Transfer 5 Week whatever the heck

Adam with Elder Wagner at Kenema Zone Conference Sept 17, 2019

Example routes from Kailahun to Kenema.

Hey everybody, it’s been a while,

So, I think I should explain and apologize for the fact that I haven't written to you guys at all lately. It kind of has to revolve around my schedule, or at least everything that has happened in the last two weeks. It runs something like this:

Monday Sept 16th: Travel to Kenema for zone conference via a small car and driver secured for us at the last minute by our branch president.  This came after a lot of scrambling and worry that we would either miss zone conference or have to take dirt bike taxis all the way to Kenema.  That’s a pretty long, rough ride on badly maintained, muddy roads on the back of a motorbike, around 108 Kilometers, over 2 hours.  Not ideal.

Tuesday Sept 17th: Wake up, buy food, go to zone conference, buy bibles, get water filters, everything that you need to set up a computer lab in Africa, Liahonas, apartment fund refill, etc. head back to the Kenema apartment. 

12:00 Go shopping for critical apartment supplies, while at the same time buying everything that I can possibly get in bulk that I can't get in Kailahun. Buy food and eat it on the fly, Show Elder Wagner around Kenema a bit, head back to the apartment. 

5:00 pm Pack up EVERYTHING, (I'm probably forgetting some of the stuff that we had to haul back) oh yeah, steal copies of the Book of Mormon from the zone leader’s apartment as a prank, and other stuff to take back home. Eat fast food one more time at ISATU FAST FOOD and be glad that there is quick food to eat. 

7:00 pm Leave

9:15 pm Smash the old Mercedes oil pan on a sharp rock in a random village 7 miles outside of Kailahun. 

9:16 pm Identify the need for new transportation

9:17 pm Realize there is no transportation

9:18 pm Be told by our driver that they can send another guy from Kailahun

9:19 pm Sit on top of a broken-down Merc. eating candy bought in Kenema. Laugh at ourselves and our ridiculous situation

10:15 pm Be told that nobody is coming from Kailahun

10:16 pm Start going to plan B

10:17 pm Call Sister Nancy, the city council women that I am sort of teaching that has access to a pickup truck, (she’s the kind of woman whose dial tone is the Lord's prayer) 

10:18 pm Be very sympathetically told by Sister Nancy that her driver is asleep so that we'll have to find some other way. 

10:19 pm Move to plan C 

10:30 pm Get two Bike men, load up with my 90 gallon back pack and probably over 50 pounds of computer equipment. 

10:31 pm Pray, really pray

10:32 pm Depart for Kailahun through the 7 roughest miles of road between there and Kenema. 

11-ish: Arrive, unpack, head back 

12:15 A.M. Arrive at the car again, repack, pay the car driver, and shuttle more stuff

1:00 A.M Arrive at the apartment again, unload, send my backpack with the bike riders to go pick up the other companionship and hope he doesn't run off with my backpack. 

2:00 A.M Other companionship finally arrives, we unpack, eat, and get ready for bed

3:00 A.M Go to bed 

And yes, this is a serious timetable. 

So overall, we basically sprinted from one thing that had to be done to another thing that had to be done till we managed to get home after having a nearly 21-hour day. 

To all other missionaries everywhere else in the world I ask: 

So, what’s your zone conference like?

Needless to say, Wednesday was rather unproductive for almost everything, even though my companion and I were still working full throttle at everything we needed to get done. We still sort of set up the computers though and managed to trouble shoot the first 2-3 hours’ worth of problems and get those knocked out. Still haven't gotten them up and networked though.

Thursday (Sept 19^th) was still recovery time/ proselytizing. We manage to get some more stuff done, work as hard as we can. Bring the branch keyboard to the apartment so my companion can figure out how to teach someone in the branch to play.

Friday Sept 20th: Get a massive cold, somewhere along the way my swearing problem I picked up from the Nigerians at the MTC began to resurface. Have the first branch missionary coordination meeting since I've been here. Teach some people

Saturday/Sunday: Teach, go to church, receive handmade soap from the relief society, and be asked to pay for it. 

Monday Sept 23rd: Repeat of everything, trying to get way too much freaking stuff done with too little time. Buy Diesel for the apartment generator, work like crazy on the computer lab, teach a few people, go shopping, be told by our market friend that the 20 3-lb. jars of American peanut butter that we ordered are being shipped in from Liberia via Koindu sometime this week. 

Today: Have an awesome day teaching, see a GIANT groundhog the size of a 35 lb sack of flour. I know it is that size, because I saw it get pulled out of said re-purposed sack of flour. It was at least 2.5 feet long and nearly a foot wide in places. 

I can now testify for a FACT:

I KNOW THAT RODENTS OF UNUSUAL SIZE ARE TRUE, AND THEY ARE THE FREAKING CRAZIEST THINGS THAT YOU CAN SEE AT ABOUT NOON WHILE GOING TO GET BREAD ON A TUESDAY

So that’s about all for now, we got permission to keep borrowing devices till we get our stupid computers set up. Huge thank you to Dad for sending the PDF's to help with all of that, going to try to get that to work.  If I had time, I would probably throw in a bunch of spiritual lessons I learned along the way and share some sappy feelings or something but I'm freaking tired and I have an apartment inspection tomorrow that we need to pass be it Heck or High water. Still have all the scorch marks from torching the cockroaches that I have to clean off of the walls. It actually sucks when bug spray is so non effective that setting it on fire is actually the only option.

Love you all, promise not to burn down the apartment or get eaten by giant rodents, or get wrecked on an obscure highway or something.

Love you all, 

I’ll send pictures soon.

Elder Shill

A few other things Adam shared with me on our phone call Monday:

--He tried eating the boiled insides of a pumpkin for the first time.  The meat was orange, but the outside of the pumpkin was green.  He said it tasted like potato which was nice since they can’t get potatoes there.

--He was very excited to have obtained 4 cans of baked beans while in Kenema.

--His new zone leader, Elder Hansen, looks like a carbon copy of his friend Braedon Line.  I saw the pictures of zone conference on Facebook and was actually trying to figure out why this Elder looked so familiar to me.  Truly, the two could be twins.  They even both play the French horn. Ironically, Braedon and his family recently moved to Nairobi, Kenya. Strange world. For those of you who know Braedon, here are two pictures of Elder Hansen so you can see the resemblance for yourself.

Elder Hansen, Elder Matchowa and President & Sister Harper

--I let him know some news about an Elder Armstrong from his mission that had been reassigned to California because of trouble with reoccurring Malaria.  I had gotten this info from the mission Facebook page and wanted to let him know because he had served with and loved Elder Armstrong.  I asked him if he already knew about it and his response was this, “Heck no! We don’t know about anything.  We are so far out here that Trump could nuke China and we wouldn’t even know about it until we ran out of tomato paste, (because all the tomato paste here comes from China.)  We don’t hear about ANYTHING!!!”

--I asked if he saw many exotic animals and he said that there were a lot of cool birds of prey and crazy bugs like Soldier ants, but that most of the “fancy” animals were killed off during the war.  This was, however, before the crazy groundhog sighting which he mentioned above!