Letter Home - Week 5

Hey Family!

The adventure continues! I just found out that Elder Odhiambo's mom just got baptized! super cool! The hard part of the missionary work out here is that everyone likes to "lime" around or just sit around and not do anything. So we will teach and they will listen, we extend commitments and they accept, but then don't keep their commitments. It makes it so tough because that is how we have and show our faith. Faith leads to repentance and both lead to being prepared for baptism. Baptism leads to having the spirit which leads to enduring to the end or continuing to do these four steps over and over again for the rest of our lives. Enduring to the end leads to conversion and it means continually coming unto Christ by continually having faith, continually repenting, continually renewing our covenants at baptism and making new commitments and goals to become better, and continually living so we have the spirit to be with us always. We show our faith by reading our scriptures everyday, praying sincerely, attending church and participating while we are there, fulfilling our callings, going to the temple, keeping the commandments, and anything else that leads us to Christ and being perfected in him. I know this is the way back to our Heavenly Father and the only way to find true peace and happiness in this life. Please read your scriptures diligently and pray sincerely! I know it will bless your life. You will grow closer to your Heavenly Father. He loves all of us so much and he wants us to talk to Him through prayer and He want to talk to us through our scripture study. The more faith and diligence we put towards the two together the better people we will become and the happier our lives will be. It is wisdom in God that we have them. This shows us why it was so important that Nephi and his brothers went back to get the brass plates and not give up when things were hard. They are our way to know the will of God. The people here say they will do these things but then they don't and it makes the work hard. We are trying to find ways to help them come unto Christ by keeping their commitments. I taught Shantel many times before she was baptized. We have been teaching many people out here. One of them that we are teaching is a great guy named Petrus (like tetrus but with a 'p'). He is getting baptized this coming Saturday! He has a five year old daughter and both make great sacrifices to get to church each week. Church is at 10:00 but they have to get ready super early to catch a bus to drive like 45 minutes to get here. He is a great example of faith. Others have a hard time walking 5-10 minutes to get there. There are many other investigators that we are teaching and working towards baptism but we are having a hard time getting them to keep their commitments. The Sisters in Vieux Fort, my area, had a baptism two days ago. We also work a lot with getting members to come out to church. There are a lot of less actives. I've now had the island mangos here and they are good! I've also had a lot of other fruit. We had a meal at Mamma Sherba's house where we taught Shantel. She is a member. It was interesting. It was like chicken and dumplings with lentils. It wasn't bad. The fruit that I had, ackees, was different from the fruit you described. It was actually given to me by the other missionaries and was the first thing I had when I got to Barbados. They are harmless. They are good. It looks like a green grape. It has an outer shell that you take off and then eat the inside. It only has one pit. There's no need to worry about me out here at all. I'm well taken care of and I feel very safe here. The rastafarian thing is true and now I get that reference from Cool Runnings haha. There are a lot of people out here with dreads. The work is good and I love it! There are hard things but there are so many great and wonderful things too if I keep looking for them and staying positive. If you guys could keep sending pictures too of each of your adventures back home that would be awesome. I loved seeing the pictures of Kaylee and the ones that Kim sent. I heard about drop box and tried using it last week but it takes forrrrrrrrreeeeeeever to download haha it's kind of frustrating but I got a flash drive here and I don't think it will bad to send it home in an envelope if I wrap it up. I'll wait to send it until after I get your email for next week to make sure it's ok. I love you all so much! The church is true! I have such a strong testimony of it!

 

Love,

Elder King