November in Bo, Sierra Leone

BANANA FACTS FOR THE DAY

These are the bananas on a tree at one of the elders apartments.  Notice the large purple pod at the bottom of the stem of bananas.

The pod feeds the undeveloped bananas until they are fully filled out.  Then it drys up and shrivels away.  This stem of bananas is not fully developed yet.  It is still feeding off the pod.

This stem of bananas has fully developed and the pod is gone at the bottom.  It is ready to be harvested.

SQUIRREL

While Sister Sherwood was learning about bananas, Elder Sherwood was putting chemicals in their well.  We treat them once a year with chlorine and alum to keep the algae and other growths gone.  In this well there was a squirrel.  Sorry no pictures.  Half way down the well on top of the inner concrete liner.  Sister Sherwood was very worried.  What if it died in the well?  How could we get it out safely.  We couldn't.  So the Elders left some food in a bucket and lowered it down to the level of the squirrel.  The next morning the squirrel was in the bucket eating food.  The elders were able to carefully bring the bucket up and remove the squirrel from the well.  As a side note, the squirrel did not die in the well but did not survive the incident.  The elders had squirrel for breakfast that morning.

Baptisms

Here we are at Torkpoi Town District center on a Saturday morning for a district baptism.  There were 3 branches baptizing 20 new members of the church.  Across town at the Njagboima chapel they were baptizing 13 new members in their district.   The church continues to grow in Sierra Leone.  We had a conference last week broadcast from Salt Lake to all of the West Africa area.  Elder Stevenson presided and spoke.  He pointed out that in West Africa in 2016 there will be a total of 16 new stakes created.  That is amazing.  It is clear that this is the time for Africa as the gospel goes to all the world.

Here one of our elders takes a new member into the font.  In Bo, a 3rd member district will be created this weekend.  From some of the branches is the two other districts.  The hope is that during 2017 they will be ready for at least 1 Stake in Bo.  That will be a glorious day.

GOSPEL LITERACY IN YEMO TOWN

We just started up the Gospel Literacy program in the 4th branch in Bo East District.  This was the Yemo Town branch.  We have 15 women in the beginner class and they are excited to be learning to read and write from the scriptures.  In these pictures you are seeing them in the Sunday School hour in their Gospel Literacy class.

MAKING TOR

Jestina is teaching me how to pound and sift dried casava root to make casava powder called tor.  She did most the pounding because I did not pound it hard enough.  I did most the sifting.  We ended up with over a gallon of casava powder.  It was a lot of hard work.  I am learning to appreciate how hard the women here work to provide food for their families.