Elder Collin Park

August 19, 2013

This week was.....  wow.

Lets start at the beginning.  I went on exchange with Elder Kouao.  Those two days went by super fast.  Nothing too crazy happened there.  I met a couple cool people and spent a lot of money.  Elder Kouao likes to eat.

Thursday evening I was planning with my normal companion and we get a phone call from our Zone Leaders.  I will tell you what they said later.  Saturday we had baptisms, we had to travel to a nearby building because our generator wasn’t working so we couldn’t pump water for the font.   We made it there in good time and everything went really smoothly.  We were able to have 2 people baptized, Mercy Tarkpor and her younger sister Marthaline.  Teaching them was fun because they always had small children with them. 

Our Sunday was good.  Since it was the 3rd Sunday, we all gave small talks, basically we just bore our testimonies.  It was a really good service.  Some of our branch leaders got a little emotional too.  It’s really rare to see male Africans get emotional, they feel it’s a sign of weakness, I don’t understand it.

After we went to the branch president’s house we had a delicious meal of LIB style spaghetti, potato salad, and really good chicken.  President Harris takes care of us. 

Okay- here’s the transfer news:  Elder Tolar and Elder Bell are staying the same. Two more missionaries are moving into the branch and opening a new area.  I am staying in Tinker Village and I am receiving a missionary from the MTC as a companion.  I have no idea who he is, or where he's from.  AND I am now the new district leader for Tinker Village.  This transfer is going to test me beyond belief!!! 

This week will be interesting for me.  I have to be in a threesome, split an area, go to a leadership training meeting, prepare a district meeting, and receive a new companion.  Well, here we go!!

I love you all and pray for you all

Elder Park

The White African

T.I.A.

And in a second email:

I GOT 3 PACKAGES!!!!!!

What a glorious day that was.  I got the one with the side bag (shoulder bag) and pants and 2 more packages with garments, they are sooooooooo white!!!!!  Elder Marondera loves the shirt and says thank you (Collin requested a new dry-fit shirt for playing and working out on pdays, I sent one for his companion who was from Zimbabwe).   Thanks for the socks also. 

So, it has taken quite awhile for packages to get to Collin - one of the packages he got I sent in March!   This picture and description was on the Liberia Mission Blog:

 

 

 

On Wednesday as I walked into the office I was greeted by 2 Royal Liberian Mail employee's asking me why I had not been to pick up our packages. I told them that Brother Sayon went 2-3 times a week. They then gave me a bag of 22 packages for missionaries! They informed me that they could not store them and that we needed to pick them up more often. When Brother Sayon got to the office he said that he had gotten a call saying that there were packages for the missionaries. On Thursday he went to the post office to see what had happened. He was given another 22 packages!!! These were packages from June, July and August. Some of them had been eaten into by rats and mice and others were fine. There was one package that was so badly eaten we had to open (what was left of the box) and transfer the contents into another box. The only thing that had been eaten (besides the box) was a whole package of Twizzlers - we have discriminating rats at the post office!

 

Here is another picture from the blog.  New washing machines for the Elders!