Christmas Week!

Una Kushe!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I know I sure did! This week was another good, fun filled week.

As I said above, we had a memorable Christmas for me over in Salone. Leading up to Christmas my companion, who is a pure bred, through and through Tongan kept telling me we were going to buy and kill a pig for Christmas. So that's exactly what we did haha. Missionaries chipped in some money and we bought a big pig. We then relieved it of its life, skinned and cleaned it. I have definitely never seen that done before and so it was really interesting to watch. We then cut it in half and roasted one half and fried the other. This took all day, and so while my Companion was roasting, I went on some exchanges with another missionary. It was great to meet and teach with a new person. I learned a lot. We then went to skype our families. This was definitely my favorite part! It was great to see them and speak with them for a bit. Being on a mission has made me really realize how blessed I am to have the family I am a part of. I am super grateful for all of them! After we were done talking, we went back to the Zone Leaders Apartment and had a huge feast! Not going to lie, pig is really good! All in all, it was a great Christmas!

The Pig for Christmas Dinner

Christmas Dinner

We had an interesting week like always. I will share one story. On Thursday we had about 7 dropped appointments which is a little more than normal, so we were a little bit discouraged. We were thinking about who to visit, when I said we should go tract. Oh what an experience it was... I was kind of excited because it was going to be my first day of tracting. We walked up to our first group of 2 or 3 people, and began to discuss our messages. All of the sudden, this guy comes out of nowhere and starts screaming at what I thought to be me. He had a lazy eye so it was hard to tell. But turns out He was yelling at a woman we were teaching. He got pretty close, screaming about how He was going to beat her for what she did to him. All of the sudden he starts hitting her and so Elder Pasikala and I grab him and cool it down. She is screaming and crying and this guy is still trying to beat her. We finally got this man to leave and helped the woman he had hit. We ended up cleaning her up and getting out of there! After that we talked to 2 more people and actually starting teaching one of them this week! This event made me realize how much more I like Jesus than Satan.

This week was actually a bit of a struggle for me. This Mission is a hard one. I have really come to realize that the hymn "I need thee every hour" should be renamed to "I need thee every single second of the day". I have spent many nights on my knees praying to Daddy God for help.(*Parental Note* "Daddy God" is what they call Heavenly Father in Sierra Leone) What has helped me though was a talk I listened to by Gene R. Cook. He gave a BYU Devotional on How God chastises and challenges His people because He loves them. After hearing this talk it drove me to my knees to ask for repentance! I was focusing on the hard things I am going through and wondering why, when I should have been thanking Daddy God for these challenges because He is molding me into who He wants me to be. Although this is an on going struggle to look at the good and not the bad. People always talk about how they grew so much because of the hardships on their mission but I am just wondering how long mine will last haha. 

Overall, a good and well earned week. We go through hard things to become who God wants us to be. We are on His timeline and not ours! Hope all is well, Happy New Year!
-Elder Morgan

 Me, Elder Pasikala, and Brother Solomon(Ward Mission Leader) at a investigators home. Elder Pasikala fell asleep haha

Brother Phillip and I. He makes awesome beaded ties.