Wednesday, February 12, 2014

11/18/13

Dear Family,
 
What do you know another busy week!!! Gotta love being here in the office! To answer you question i have no idea how long i am going to be one of Presidents Assistants. Elder Pentreath and I were trying to work it out but it all depends if President keeps Elder Pentreath here for another transfer or if he is going after this one. Either way i will probably be here for 2-4 more transfers or like 3-5 months. Woohoo!!! I love being here in the office with all the great people we get to work with.
Well we have seen some of our own miracles come in and out of here in the office this week. Wednesday our brand new baby missionaries came in from Ghana. Woo. No these Elders werent babies at all. Elder Sanders, Gunnell, and Backman arrived at about 5:00pm and we are in charge of them having a great first night in Liberia. We feed them some great rice and stew with some legit BBQ sauce and tasted amazing. We then talked and planned with them so that they would be able to have some down time and write in their journal.
 Everything in the mission gets better when new missionaries arrive. President sees the wonderful impact new missionaries can have on the mission and so he takes this opportunity and magnifies it. He calls the best trainers to train these new missionaries and puts them in the best apartments. You really can notice a difference in ever part of the work. And these missionaries are totally prepared for the job. Its no small thing to be here on mission especially in Liberia. In this mission because it is so young, you learn to be flexible. Each apartment is lacking reliable resources which really can effect the work. Such as water, power, Natural gas etc. So when you arrive it can be a little bit weird when the first time you try to open the tap and no water comes out ( or its different colors). This is why I love the missionaries here just because they are able to adjust and quick. It is so sweet.
 
Dad to answer your question about am i getting the hang of this whole Assistant thing yet to be honest, After doing another week of training and doing different instructions, no not really but i am getting there. Hopefully someday it will just come when i am able to speak where people just understand me and i can clearly get a message across. I think this is going to take some practice though. haha i think i am too hard on myself sometimes as well. I just need to gain that confidence in what i am saying. But like i said its a work in progress.
 
Interesting thing that i noticed this week. My companion and i were teaching a young man named Wilobah about the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We taught him how Christ had established his church and due to the great apostasy it fell. We then had the wonderful opportunity to explain Joseph Smiths first vision with a picture of the vision.( Its always cool to see every ones reaction to seeing the picture when they see it for the first time." Wow, that Jesus??) When we teach this no matter how many times i have on my mission it always strengthens my testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith. I love to explain about The Book of Mormon. Even now as i am writing it i feel just peace inside my heart. I know these things are true and i love being on this mission to share my beliefs and things i know to be true with absolutly everyone around me. It is very uncommon to meet a stranger and not talk about anything besides the church or the Book of Mormon or what we believe as missionaries.
I met a man from India this past week, we got talking about why he was here and what he believed in. He explained he had come here for business and his wife was back at home and he was Hindu. Very interesting and nice man. I love having something to talk about with everyone. How easy is it just to simply explain something you believe in. Never did i think this back at home. I was always to worried that they would ask me a question that i wouldn't be able to answer. But now thats not the case.
 
Welll as you can see i am just enjoying my mission immensely. I love Liberia and Liberians so much. I know why they call it the best Two Years. I am just glad its not soon finishing there is just much i still need to learn here.
I love you all very much and cant wait to here from you again.
Love,
Elder Skouson

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