Krissmus dundun‏

So Christmas has come and gone. I love Christmas here... you only get homesick for like 1 day because it feels like its August 25th here and there is not a lot of decorations and obviously... no snow, so that means nothing to make me homesick except for the call home! The call home was super awesome! It was so nice to talk with all of you and hear your voices. I can't believe that it's been almost 3 months now.... time does go by fast if you live in the day.. meaning you don't look forward to the end and you don't look back into the past. Its a very hard thing to do. But small small. So mom you were asking if i wanted anything to come in my package. Things i want are.... some more pens (but i think i already told you that) and some blueberry muffin mix that i used to get from Winco! Other than that you can put whatever you want in it and surprise me! Thank you for the Christmas package! I am definitely enjoying it and i love the football! Elder Oyetola is from Nigeria and he is in our apartment and he plays with it like its a rugby ball and i really think he thinks its one because he's never seen a football... im just not gonna tell him and we'll see if he ever figures it out. But the football.... is awesome... in fact i've already created a game with it. It's called "Kill Ball!" So pretty much what you do is you take the Kill Ball (football) and you earn points by throwing and smashing spiders, flies, mosquitoes, giant spiders, rats, champions, and....... cockroaches! Spiders are 10 points, flies mosquitoes and champions are 25 points, giant spiders and rats are 50 points, and cockroaches are worth 100 points cuz they are frickin fast! So that's Kill Ball and my evening entertainment. 

So one of the opportunities that the missionaries that serve in Sierra Leone is to build up a very strong ward. And that's exactly what Elder Gherkins and I have really been targeting this transfer. Last Sunday was a missionary Sunday.. which means the missionaries do everything in church... talks, teach investigators class, elders quorum.... and guess who didn't get told that it was a missionary Sunday until 5 minutes before church... the missionaries.. so pretty much it was a day of chastisement and we really kind of unleashed on the ward how ridiculous it was and how crappy elders quorum is... sounds like we are horrible missionaries right? Wrong. Nothing worked better than this... Because before this we would have our investigators go home and skip elders quorum because they never taught out of the manual and they never had a lesson prepared.. at the beginning of class the teacher, whoever it was that stood up cuz the elders quorum presidency was never present, would ask what the class wanted to discuss today and then another man, Bro. Samba would stand up and talk about how many miracles he's seen in his life.... back to the story. We chastised and then after church we had a closed meeting with Bishop and we discussed what we needed to change so that church would be a better experience for our investigators as well as the members. Our Bishop is a great guy! He served in the Enugu, Nigeria mission and he knows all the problems with the ward but one man is just not enough to flip a ward around... so we set some rules for Elders Quorum. 1- We need manuals 2- Every person must sit within the first three rows 3- Bro. Samba isn't allowed to teach 4- The Elders Quorum President must be present and either teaches the class or assigns someone THE WEEK BEFORE to teach the class. So this Sunday... was awesome! It worked. Elders Quorum was awesome! It was definitely a place that we would want our investigators and it was just like back at home... kinda. But it was way sweet! 
During elders quorum i saw that Paul Sesay's freakin awesome son Abubakarr was sitting outside alone. So i went and carried him into elders quorum and we sat in the back and i gave him my pen and a sheet of paper and taught him how to trace his hand... it was way sweet til he attempted to trace inside the hymn book. So that was my sunday... next week church time changes to 8:30 in the morning..... sweeeeeeeeeeetttttttttttttttttttt............. Anyways transfers are just around the corner.. we find out this week if we stay or go (hopefully stay).

So ever since i started teaching Paul i've just kind of been drawn to his and Abubakarr's relationship and i could never find out why. Paul and Abubakarr are ALWAYS together.. you never see one without the other even though Paul is 54 and Abubakarr is 2. They always are talking and laughing together and whenever paul is gone abubakarr has this very down look on his face. So i could never figure out why i thought that their relationship was so sweet and for some reason i felt drawn to it.. then one day it just hit me... their relationship is almost exactly how my relationship is with my dad! Its so crazy... from what i've always been told about how i would follow dad around and cry when he would leave and i would just hang out with him... this was exactly what it sounded like! So anyways i thought i'd just let you all in on that... Other than that there really wasn't anything else that was to crazy this week other than the usual stuff! Love you all! Mallowai!

Elder Rogers