The Gospel of Jesus Christ in Sierra Leone

It is March already.  We were chastised by our daughter for not blogging enough.  Guilty as charged.  

It is Hot, Humid, and Dusty.

We are into the Harmattan season here. The Harmattan is a season in the West African subcontinent, which occurs between the end of November and the middle of March. It is characterized by dry and dusty northeasterly trade wind, of the same name, which blows from the Sahara Desert over West Africa into the Gulf of Guinea. It means the sky is "hazy" all the time. Dust collects everywhere. March is the hottest month of the year.  We are feeling the heat.  This is also the time of the year when everyone is clearing the land of the dead savanna grasses and all the dead weeds that have grown during the wet season.  There are small fires everywhere, even in the towns.  So the haze includes smoke and dust.  It is hay fever time.  We feel like we have had one single cold since the middle of December.  But that is the only health problem we have so that is a real blessing.

Training from Salt Lake

The 1st week in March we went to Freetown for a special conference for Young Women and Primary leaders.  We were there for 3 days.  Members of the two general presidencies of these two organization were here from Salt Lake.  Sister Carol F. McConkie from the Young Womens, and Sister Joy D. Jones from the Primary.  We also had Elder Nash from the Africa West Area Presidency who spoke with them.  They were here to train the leaders from though out the mission.  It was a major effort to bring about 70 leaders from Bo, Kenema, and McKinney into Freetown.  They stayed one night in a hotel and needed to be fed several meals.
They did a fine job of training.  Our hearts go out to them.  They work hard at developing programs for the whole world.  Teaching in the Saviors Way, and Teachers Councils were two of their priorities. Then they come into West Africa.  They find the biggest challenge in West Africa is to have teachers called.  Most branches have a primary president and maybe a counselor.  They take turns teaching a primary that has 10 to 30 children.  Rarely are separate teachers called.  Many have never been to a Branch Council, so what is a Branch Teachers Council.  They went back to Salt Lake with a much better picture of what life is like in West Africa, and our members felt the love of those in church leadership who cared enough to come all the way to Africa to teach them.

Growing in West Africa

Here in Bo, we created two new branches 2 weeks ago in the Bo North District.  They now have 7.  Today, the Bo West District also created a new branch giving them 6.  There are 2 district/stake center buildings being built which should be completed before we leave.  There is a district/stake center building being built in Kenema and they are also splitting branches. 

In Freetown, they are getting ready to create their 2nd stake.  It has now been approved.  We are hoping for 1 or 2 stakes in Bo before we leave. The church is growing in Sierra Leone, West Africa. 

We testify that our Father in Heaven is preparing the world for the return of His Son Jesus Christ.  We in West Africa are just a small part of this great kingdom that is rolling forth through out the world.  "No unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing...The truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, until it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear.  Til the purposes of God have been accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say 'The Work is Done'".  (Wentworth Letter).

We are witnesses daily  of His great love and miracles.  We love working in His Kingdom.  We await anxiously for his return.  God bless you all.

Where Did January Go

Bo, Sierra Leone Relief Society Conference

 Mid January we had a Relief Society Conference for all three districts in Bo.  That's 15 branches.  So Question:  How many  eggs to you have to boil and peel to make egg salad sandwiches for 350 women?  Answer:  600 eggs.  It was an all day project.  We are not in the picture, but Elder and Sister Sherwood were in the middle of peeling eggs.  We also spent two full days baking 450 banana bread muffins.  One pan at a time since that is all the oven can hold.

Here we are at the conference getting ready to unload the coolers full of egg  salad, rolls, and banana bread muffins.  Notice Sister Sherwood's new favorite dress she had made for the conference.  It is beautiful, befitting a beautiful lady.

Today We Were Tank Movers

Here we are moving water tanks from one chapel to another chapel.  It must be the beginning of the "Dry" season since water is now one of the biggest issues.  The bigger the tank you  have the more water that can be pumped from the well, or brought in by truck.  This will hold enough water for two weeks use of the chapel.  Their main usage is for toilets.  Notice how big a tank our little truck can handle.

I helped with this smaller tank, mostly by cheering them on.  We were swapping tanks from two chapels.  The chapel that had the bigger tank could not fit it on their tower, so we moved it to a chapel that could use it.  We then put the smaller tank on the first chapels water tower.

A little rope to keep it from bouncing off as we travel over the rough roads.

The African Pumpkin

Here is an african pumpkin.  The 2nd picture tells you it's size with Sister Sherwoods hand in the picture.  This one is a little smaller than average.  It makes a great ponky soup to go over rice or mashed potatoes.  One of our favorite dishes.  They do not know pumpkin pie here but they do know ponky soup.  The pumpkin is essentially the same as we know at home, Just a different color on the outside.  Same on the inside.

Sister Sherwood Can Not Resist the Children

We went over to Elder Kays apartment to get a picture from him.  While there these two neighbor boys wanted to be our friends and wanted their picture taken too.  How can you resist cute little faces like this.

Here they are with Elder Kay and Elder Wokoma

Happy New Year!

Whoa.  December has flown by and we did not do a blog.  We did have a wonderful, hard working, busy time.

Christmas in Sierra Leone

The west Africans do not do a lot with the holiday as far as Santa Claus and the gift giving.  We were missing some of the decorations and such and decided we wanted a nativity set.  We could not find any in Bo.  We heard you could get some in Freetown but we are rarely there.  We asked around to see if any one knew of a "carver".  We eventually found one in a Bo suburb called .  We found him just one week before Christmas eve.  We described to him that what we would like is a nativity that showed how a person from Sierra Leone views the birth of the Savior.  He was a Christian and appeared to understand what we were asking for.  He teaches arts and crafts in a local college.  We discussed ideas from individual carvings of nativity items to a 3-d plaque.  He concluded that he could do a plaque in 1 week.  Christmas eve we picked it up and we were thrilled with the result.  We have thoroughly enjoyed having it hanging in our living room.  It will stay there until we come home in a year.

Our Sierra Leone Nativity

We worked with the missionaries for the two days before Christmas to help them skype with their families.  We didn't want to do it on Christmas day because we felt the networks might be too buys.  It was enjoyable to watch them  interact with their families.  We were blessed that all but one was able to have pretty good skype sessions.  The internet has been pretty sporadic but held when we needed it.

We also added a Christmas tree to make it feel more like home.

Our Sierra Leone Christmas tree

We enjoyed a mission Christmas party with all the missionaries and couples in Bo and Kenema.

The Kenema missionaries portrayed the Christmas story.  The largest elder in the group played the angel Gabriel "flying" around the stage and booming out the glorious news to Mary and the shepherds in his deep voice.  Another, smaller elder, played the baby Jesus, still the biggest baby we had ever seen.  Multiple missionary groups sang carols and hymns.  They also watched the film Ephraim's Rescue, and multiple other church videos depicting the birth of Christ.

The couples provided lots of goodies for them.  Sister Sherwood made sugar cookies, and fudge, and almond roca.  Sister Corbally made brownies, peanut butter bars.  Sister Clawson did rice krispie treats and popcorn.  We did have healthy food in addition to the treats.  There was three different meals they could pick and choose from.  Most of them had some of all three. Chicken, potatoes and gravy.  macaroni salad, and/or local rice.  Jestina and her friends catered the meal.  In the cooking lesson the week prior, Sister Sherwood taught Jestina how to make mashed potatoes and gravy.

Sister Sherwood frosting 5-dozen sugar cookies

Our caterers in their festive party outfits

Christmas day we went to the Messima branch and really enjoyed the sacrament meeting and the talks.  What a wonderful opportunity to remember the birth, life, death and resurrection of our Savior.  We are so grateful for HIM.  The greatest gift that was ever given.

New Years in Sierra Leone

We spent New Years Eve at home watching Mister Kruegers Christmas and Ephraim's Rescue.  Nice quite evening.  Just before midnight we were awakened by a dull roar.  Firecrackers, noise makers and lots of people celebrating.  Extremely loud music.  They were in "Night Clubs" down the highway and roaming up and down the streets.  This went on until morning.  Definitely a bigger deal in the community than Christmas eve or day.

We hope all of you have a wonderful 2017 year.  May the blessings of the Gospel of Jesus Christ fill your lives with love and charity for all around you.  Especially may you experience love in your families and peace in your hearts.  We love you all and bear witness of the Lord.  He really was born.  He really did die for all of us.  He really did rise from the tomb on the third day and bring the resurrection unto all of us.  It is all true and they are still glad tidings to all men.  May you all find it so in your lives is our prayer.

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.  

We are almost through the rainy season here in Sierra Leone.  We occasionally have a heavy rain but mostly during the night.  During August, September, and October they were during the day and night.

Rainy day in Bo.  Video did not work

Last week as we were coming back to our apartment, a heavy rain started.  By the time we got to our compound, the rain was so heavy that the guards could not hear us at the gate because of the noise the rain makes on the guard house tin roof.  We also did not want to get out of the truck and didn't want the guard to have to open the gate in the rain..  We waited for about 15 minutes for the rain to slow down.  Since we had nothing better to do, we took this video of the rain on the truck window.  You can see the water coming down in a solid sheet on the windshield.

Sister Sherwood and JJ

This is the nephew of Sister Sherwood's cooking teacher, Jestina.  Notice how he is carefully examining her hand.  Little ones are so intrigued by a white man's hand.  They sometimes try and wipe your hand to take off the chalk and reveal the black underneath.  They are so precious.  The smaller ones are sometimes afraid of us and won't leave their mother's side.  JJ made himself right at home in our house during the cooking lesson.  He was happy to color with markers while we cooked.  However later I found that he had colored the back of my skirt as well.

The other night we were surprised by the sound of hymns outside our compound.  It was an apartment full of Elders(6 in all) coming to get some supplies for their apartment.  What a delight to hear their spirit and their harmony.  When President and Sister Clawson came a few days later, we called the same elders and had them come and sing again.  They live about 1/4 mile down the street from us.  They came over and started singing for President Clawson and we decided to record it.

Elder and Sister Heckle return to Bo.

Elder and Sister Heckle, the area literacy specialists from Ghana, were with us for another week.  We are in the process of starting 2 more branches doing the Gospel Literacy training here in Bo.  We now have 4 branches going.

We have been thrilled with the progress of the Gospel Literacy program.  The definition of Gospel Literacy is not the same as normal adult literacy.  It is "the ability to use the Gift of the Holy Ghost to READ, WRITE, UNDERSTAND, TESTIFY and LIVE the Words of God."

Many members have felt on the outskirts of the gospel ever since they were baptized because they could not read the scriptures.  In church they get little out of the lessons.  Many come to Sacrament Meeting and then go home.  They feel the gospel is only for those who have been to school.  In just a few weeks of the Gospel Literacy Sunday School class they are beginning to read scripture and feel the spirit testify to them of the truth of what they are reading.  They are coming each week and staying.   They are now getting more out of the other lessons in church as well.  We are so grateful to the Heckles who have been giving decades of their lives to developing these inspired program training materials.  This program is putting the words of the Savior in the hands of the common people.  It is wonderful.

Bo Zone Activity Day

Bo Zone Activity Day

This is the third time in the past 6 months that our Zone has had an activity day.  It is an excuse for the young missionaries to get together on their Preparation-Day, play football, eat and just enjoy each other.

This is half the full-time missionary team

This is the other half.  Oops, who are those old people?

Our Bo Zone has gotten too big for one picture.  We now have 31.  We expect 4 more next week.









Football in the real world means soccer to you uninformed westerners.  The people of Sierra Leone take their football seriously.  You will see even the youngest school kids and preschool also out on the field kicking a ball around.  Or something like a ball.

Elder Seaman is an experienced footballer from Great Britain.  As you can see he brought a real football.  Game on.










This was the 2nd time the football game has been a match of the full-time missionaries vs. the branch missionaries.  The problem is the branch missionary team seems to always have many ringers on it.  They are not all branch missionaries but bring some experienced players from local teams.  A member of the Bo West District presidency, President Mammy. is their coach.

Bo East District President Nasiru

The local members also bring the referees and enjoy the match.  They were convinced that for this match the full-time missionaries would be crushed.









When you observe that 1/3 of the full-time missionaries playing are white guys, you get the feeling maybe they don't have a chance.  However, this addition of the match ended up a 1-1 tie.  Same as last time.  No one wins.  No one loses.  But every one plays their heart out and has fun.  The consensus was that one of our brand new Elders from Arizona, Elder Cluff, was the star because of his great job as goalie.  They all played well.

After the game we brought out the food and the cool-aid and enjoyed a picnic at the side of the field.

Elder and Sister Sherwood did not play football.  Sister Sherwood made brownies and we helped get the other food the sister missionaries prepared to the activity.  A delicious chicken stew over rice.

On The Road in Sierra Leone

It seems all of our pictures this week were taken from the truck.  So here we go.

First of all "okadas".  These are small motor bikes that are used for taxis.  They are the fastest transportation to get around town and they are the most dangerous.  In Bo, for every car or truck there are 10-20 okadas on the road.  This past month they began enforcing the helmet laws in the country.  Okada drivers must wear a helmet and now they must provide one for their passenger as well.  If they are caught without a helmet or without one for their passenger, they are given a heavy fine and their motorbike is impounded until they have paid the fine.  They also have rules about having too many passengers.

Here is an okada diligently doing his best to meet the requirements of the law.  Notice how the passenger does have his helmet, but had trouble figuring out how to make it work with the load on his head.












Here is another passenger. Women do not like to wear the helmets because they mess up their hairdos.  And some of the men just won't wear them.  Another valid question is "What qualifies as a helmet?  It is very common to see football helmets, baseball batters helmets, construction hard hats, as well as bicycle helmets etc.








Then there is the occasional interesting load.  You have to look closely at this picture to see what is going on.  The passenger is holder two pieces of "rebar" behind his back.  It is trailing behind the okada and swinging back and forth across the road.  We watched some people walking along the side of the road who had to jump over it to keep from getting hit.  This is about 1/2 inch rebar which is steel used to reinforce concrete structures.  Very heavy and dangerous.  Another okada almost ran over the rebar which could have created an interesting accident.  We hope he got to his destination safely.

The Roads of Kenema

These are the famous beautiful paved roads of Kenema.  It is the middle of the "rainy" season so most days have some rain and some days have a lot of rain.  The road you are seeing in these pictures is the main road in the city of Kenema.  It was totally paved at one time.  Notice the large piles of rocks dumped in the middle of the road.  These piles of rocks are there to be broken up and used to fill the potholes.  They have been there for about a month.  They must be waiting for the rains to stop.  In the mean time cars and trucks go very slowly as they try to maneuver around the rock piles and the potholes that can be very deep.  It takes about 30 minutes to go 5 miles through town.

The All Africa Day Of Service

This was an event the church held throughout Africa.  Here in Bo, we worked with two branches that cleaned up along the main highway going through town.  By cleaning up, we mainly mean wacking down the jungle in the ditches so the rain water can run well.

Here, Elder and Sister Sherwood are with President Sheriff, the branch president who orchestrated this project.





















Here you get an idea of how high the vegetation can grow in these road







Here are two companions enjoying the work and play together.  Two hard working Elders.  Elder Kay and Elder Ayabowei.


Here we can see about half the workers along the highway.

Notice the women on the left, working alongside the men.  Even doing hard, dirty work outdoors, they still wear dresses.