Transfer 9 Week 4: Exchanges in the District, Food storage orders, Guinea is imploding, Africa as usual

It’s been a pretty good week so far, we are working with a lot of new people in our area, and yesterday we had 8 investigators come to church on Sunday, which was really good. This week I also went on two exchanges with the Elders in the Rogbaneh and Teko 2/barracks areas. I had been postponing doing those until as late as possible, so that Elder Vandertoolen would be familiar with the area. On the exchanges, I got to go with Elder Maakafi and Elder Torres, the former from Tonga and the latter from the Philippines, and I am very pleased with both of them. I have an awesome district right now, and it’s been really cool to actually watch these guys learn and grow together. I know they are a team and we enjoy working together and being together. Just by looking at the numbers, I know we are getting a ton done.

Zone conference will be this week, and we are all looking forward to that. President and Sister Harper have asked us to prepare a "Restoration Presentation" that is not supposed to be a skit. We spent the better part of district council discussing how we were going to do that. I think we have a pretty good plan set out for it, and I’ll tell you about it later. 

We also have just received an email this week saying that we are supposed to purchase a 25 kilogram bag of rice for every apartment and 50 liters of water per missionary using the apartment fund, for use in any kind of situation where we have to shelter in place for a significant period of time. This was, of course, related to an incident this week where a person was killed outside the Guinea embassy during rioting that was going on there due to the elections happening in their country.  We received a notification from the state department passed down by mission leadership that we are to stay away from anything nationally associated with the Republic of Guinea. This is actually all ridiculously hilarious to us, because some of missionaries are actually seeing a number of Guinea nationals in our areas, who specifically timed their visit to this country so that they can be away from election season, including a full up women's soccer team. Prices have seemed to have stabilized though, so the end of the world isn't just now, although I haven't gone shopping today so we'll have to see. 

So, at the end of the day, I'm going to just chalk it up by saying that this is Africa as normal.

I really wish I could send pictures today, but I'm on a computer with a remote desktop somewhere so I can't stick my drive in.

Been dreaming of home lately and some other weird things. The other night, I dreamed I had a weird question and answer session with the quorum of the 12, except that Boyd K. Packer was up there. Now we've received news that we are going to have a worldwide seminar where Elder Uchtdorf will be explaining how to interact normally with people. I thought that was kind of cool, because I think being a missionary for too long can definitely skew our understanding of what normal interaction is.

I have one thing I would like you to send some time for me, not urgent. One of our recent converts is paralyzed and has some bad eyesight since she is rather elderly, but she can still see large font letters. I've been trying to look for a magnifying glass for a while now, but I can't find one. All she does is sit at home all day, and she is using this time to read as much of the gospel as possible because she actually is very literate. If you guys could send just a big magnifying glass for her, even if I were transferred in another area, I could make sure that it will get into her hands. 

I love you all and hope that you can bare another week of no photos or videos, I will try to get that done next week if everything is working out. 

Sincerely,

Elder Shill