Aug. 22nd

My favorite part about being in Kenya is being in Kenya :) and serving the Lord I love it all I think I am even getting used to the food :) I am in a ward it is called Riruta ward it is nice to go there on Sundays but a sad thing is that allot of the members are less active a few years ago it almost split into 2 wards because it had so many members but almost all of them have stopped coming to church like this Sunday we had 20 people there before sacrament started.  The area was dead we are trying to bring it back to life and with investigators we are really we have allot of people to teach but the most of the members are less active and we need to do our best to get them back and there is no elders president so that’s hard because for some reason all this responsibly falls on the bishop and us. So that is a sad thing but my comp and I are working on it.

 Things are great! The week has been good well all but the baptism. it

got pushed back to next Sunday because we found out about

homosexuality that our investigator used to have. so he will be

interviewed by President B. But I know he is going to be baptized and

be a good member. He even gave us like over 200 other people that want

to lean about the Church :) because he used to be a pastor and now he

told his congregation that he found a new faith :) so I am saying that

I have 201 people who want to be baptized :) hahahaha

 On another happier note I got the package you sent :) that made

mine and my comps day! in fact we cooked one of the potatoes that very

night :) I also love the pics as well! The only ones that I had of

the fam were the ones you took at the byu basketball game so long ago,

and that is all that I could show people. But these are wonderful and

they turned out great. But I have to say looking at them made me miss

you guys and miss that really really really green grass we all sat on,

:) we don't have that here.  

 I love this family named Caliso's They are so fun and they try to have my comp and me over for FHE every Sunday :) they feed us but that is not the only reason I love them, when ever I am with them in their house I feel like I am at home! it is wonderful I also feel that way about this family whose name is the Munene's. the father of this one is in the Stake Presidency.:)

 Teaching is going great our companionship is strong and is getting stronger everyday so we teach with the Spirit and I know that the people we talk to feel it as well. So it is going very well! You know how the work is you have some investigators who are just golden but then you have others that you have to spend 4 lessons going over one point, but we have alot of them progressing and that is a great thing. And I love to teach anyone who is willing to hear the message even if they don’t know English, even yesterday I walked up to 4 guys who I think were kind of a mix of Christian and Islam who only knew Kiswahili and tried to teach them about the Book of Mormon or “Kitabu cha Moromoni" I gave them one in Kiswahili, I hope they read it, but I have to think that it looked and sounded funny for people watching us. You have this mazungu or white man trying to tell these people that don’t speak the same language about some book. I just think it would have been fun to watch  You know me. I have to have fun with people! and just wait till I send home some pics of our crazy zombie, ninja, cockroach race lol so Ya we have fun :

 Ok, I’m sorry I have forgotten to tell you about the body guards in the past letters, but the answer is yes. We do have guards. They are all really nice people its just kind of scary to walk past a guy holding a AK-47 to get to our flat. I will tell you what, I will get a pic with some of them and then I will send it home to you is that ok? You all have the right to brag about your amazing African missionary :) I mean I think only like 32 parents can say that they have a son/brother in Kenya :) so we can see that not all parents can raise sons as cool as we are :)

Till next week

your super cool African missionary

SLY

Elder Hodges