May 5, 2014

Dear Family,

First things first i will be calling on sunday by 5pm on sunday which i believe that is 9am your time so hopefully that will be enough time before church. Unless you wanted me to call by 9pm and that would be like 1pm for you. Let me know.

Well i am trying to figure out where to start. Well with my new companion and i we are still in the Harbel Branch just swapped areas with Elder Haas so the area is new to us but not too new to the people. We received the area with only 2 progressing investigators and a few recent coverts to be teaching. SOOOO the goal of this week was being able to find people to teach, because nothing happens in missionary work until we find people to teach.

We wanted to start finding Shepard for the branch and not sheep. Which means we need leaders to help strengthen the branch once they come in. So who better to teach then the leaders of the Community. The leaders of the community are very wise mostly old men who know how to solve everyday issues or "palava" as Liberian's would say. So these wise men we began to seek and teach the message of the restoration. All were very receptive of us as missionaries and respect us like frog which is very sweet. Not going to lie it almost felt like being Ammon in the book of Mormon and being placed before a very humble King Lamoni. These Leaders are sometime called King inside there tribes.

In my letter to President i told him about one of our investigators we met last Friday and came to church on Sunday. Don't laugh at her name but its Candy Girl and she is really just a sweet woman.

My companion Elder Egbu can work which is a good thing because i will probably be killing this man as well. He leaves in July so only one transfer left and then he is outta here. Crazy that i have 3 transfers after this. I am beginning to realize i am an old missionary. Its going to be weird when i see the missionaries that just arrived on mission. So young and cute. haha. 

No we are really working hard and there is not a whole lot left to talk about so i guess i will be hearing from you on Sunday. I cant wait. 

Love,
Elder Skouson.

BTW. I went fishing this morning on a river with no fish inside. Its sadddd.

Dear President Kirkham,
This week has been a wonderful week full of just hardcore hard work. Elder Egbu can work! In the new area we have been assigned to it was on it knees with investigators we weren't progressing at all. So it was almost just starting from scratch. We have made contact with all the Recent converts and because we don't know exactly where the were we decided we would just teach them all the lessons again. Many of these lessons turned into member present lessons and we have many investigators now because of this.
We also had many rumors about mainly the church. People don't know really who Joseph Smith is so they cant really talk about him. But the church has this big thing around cotton tree that "Its a 5 dollar Church" first it pays people $5 u.s. each time you come to service, and also that we do weird rituals inside so that is why the church is growing so much. We just kind of shrug it off and just help people to understand the truth.
My companion came in really wanting to teach the leaders of the Community so that these rumors can be resolved. We got one of our Recent Convert brothers to come around and show us who these leaders where. We sat down with Three different men and there families. One was a Lower Margibi county administrator who was receptive to the message but convinced he didn't need to move from his church. Another was a Cotton Tree Community Leader who was very busy, and the last was a very receptive Gkissi tribe Leader who actually wanted to learn more about the message that we bring. We really think this will benefit the community if these wise men of the community come to at least visit the church. We think it will open doors for us and keep the rumors down to a minimum. I like what the church sometimes says any publicity is good publicity though. Its true because those people who are actually interested to ask questions about the church are though who are likely to allow us to visit and teach.
One of these people who allowed us to sit down with them was a girl named Candy Girl and her mother Annie. Annie had been one who had heard the our church was a devil worshiping church but still she let us sit down with her. We asked her if she had any questions or things she had heard about the church. She explained to us that she had and wanted to know if they were true. We then taught her about the restoration focusing how the church wasn't built by Joseph Smith just restored on the earth. We had a great lesson and discussion and the spirit was felt by all. She said that she wouldn't be able to come this week but that she would send her daughter Candy Girl. This was big because before she had explained to her children to never step foot in that devil church. The great thing was that Candy Girl actually came to service on Sunday and even bore a testimony. She can read and write and she is an outgoing almost missionary herself kind of girl. We expect great things from this family as well as the area.
President just know that we might not have very many baptisms here but we are doing things that are going to set this area up for the future. 

Love,

Elder Skouson