E-mail dated 9/7/08

Family,

That is cool that the Utes won again. I had a feeling that this season was going to be a good one. And Utah State next . . please we might as well play Murray. Once again, I think that this job change is awesome. It really makes me eager to work with Miro when I get back. Dad you are going to love it. The people you are going to be working with are really good people (excpet for milt and his cussin). I want to hear about it and any other changes with work. And sure, send me your talks for stake conference. I want to hear some deep doctrines. I am finding that I am having so many questions that I know you could answer but your not here. Don't worry we will have discussions when we get back.

To answer your questions. I gave the scriptures to the mission president when I first arrived and he made sure it got to mariamas boyfriend. I actually met him yesterday and he was wearing a university of utah tie. he said thank you and i told him to find me when ever mariama comes back to sierra leone. We always have new investigators every week but the important thing is progressing investigators. And we actually have two progressing to baptism this weekend. One of them is a great man, whose wife has been a member for quite sometime. He was not ready to be baptized when she was but that didn't stop previous missionaries from trying. This sister had actually fallen inactive by the time that I came and we had no knowledge if she was a member or not. While working on a tracting list (finding less-actives) we came across this sister and invited her back to church. She came and this time brought her husband and he is so humble and willing to change I can tell that the Lord has prepared him for bright things in this country. The other baptism is a young woman who is a neighbor of one of our members. Her understanding is slow but she is keeping her commitments and she is ready for baptism. One thing about teaching here is that you have to put everything in simple terms. Part of the reason is that we are teaching young adults and the other reason is that this Krio is like impossible to explain deep things. The krio vocabulary is about 1/10th of the english vocabulary. But the work is still progressing.

We actually had a zone conference on saturday because the second counciler in the Africa West Presidency was visiting. Elder Golden is from South Africa and I really enjoyed his teachings. I learned a lot from this doctrinal man and I hope to put his teachings into practice. So that means I recieved your letter with the schedules on saturday. but the bad thing is that our next conference isn't until october. Oh well. That is all I have for today and have a great week.

Elder Degen.