Letter Home - Week 4

Good Afternoon Family!

What an adventure it has been for me! From the emails I see that each of you had a pretty good week! As much as you all look forward to Monday I do as well. I love hearing from you guys. I finally got mike's email. I don't know why they weren't going through. I'm happy for Jay that he is trying to get his license. I know he will pass that test. I had a laugh from his picture last week. I'm glad he shaved the goatee off haha. School has started! That feels weird to me. I'm glad Kaylee likes her classes and that Dad you have found a great goal and purpose for your students this year. Mom tell sister Goss and her family thank you for the treat in the mtc. It was appreciated and I had a good laugh when I opened the package of cheese balls. I wish I could've been there for Sydney and Paige's farewell talks. I bet they were amazing. They will both be awesome missionaries. My companion, Elder Odhiambo, is a convert and was baptized at the age of 14. The missionaries found him and taught him. His dad is a member and his mom is now taking lessons. He has three sisters and no brothers. Only one sister is not a member. He likes to eat and drink coke. Lots of coke. He is a sprinter not a long distance running like me. We have gone a short run once and plan on running like three times a week in the morning. He plays rugby and is a strong guy. He's from africa and always says he is a lion and I am a king so together we make the lion king hahah. They have a store here that is like a mini version of macy's that we get our food from so I have a lot of food from home that I can get. We don't really eat at the members homes. We always eat at our apartment but I have had some food that's from here. I had some fried fish that was good. I also had this fruit called akies that is small like a grape with a pit and you suck on it. It was interesting. The island is gorgeous. It is also very dirty. The people are amazing but their circumstances are quite humble. It amazes me how they live and are still so happy. They remind me of the people on cool runnings and the other side of heaven. It's been so awesome to work with them. They are so accepting to listening to us. I haven't had much experience with rejection out here. They are so humble and believe in God. They are poor and don't have much but still are happy. They don't complain. It has taught me a lot. Back home it's like a paradise and yet sometimes we can still be so ungrateful. My apartment is humble and yet still nicer than a lot of the people's homes. In our apartment it is only air conditioned in the bedroom so while we study and plan and stuff in can get really hot. I often end up going in the bedroom to study haha. The temp outside isn't bad because of the breeze that is there. It feels nicer outside than in the apartment. The best part of my day is when we go out and work with people. It brings me great joy. We are able to listen to a lot of great music in the apartment which is awesome too. It kinda feels like a farm out here because they have animals everywhere. There are dogs wandering the streets all the time but they aren't scary at all which I'm glad about. They are timid stray dogs. They also have goats, pigs, horses, frogs, cats, bulls or cows, and lots of bugs. Yesterday I found a couple of huge roaches in the apartment....ahhh haha they're harmless though. The mosquitoes aren't as bad as I thought. Only at night do they get annoying. Nothing really too bad. For travel we walk a lot but there is also a fun transportation system to get us from area to area. They use "buses" or vans and they drive on the left side of the road!!!. It was an adjustment to get used to it. They have small roads and there are some crazy drivers here haha. In certain areas is hard to get a bus and one of those days was the day of the baptism of shantel. We were far away at a teaching appointment and only had a short time to get back in time for the baptism. We got a ride from some people but then had to get dropped off because we were going on a different route. It started pouring on us and so we started running downhill for a least a mile to the next bus area and were finally able to make it to the church for the baptism. The baptism of shantel was great. It was such a cool experience. Not just because of the baptism but seeing shantel before during and after being baptized. She progressed well while teaching her and then after the baptism she was talking to me and asked can we do that again tomorrow. She was really happy. It was also cool to be able to do it in the ocean. The Smith's from PG were there and we had a good time with them. I'm learning a lot about the basics of the gospel and my understanding has grown immensely. I feel like I'm becoming a good missionary and the tools given like preach my gospel are helping a ton. PMG is inspired. I'm learning how to really love the people here. I've felt a lot of love for them from the beginning but it's growing. We are teaching a lot of lessons and finding good people. We teach everyone members, investigators, recent converts, and less actives. It's so fun. I'll write next week about the different people we are teaching. For pictures it is too hard to send them all with the limited resources I have and it takes a lot of time to even send a few so I thought of a way that I could get you guys the pictures. If you could send me some flash drives in the mail I could download all of them and send them back. If you send quite a few I can continue to send them every few weeks or so. Right now I have like over 300 so this is the only way I can think of. I don't want to lose them and would like you guys to see all of them. If you send it in an envelope and do something to protect the flash drives I think it will work really well. Then I can delete the photos I have and take more. It will take a few weeks I think for you to send them to me and then to get back to you but it will be worth it. Anyway I'll talk to you all next week! I love each of you so much! I know this church is true!

With much love,

Elder King