Missionary Christmas

A Missionary Christmas (author unknown)
I skipped the sales after Thanksgiving. The thrill just wasn't there.
No pictures taken with Santa Claus, My decorating has no flair.
His presents are shoes, shirts, and ties, two suits and socks...no fun. I've
bought him all white clothes because... This year I'm giving Christ my son.I've spent more time in the temple, my testimony stirred.
I've reread November's Ensign, Felt strength come from His words.
Our family prays more frequently. My tears are quick to run.
Abraham seems closer because, This year I'm giving Christ my son.
I wonder how those Lamanite mothers, gave their sons to war?
Or how the pioneers chose Zion , their sacrifice was so much more.
 My loss will be his presence, I'll miss his smile a ton.
For two years we will pray for him, I'm giving Christ my son.
I stare at his face when he's not looking. I memorize his eyes, their shine.
He's always hungered for the part of him, that makes his soul divine.
The stories and lessons he always heard, His choice and mine are one.
I'll put my faith in God's hand, this year, I'm giving Him my son.
Past gifts have lost their glitter; I think I finally understand,
Christ's birth should be celebrated by giving Him a hand.
It's because I know Christ lives and reigns that all his packing's done.
My gift has taken years to make, This year... I'm giving Christ my son.
I know there's One who understands, the sacrifice I'm making.
Who knows the gift I willingly give, The toll it will be taking.
For He has done it all before Greater love - there could be none.
For years ago God gave to me, His only begotten son.
The hands I washed, the hands I held, The hands I taught to pray;
Now knock on doors to find the ones who will listen to what he'll say.
Because I know Christ needs him, until all the gathering's done,
My gift has taken years to make.
This year...I'm giving Christ my son.
Love, MOM

First Transfer!!!

 I have some BIG news!!!  I am no longer going to be serving in Riruta. I am being transferred. I am going to Chulyu.(pronounced: CuLu)  I don’t know if you remember when we were at the dinner with that guy from Kenya and we were talking about places to go. We talked about Chulyu, how it is soooooo far out there in the bush, so it is going to be a real man vs wild trip :) oh and good news, because the people live miles apart we get bikes. :) but not the bikes that we think of. we get the good old Iron horse bikes :) so that will be..................fun. :) Chulyu is going to be crazy fun! just out there helping people build their houses out of mud :) its going to be great! :) But along with that news is some other, my comp and I are closing this area for Elders, now there will only be sister missionaries there. And that’s not really a good thing,  sorry to say that but its true.  When we told the people in the ward like the bishop and the mission leader, they were not too exited about it. They just said that the sisters have big shoes to fill. And that made me feel good :) so both of us are leaving. Like I said I am going to Chulyu and Elder Sumsion is going to Mombasa. I don’t really know much about my new comp. all I know is that his name is Elder Oten and he is from Nigeria and that he came to Kenya in the group after me. So new things are ahead. But I do have to say that saying goodbye to these people here was soooooooooooooooooooo HARD!!!!!! I have faith that everything will work out…. but with our investigators.. I just want to see all of them through to the end. And the members and I have gotten so close to each other! It is sad to go but I am looking forward to the next step. It’s all part of a mission so I just need to push forward with faith and love the next people just as much.

 No one here does the whole Thanksgiving thing. So you are going to have to eat extra just for me :) does that sound good ?:) plus on that day I will be on a super long bus ride to my new area. We got transfer news on Saturday and I leave this week on Thursday.  So not much is going to happen. But it will give me a lot of time to think about what I am thankful for :)

So it has rained like every day for the past week :) mostly at night. But we still have to deal with the mud, because that is what happens to the "roads" here. they turn into a soup that turns everything a nice brown :) there have been sometimes we would have to go fishing for our shoes. :) makes things fun :)

 Sorry I opened the Christmas package; the snowmen should have stopped me. :) but they didn’t. but thank you for the Frisbee and the cinnamon bears… sent from heaven :) I tried to make them last a long time but we all know what really happened :)

I was going to send a package home today, but it turns out that it would be over 10,000 KSH or over $100 so I don’t think I can send things home to you.  :( but I will try to send pics on a cd. that should work out ok.

T-Cakes:

I know I never want to forget about here so I bet it feels good to remember things :)

P-days here can be super fun or really boring. like we have gone and played games with other missionaries and also we got to see some cool things like snakes and animals and stuff. I have some pics that I want to send home. I am trying to make a CD or something. but when you have nothing to do they really suck. SO I got a dartboard. :) lol, it’s so cool! I am lucky to have got it too. :) but it will move around with me and help me stay in a good mood :)

I have learned that President B. will let us email family & friends as long as it doesn’t hurt the work, so if they want, let them send an email out :) or in that matter anyone in the ward or family friends :) I would love to hear from more people!

Well that is most of the news for this week :)
know that I love you!!!!!!!
Your son
Elder Hodges

This is an excerpt from an email I received from another MM after asking for information about the Chulyu area.

Dear Gaylin,
Our son Elder Ashtonn Jones has been serving in the Chulyu area for about 2 months he absolutely loves it there. I know when he was being assigned to his new area Pres.Broadbent told him that he was going to the promised land. Ashtonn has been very humbled by serving in Chuylu it's a very poor area the missionaries have an actual home with running water, electricity a refrigerator but no washer and dryer they wash their clothes by hand. But the other people in the village are not so fortunate. Ashtonn is a different person now and is very grateful for what he has. But I know that he has been truly blessed to be there he said in one letter that there is no where else that he would like to be. So they walk tons in fact he has already worn out a pair of shoes because they walk so much. They eat lots of fruits,rice,beans and he has even showed us some pictures of him killing his own dinner which consists of sheep and chickens but he said they only eat them about once a month because they aren't cheap. They have 4 branches there and the members are very helpful to the missionaries. They do a lot of service there Ashtonn has even helped build a home there and it only took one day. He is excited because there are a lot of members who want to be baptized. His favorite things in Chuylu are Mt. Kilimanjaro and the little kids that like to touch his skin all the time because some of them have never seen a white person before.  We hope that this has helped in some way let us know how your son is doing.

Sincerely,
Daneane Jones

November 7th

Life in Kenya has been amazing a real eye opener like always.

So you are reporting on the mission? :) I was wondering when that would come. But the only problem is that I don’t really know what to say. Just things like always go to the temple!!!! And that I love everyone! Truly live the gospel!

That is the biggest problem the Church has out here. People really know about the bible and even the book of Mormon sometimes but people don’t do what they know they should do. So all of us need to take a stand! And do what we know to be right!
And what we do for service is we dig "shambas" or a garden. Then we fetch water for people. Things like that. In other places they help people make their houses out of mud bricks. It really depends on where you are.
I have had 3 baptisms so far and many more on the way they are all great people! One of them we found through a little girl. :) we were just walking down the road and this little girl just started saying "how are you" so we went over and started joking with here and that is weird because we never do that then a man stuck his head out from behind the steal gate and said hello is there anything that we want. And we thought that he was the father of the little girl so we explained that we were missionaries and we set up an appointment and we taught him and now he is a member. But he is not that father of the little girl he just lived in the same compound. But it’s so cool to see some of the workings of the Lord, even through little kids. :) 
I don’t know if that is what you want but to tell you the truth I have a hard time remembering what American life is like. It is just so different here. 
It sounds like you have had a fun week :) its good to hear that you are having fun without me :)

Dad, thank you for the help about missionaries. I hope and pray that I can become like them in anyway shape or form. There are many times when I feel like I am not good enough to be out here. When I say something I really wish I hadn’t. Sometimes I just pray for strength to walk out the door. I hope that doesn’t sound like I am a bad missionary. I just want to do my best but sometimes I don’t think my best is good enough. Like we have this one investigator she is wonderful! One of our best if not the best! We had her baptism planned for this Sunday so we were going over the interview questions with her. When it turns out that she has participated in an abortion. So we talked to president about it and he wants us to postpone her baptism.  We didn’t want to tell her that but we had to, and so we did. She took the news very very badly. And in fact she didn’t even show up to church at all! Which is bad for her, she has been devout the whole time we have been teaching her. So when she was crying to us and asking why we can’t do it on Sunday I tried to comfort her but nothing I said, no scripture, nothing helped. I just felt like I couldn't help in any way. It was by far the worst experience I have had on mission!
But I will take what you said into my own study and I hope I can become a better missionary and a better person.
I am glad that sister Blackburn got my letter :) she truly is one amazing women I wish I had gotten to know her before my mission. She writes me almost as much as you guys do. :)

Sorry I don’t have a lott of time this week. It has been a really cool and crazy day we went and saw some snakes and animals here and now I have like no time to email sorry. But at least I got some cool pics out of it that I will send to you.

Bennions!

I am so happy to hear from you guys!!!!  I did get the Bennion package so thank you very much! I love it and you have been awarded 50 points for it :) yet now you are at 150 and still in the lead but only by 50 :) lol keep up the good work.
And holy cow Logan. I don’t even know how to program a computer. But that will be super cool for you! Work hard in whatever you are doing.
And you guys sound like a missionaries dream family!!! Helping less actives and feeding them there is not much more that they want other then referrals.

I love hearing from you ALL!!!

Oct, 24th & 31st

You are right this week was extra amazing! I loved it. We got to hear Elder Nelson speak twice! :) And it was amazing he even said hi to my comp and me when he was leaving because we were the only missionaries that could come to that meeting, but he said it was good to see us :) it was really cool he looks a lot younger than he does on TV. He spoke about the young women values and how they are for every one. He used a lot of heart examples like he always does :) but it was cool! Then his wife spoke about prayer and how when we pray in the name of Christ we should be praying like Christ would pray for us. It was really good! Then the next day elder Nelson spoke on how the little kids are the future of the church and what the parents need to be doing to help them grow to become strong. I took a lot of notes :) it was great! I am so glad that the people of Kenya got to hear from him! Many of them are amazed at seeing him! There was just such a spirit here. The only thing that I am sad about is that he didn’t have time to see just the missionaries. That’s the only regret but other than that it was AMAZING!!

So that was the big high light of the week, but it did have some downers. I thought that being the DL was going to be an easy and fun job but I have to say that I was very much wrong!   It’s mostly because of the sister missionaries. They have had a lot of problems this week. Let’s just say that they don’t like each other at all! And I have had to try and help them get past it. But man it is hard. But we have got it calmed down enough that their not treating to beat each other any more :) so that’s a good thing. :) Plus we had a huge rain storm for the past like 3 days and their house flooded. So this week has been full of fun things to keep me on my toes :)

Ok I forgot to tell you last week about this guy. But I think I found the black grandpa T. I am not kidding it really hit me hard when we saw him. It had been a hard day we had been bounced from a lot of our appointments so we were tracking and we were in an area that no one wanted to hear the gospel. But there was this old man that call us over to him with his hand. And he looks like grandpa! He didn’t speak English but we still tried to communicate with him. He was as tall as grandpa, he didn’t have a lot of teeth, and sounded like grandpa when he spoke. He laughed like grandpa. he did everything like grandpa. But the thing that really hit me was his eyes!!!!!! They were the exact same color!!!!! That bright blue!!!!!! It was so unbelievable!!! You never see an African with colored eyes let alone that bright blue!!! I don’t know what it was but I felt like it was grandpa just checking up on me or something. But that was a crazy day!!

So the work is going good we are planning on having 3 to 4 baptisms within the next month. :) It’s going forth! This work is amazing! It really is the work of God! Like Elder Nelson said all of the prophets in all the earths’ history spoke about the last days and how the Gospel will fill the whole earth. He said how amazing is it that we get to participate in fulfilling those prophesies. I am a part you are a part we are all a part of this rock that was cut forth from the mountain without hands that will fill the whole earth. It’s wonderful to think about!
 You know what it is like when you teach someone the gospel! You form a bond with people and it is just truly wonderful! I love teaching I just wish that we had more and more people to teach so we wouldn't have to spend any time tracking just teaching.

And I;m sorry to say that the people here don’t do holidays. They kind of do Christmas but really all they do is have a nice dinner. They might get with family but mostly they just get a chicken and have a good dinner. So they they just like the time off work. 

About the animals, I haven't seen too many but I have seen some cool ones. I will try to send pics to mom. And also some CRAZY CRAZY looking bugs!!! found a beetle bigger than my thumb, a bright blue caterpillar, and some SUPPER big spiders some really amazing looking birds some lizards tons of goats and sheep, almost got ran over by a big herd of cows :) just normal things like that, and the bugs here, they not to bad. But there are ALOT of flies!!!! It’s crazy and yes we do sleep with nets and those are nice :) plus its cool to say that I have to sleep with a net :) it is kind of a pain to put around your bed at night instead of just falling into your bed but oh well :)

Ya tell me about how time flies!!!! I mean I have almost been out 4 months!!!!!! When did that happen?????? I don’t know!!!

So about teaching about tithing, sometimes it is very hard to teach. But the most common is worse. See here there are WAY TO MANY CHURCHES!!!!!!!!!!! No joke I know that there is over like 150 different churches just in my area! All of them have different pastors and things like that but the sad part about it is that the pastors just "preach" for money! They take advantage of the people. Having a church is a business here, so most people find it easy because they already pay money to their pastor.

 The work is going good! Just had my 3rd baptism yesterday. :) That was good and I would have to say that he is the most powerful yet! And we have more coming we have at least 4 planned for next month! It is sweet all of them are powerful! But it is sad because the members don't help us much almost all of the investigators we have tracked into them. I have not baptized a referral yet.

So the work is going good we are planning on having 3 to 4 baptisms within the next month. :) It’s going forth! This work is amazing! It really is the work of God! Like Elder Nelson said all of the prophets in all the earths’ history spoke about the last days and how the Gospel will fill the whole earth. He said how amazing is it that we get to participate in fulfilling those prophesies. I am a part you are a part we are all a part of this rock that was cut forth from the mountain without hands that will fill the whole earth. It’s wonderful to think about!

But yes :) its good here :) I love it!!!! And remember that I love you :) and if you know of any girls that want to write a super cool missionary in Africa you can hand out my address to the ones you find worthy. :)