Baptisms and Rats!

Hello Everyone!

We had yet another great and hard working week. We had a Baptism on Saturday and had some fun experiences! 

Honestly, the pinnacle of the week was getting a package from my parents. A few weeks ago, I had told them that we had rats in our apartments so they sent a few rat traps. I kid you not, 15 minutes after I set both of them we caught 2 rats. After throwing those guys over the fence, I re-set them and 30ish minutes later caught 2 more. I then let another apartment borrow them, but that just goes to show how many rats we had... and there are still more! 

We also had a Baptism where we baptized Brother James Lavalie Jr. and Brother Musa Bangura. What an awesome Baptism! If you remember back a few emails ago, I talked about James having those few addictions that would have stopped him from getting baptized. We had a heart to heart conversation, and He totally changed and dropped His old ways, just like that. It took a lot for him to get worthy and ready for the baptism and so it was such an awesome experience to see him get baptized. Right when He came out of the water, He looked right at me and said " I feel good!" I was so proud of Him for going through all that He went through. Quite an example to me. 

On Easter Sunday, we watched The Sunday Morning General Conference session for our Church meeting. They did not tell anyone except us as missionaries, because I guess no one really comes to watch it if they know. So everyone was just talking and our investigators were the only ones on the front row listening and telling the members to be quiet! Part of me was so embarrassed and the other part of me ws so proud! Embarrassed because the members were being so disruptive and loud, but proud because all 14 of our investigators were at church and listening intently!! As many of you know all they speak here is Krio, and so knowing that the talks would not make any sense to them, I was able to translate every talk for them. It was a pretty funny and awesome experience that I got to have! 

A short experience of faith and will power- 
Obeying the Law of Chastity and the Word of Wisdom are the toughest things here for people to keep. One of our investigators, Joseph, opened up to us about some things when we talked about The Law of Chastity. We counselled with him and had a good lesson. After we left, He went straight to His girlfriends house and told her He wanted to change. He brought out scriptures and totally taught the same lesson we had just taught to him! The next day He told us all of this and how He has made up his mind to stop. He also was smoking about 5 ties of marijuana a day. We talked about the word of wisdom and He threw away all his marijuana right then and there. He hasn't touched anything since. I was so impressed by his faith and will power to just stop right then and there. I think we can all learn from his example!

--Elder Morgan