Zoning In

Today was Zone Conference. I really love Zone conferences. It is a great time to meet with all the elders. Sister Peterson and I usually try to fix a little something since they leave from their apartments pretty early to get over to the mission home, which is where we have the conference. Last night we made some muffins (which is the same thing we did last zone conference). We then have something for them to drink. They love coming in and chatting with each other and getting a little something to eat. We then start zone conference at about 10:00 a.m. Today we were taught by the Freetown Zone Leaders as well as President and Sister Squires. The focus of President and Sister Squires's remarks were on Pioneers. It is so appropriate with the 24th of July coming up, but also where we are in Sierra Leone, the elders are teaching the pioneers of this country. I don't know if it was covered by the Ensign, but the Liahona was about the pioneers of the church in Ghana. Elder Jones remembers being in Hong Kong and being taught about the pioneers by a Filipino sister. You might have thought that she would feel very detached from the pioneers who crossed the plains in the late 1840's into the 1850's. But such was not the case, she considered those pioneers her pioneers. Such is true , I'm sure worldwide. The things those pioneers went through have blessed all of us today whether we are direct ancestors or not.

I don't have a current picture of the zone, but this was taken at last month's zone conference. We feel it such a pleasure to serve with these fine elders. There are about 48 elders serving in this mission. It is not a large mission, but certainly a challenging mission in many ways.



Below is a picture of Elder Michael. You may remember him from another post. He went home a week ago. He was the first elder officially called to serve in the Sierra Leone Freetown mission. It is interesting the way the elder composition is in this mission. They really try to maintain half native elders and half American elders. The way that they have come in, however, is most interesting. Elder Judd from Mesa (who went home in June last year) was the last American elder to return home. We will be sending 5 American elders home the end of August and 3 more the end of September. Then the native elders will be the longest serving elders until March.

One thing that is amazing over here is what we call "the African miracle". You will be walking down the street and meet up with a Sierra Leonian. He will have this very serious look on his face. You say "hello" to him or "howdebody" and his face will light up like the sun. It is amazing to watch. I love it. It is one of my very favorite things to do. It happens even as you wave to them in their taxis or poda podas. Their expression will change immediately to just this bright, wonderful smile.

Recently we have been having trouble with our internet. In fact for a week or so, we really had trouble getting reports, etc., sent to Ghana. We tried and tried to get someone in the company to come and look at it. Elder Jones finally took the situation into his own hands. He went down to the Fire Force (fire station) and got a ladder (after calculating how long a ladder he would have to have in order to get on top of the mission office building). He brought the ladder back strapped to the top of the truck--I wish I had a picture of it. Then he and Markus climbed on top of the building. You might have to enlarge the picture (double click it) in order to see Elder Jones and Markus on top of the building.


After determining that one of the trees in the compound might be affecting the signal, they proceeded to remove the offending tree. Markus climbed up the tree (getting up the first part with the same ladder) and attached a rope. Markus then came down and started chopping the tree down. Elder Jones challenged him to have the tree down in 20 minutes. Markus did it in less than 10. You would be even more impressed if you saw the ax that Markus used to chop it down with. The man holding the rope is Mustapha who is one of the guards at the mission office compound. Both of them are members of the church. Mustapha doesn't live too far from where we live. His children come at least weekly to visit us. It is not unusual to have them come right at dinner time.

In fact one of the funniest stories about the children coming for dinner was the last time they were here. They showed up just after we had started to eat. They walked in and looked at our food. We asked them if they would like to eat, which they quickly nodded their heads "yes." We got them a plate of food. Later as I was finishing up, my glass of water was nearest to the children. The girl reached over, picked up my glass, and poured some more water and took a drink. That is not an unusual thing. They really don't care about using plates or utensils that someone else has just used.

I have started to teach piano lessons. Elder Jones and I go to Kissy (in the East part of Freetown) on Wednesday nights at 5:30 p.m. It is a crazy drive. The roads are very crowded. People are everywhere. If any cars are parked on the side of the road, it will block the traffic flow. It is okay if it is cars going on both sides of the road, but if trucks are involved, it is a disaster. We went out to Kissy on Sunday and it took us an hour and a half to go 7 miles. We had planned to teach on Sunday nights in Kissy also, but another ward, Lumley, wants me to help them with their choir for their branch conference in August. They also have some people who are interested in learning to play the piano. On Saturdays we will go to Goderich--over a horrible road--to help with the choir there and also to teach. Elder Jones is going to help me so that we can get more people on the keyboards. At Kissy, I have about 7 people who are coming. I will report later on Lumley and Goderich. We are excited to be able to be of service and help the people to have some pianists in their branches.

When we arrived in Sierra Leone, there were 10 branches here in Freetown. After the end of the month, there will be 12. They keep the branches small because of the size of the buildings they meet in and also because of trying to give others the opportunity to serve. There are 7 branches in Bo--with one more being planned, and 9 branches in Liberia.

I (this is Elder Jones) went to the American Embasy last week to get something notarized, it didn't go so well. First I was told they only do it on Tuesday and Thursday at 1pm. I went on Tuesday the 7th but was sent away because they were having a Fourth of July celebration and were too busy. I went back on Thursday at one and after clearing security was directed to a waiting room with about 40 other people (all blacks of course). I felt like I was in a prison (I have visited there a number of times) guards everywhere and where you talk to the employees it is though thick glass. Everybody was very solemn, after about 20 minutes I started talking to everybody and got everyone on my side of the room to smile and talk about where they were from and why they were at the embasy. I even got the guard to come over and got him to smile and talk to us. I told them we were in Sierra Leone where the people are all very friendly. It is ironic that a video was playing on the TV about America and had all these smiling people of all ethinic backgrouds saying "I'm an American", however nobody there was smiling.

After almost a hour of waiting I needed to go. I asked the lady how long this took and she said about 5 minutes, I said I was way past 5 minutes and needed to go. She said the consular was busy and it should be soon. I decided to leave which saved me the $50 they were going to charge. Later I went to a local attorney who had a notary public stamp and had the documents notarized for no charge and it looked far more official. So I was not impressed with the embassey and whatever it is they do there. They have about the largest building in the country with 40 or 50 guards around the building and I'm sure spend millions of our tax dollars for the little tiny country (population 5.5million).

Catch you all later from here in Sierra Leone.