Emails

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Email

October 28, 2024

Dear Friends and family,

    Elder Thacker and I are alive and well in Sierra Leone.  With each passing day, week, and month we still marvel at all we are learning.  We are humbled by our experiences.  Many times we will encounter experiences that make us sit in silence as we individually try to formulate how to put it into words the ways in which it affected us.  

   We often feel directed to post on Facebook, yet neither of us are comfortable with it. We do not wish to make our mission experiences about us or what good others might think we are doing.  We are only instruments in the Lord's work that get the chance to have beautiful experiences.

   In our area in which we are serving  the missionaries, branch leadership, and members are working hard to grow the church.  Each week the home groups and branches grow in leaps and bounds.  The home groups have outgrown their places to meet in.  We get to help find new buildings.  This past few weeks a new plot of ground and a building has been found for a District center and will be big enough to be a stake center in the years to come.  The plot is owned by the tribal council. We were invited to meet with the Paramount Chief, then the chief over the Tribe Council in their homes. We were welcomed with great respect, when really I was the one with great respect for the Chief.  I am happy to say that the council has accepted the offer for the church to purchase the ground.  This will be a wonderful blessing for the members in this area.

  Elder Thacker and I were able to visit a school.  The school is for both primary and secondary age children.  In total there were 450 students.  We were invited into each of the secondary classes and asked to speak with them.  It's hard to speak, when you have so much admiration for these students.  There is not one child as I have been in Sierra Leone that when I ask if they like school they all light up and say they love school.  Even at a young age they understand that the opportunity to go to school is a privilege.  There are plenty that do not get this opportunity. The principal, our friend and member is Grace.  Grace lives at the school housing during the week.  She has taken in 3 teenage boys that have lost their parents so that they can attend school.  We find that the people of Sierra Leone compassionately and regularly without a hardened heart take in children and youth in less fortunate living conditions, to live with them and become part of their family.
   
Baptisms were this weekend.  It was amazing!  Our missionaries are so dedicated to missionary work, and the people are ready to learn.  Here people freely speak of religion and whether they are Christian or Muslim.  Both are accepting of each other.  It is such a beautiful thing.  Our missionaries have so many referrals because as members accept the gospel of Jesus Christ they desire to share it with their family and friends.  Elder Thacker and I got the opportunity to help fill the font.  The church house does not have a good water well so water is filled in jerry cans (5 gallon cans) a block away.  Usually, young adults fill the cans and carry them to the font.  Because we drive a truck we were able to put the jerry cans in our truck.  3 hours and 110 jerry cans the font was filled.

   Today was another choice Sunday.  I love Sunday's in Sierra Leone and wish for all to attend just 1.  There were 68 people crammed into a school house sitting on the children's benches.  As more people came we all just kept squeezing in.  It was hot, no lights, and filled to over capacity and yet when new members were confirmed and the primary children sang "I am a child of God" there was no place I would rather be.

  My favorite part of missionary work is visiting people in their homes.  Every home has a porch or lean to with benches and chairs for visitors.  In their very humble homes, they always invite you to sit outside and be a part of their family for a moment.  I now understand pure joy as we visit and get to know these people as truly our long lost brothers and sisters.
 
   I hope all is well with you and your family.
Love, Elder and Sister Thacker

Pictures:  Baptisms, school pictures, church at one of our home groups, filling the baptismal font.
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