Heel Clicks

Wow, what a week, what a week! Here is a brief history…Thursday we went to Kissy to go and do a training there, and then spent 2 hours inside taxi on the way home while I tried not to cry my eyes out at the terrible transport system in this wretched city! But, got back and worked in the office until we had our office meeting at 5…then, we had a brilliant idea that we needed to go to Bo to visit the assistants out there…and President Ostler accepted!

Friday morning I was up at 3:45 doing crunches, then we were out the door into the dark by 4:30 to make our way into town to the bus stop so we could catch a government bus to Bo…well, we fortunately found a taxi and got there relatively quickly, but there was already a long line for all the buses to upline, and unfortunately we missed the que for the first bus leaving around 7…and we would have to wait until 9, NOT ACCEPTABLE! So, we got to meet this nice American woman, Georgiana from VA, sweet, then we got to work on our communication skills…so  I managed to convince the bus apprentice that we needed to be on the bus and he got us on the bus…yeah, we're smooth, and there we were, off on our way to Bo, slipping in and out of consciousness on the 5 hour bus ride.

We arrived in Bo and quickly jumped on bikes (gosh it has been such a long long time) and off we went to the chapel to meet up with the ending of Bo West Zone’s zone meeting, and I got to see my children Elder Labrum and Elder Etuk and my grandchildren Kelikume and Eshun as well and even more and it was a sweet reunion with Elder Hales and Hovley too :) We went and got lunch and began discussing our plans to make a new study curriculum for the elders and sisters next transfer. We sat in their apartment for about 3 hours discussing plans and trying out new ideas until we had to take a break and Elder Stanford and I hopped on bikes and ventured over to our former area...Messima Branch, Torkpoi Town and boy was it awesome. I was beaming the whole ride there and when we got there I was practically jumping up and down, and when we arrived at the first compound my heart was just so happy as they all remembered my name and came running from various houses to come out and greet me and the mommies and aunties and everyone and it was just so awesome to see my converts again! We made our way all around town, seeing all the wonderful families and members and people we taught and baptized and saw John Mgavou and his family...I had taught them but never got to see them baptized and it was so great to see him and his wife baptized and so happy with their children, and then to one of my favorite people Nancy Moses (the one who I baptized her daughter in the ocean in Freetown) and she was just so happy to see us and was cooking us food because she heard we were coming and we just went around for a couple of hours, trying not to cry, as we saw our wonderful families and friends and took pictures an ah :) so sweet! We made our way back just before dark and arrived back at the apartment close to 7, and got back to work on the curriculum and other ideas until 10:20 at night, not even eating dinner or anything, then went to bed with nets draped over chairs and crashed...

Up again at 4:00 to get ready to go and Elder Hales and Hovley half got up to wish us farewell and we were out into the darkness...so sketchy, we had to say a deep sincere prayer to be protected because we were off in the bush, far from the main road, in pitch black, and we got to the road and had a miracle...a bike man..at 4:30 in the morning, was passing, and we got a ride with him into town where the vans were loading, and another miracle, a van waiting for 2 more people! and...not-okay, so this one actually wasn't so sweet, we had to sit in the front seat...together...for 4 hours! tish, my butt died from being jammed into the seat belt 10 mins after we started, and we just kept shifting forward and backwards to try to stay comfortable and ahhh I just was so uncomfortable and in so much pain that I just kept slipping out of consciousness while the driver was cruising at close to 80 mph and jamming out to some nice R and B...oh boy, we ditched the van early in Jui and I couldn't even walk...I had to limp all the way to the next taxi stop and my butt didn't even recover before i was jammed in the back seat with 4 other people...we finally arrived at our apartment and looked like complete tish...honestly we looked in the mirror and were just horrified, so we showered and shaved and then immediately had to make our way into town to start looking for 180 umbrellas and 114 boots and 18 mosquitoe nets, but had another miracle when the first man we contacted showed us to all the vendors we would need and we got quotes from all of them, then wrapped it all off by getting a quote for the mothers day phone call...oh what a busy day! 

Sunday..oh my it poured all morning, so we had a diappointing turn out when we arrived to 4 other members there pretty much, but the amazing charles family was there, so we ran up to our apartment and Elder Flament brought bread and water and cups since the others were locked in the office, but at least the 1st counselor showed up so we had sacrament with about 10-12 people not including missionaries, and I got to bless the sacrament which has been a long long time, and we just kept our heads up and had a super spiritual experience and I even got to bear my testimony :) so it was really nice, we had to spend a couple hours in the office and then off to our area in great haste and excitement. We started literally running out of the compound doing heel clicks and it was pretty much the most hilarious thing even in my mind to watch these 2 white guys come running out of a building looking like tired tish, big black bags under their eyes and fasting and so tired and coming running out the door doing heel clicks and then get tired after about 40 yards and starting crying in laughter...yeah, that's our companionship :) we love it!

Yesterday...no p day for us. we took an hour drive with Brother Kargbo down into town and then stood in our lebanese store waiting for them to find all the boots for about 2 hours, we finally got them and got stuck in traffic and moved less then half a mile for 2 and a half hours, and gave up and back tracked to where we started and walked about a mile to the umbrella place, and fortunately found a bobo who would tote the things on his trolly for some money, so got all that back, and picked up some nets along the way, and then we were off to another hour drive home..so we got back and unpacked everything, then mad dashed out the door with a nice cute heel click again and off to our area. We got to meet up with S. for a sweet lesson, well really he had tons of questions about Galatians 1-2 which I thought was funny because I usually use scriptures from there to teach the apostasy, so it went pretty smoothly :) we made our way home and then started organizing all the rain gear until 10:20 and then off to bed...

Today, we thought we were going to have p -day but instead worked the entire day doing all kinds of crazy jobs and had some sweet pre transfer meetings with president and then we went into town and bought 4 thousand dollars worth of phone credit, oh yeah, felt like bosses carrying that around, and made our way back to the office to do some more work, then work work...and now we finally get to email our sweet famlies and life is good :) Staying busy, staying happy, staying awesome. love you all!

Love,

Jesse

Elder Sumrak