CRAZY DRIVING, MANY STREET VENDORS, SLOW COMPUTERS AND UPDATE ON THE WORK

Driving with T. Good times.

The people drive crazy here, aha, but I manage just fine. I've adapted. The roads are thin and full of pot holes, there is no law enforcement, everyone drives super fast and will randomly stop in the middle of the road and park. So yeah, driving is fun. Also, people sell everything from fresh coconuts to pirated movies on the side of the road. Ice cold coconut water is a cool experience, but coconut water is not my favorite.. aha.. the juice here is amazing, though, and they have so many different types I've never heard of. Luckily, the water here is clean, so I drink plenty of it seeing as I'm in the hot sun all day.

Sorry about the lack of long letters. The computers here are really slow and sometimes the power surges, and I loose everything I was writing and other stuff, but I should tell you how the work is going. It's been less than stellar, but there's some amazing aspects as well. So this has been my life for the past few weeks. If you remember from my previous letter, we had three baptism dates a month ago... and now we have one and a half. One lady avoids us because her mom told her not to associate with our church and this if she's baptized she'll go to hell because you are only supposed to be baptized once, among other things. Moesha is 18, but she kind of has to obey her mother, so we haven't seen her in quite a while.

The other baptismal date was Brian. He's been living with Sister Halloway (a member) and has been for a very long time. They are practically married just without actually being married. So, we've been trying to set a marriage date for them. Sister Halloway is good to go whenever, but Brian is a little less sure. He's the one I gave the blessing to, by the way. So, we are teaching them together about the importance and beauty of marriage this week to try and set that wedding date. Just pray for us.

Lastly, is Kay. She's our golden investigator. Always progressing, keeps commitments, knows the church is true. But, the baptism date that she gave us was January 2nd because she wanted to do it at the new years to turn her life around. That's a solid baptism date, but I don't know if I'll still be here because it's after transfers. I guess that's not really the important part but I just wanted to be there to see the result of hard work. Kind of selfish thinking, I know.

Other than that, we've been contacting and meeting amazing people. The problem is, just because they are amazing doesn't mean they accept the restoration or care enough to change their lives. This letter might sound pretty down, but I want you to know that I'm doing fine. It's just the reality of missionary work. I guess people's agency just makes things very unpredictable. (:

Thank you for your prayers, love and support. It helps more than you know.

Love,
Elder Mikesell the 4th

So, it's election season here, and the two major parties are NDP (new democratic party) and Labor. So, Elder T and I got Labor t-shirts... and NDP shirts... I just haven't taken a picture in my NDP shirt yet, aha.