two parties that win each year, but here they have about 30 different parties that go at it. Of course there are some main ones that are more likely to win, but I don't really know any of them so to me they all can win. It makes a lot of people really busy though so it's more difficult to find people at home now. 

Anyways! Besides that this week went well. We're busy as usual. Thursday we had our zone conference and it was really nice. We talked a lot about working with members and how to work with stake and ward leaders. I never really realized before how little I was doing to help the church progress. I'll have to do better when I get back. 

On Friday, the Sinkor zone was asked to stay in their apartments because of a campaign rally that was supposed to be crazy. So we stayed in the apartment the whole day. It felt really weird because I've made that a point on my mission to never spend the whole day in the apartment. It has only happened once when I got really sick one morning and didn't even go to church. This was the second time. I just feel guilty when I'm in the apartment. Not bad though I got to rest :)

Saturday was nuts. Saturday was the last day that people would be allowed to have any kind of election campaign or anything like that so everyone was out. The traffic was really bad, but we weren't really affected for most of the day. However, on our way home we hit some trouble. Walking back to our apartment there is one of the major party's headquarters there and everyone and their dog was there. It was completely stopped traffic. There are two lanes on each side but it basically just looked like there were cars on all four lanes facing each other in a dead stop. We weren't really supposed to be there but we had to get back. Luckily it was also pouring rain so we got soaked in addition to our crazy adventure. When we got in front of the headquarters there were people all over on the street chanting and yelling and police cars everywhere. We were just walking in between cars and trucks and buses on the road because no one could move. We walked in between two huge trucks and got so wet! Luckily my scriptures were okay. Looking back it was kind of cool but at the moment I was feeling bad that we were in the situation. I didn't really think that anything would happen to us, but we shouldn't find ourselves in places like that so it was unfortunate but probably unavoidable. We made it back safely and I'm alive and well. 

Well that was the craziness that happened this week. One woman said that she was stuck in the traffic until 3 am. She still came to church because she said she had promised us but she went home early because she was tired. Can't blame her. 

I'm doing great though! Can't complain. Love you all. :)

Elder Bush

September Photos

Conference and Cake

Well this was a wonderful busy week as always!

We had a lot going on this week and we got a lot done as well. On Wednesday night I went for an exchange with Elder Sorenson. He is one of the assistants that is serving in town right now. Wednesday night I went with him to his apartment and slept there. They have air conditioning and it was so weird to sleep in the cold. I had a little sheet so my body was fine, but breathing in the cold air gave me a hard time. I don't know how I'm going to make it when I get back when even outside will feel air conditioned in the winter! I'm sure I'll manage. We had a nice exchange but I mostly just conducted baptismal interviews for their candidates. I like doing interviews though people say funny things. 

Saturday we had a baptism and it went... well?His name is Shadrach and he is a really funny old man. He really loves the gospel and the church though and he is doing well. Friday Brother Shadrach was interviewed and passed. You can only baptize someone if you have water though! We cleaned the font and turned on the water which ran for a little while, but we had to go home. We turned off the water and came back early in the morning to turn it back on. Water was not coming anymore... Yay! So we had to draw water from a well probably about 100 yards away from the font or so and carry it to the font using buckets. This is the second time it has happened in this ward. We got enough to baptize Shadrach and that was good enough for us and him. So he was baptized and everyone is happy.

Sunday we had conference so we went in town early in the morning and watched the Saturday afternoon, Sunday morning and priesthood session of conference. For some reason all the women stayed for the priesthood session and no one told them to leave... I guess that's okay?  I loved the talks and I was especially touched by what Henry B Eyering said about the Book of Mormon. Although he has been reading the Book of Mormon every day for over 50 years, he decided to read in more detail and with greater focus because the prophet asked. Humbled me a little to realize that I need to continue reading it each day. I have been reading Doctrine and Covenants so I got a little bit lazy. So I am recommitting myself to be diligent in reading The Book of Mormon as well. Between sessions the assistants had made some cake and food so we went up to their apartment to eat which was super nice of them. I sustain them. Great week!

That's about all for today but I'll send some pictures. Love you all!

Elder Bush