E-mail dated 11/10/08

Family, How is everyone doing? From the sound of it everyone is getting sick. As for me I am sick free. Malaria is not a life long disease, which means I won't be coming home from getting sick. Its kind of like the flu to us. It comes, its not fun, and then it goes.

So this week for me was pretty good. If I didn't know any better I would have thought that all of africa won the presidential election in America. I heard it all this week. "We won the election" "Its the Black house now" and many many others. It is so ridiculous that people here focus more on American politics that thier own countries problems. People now think that Sierra Leone will be better because Barak Obama will be president. It doesn't make any sense to me either.

It is getting really hot now. The rainy season is officially done and now we are in the "dry season". But the funny thing is I am never dry. My shirt is soaked in sweat about 2 minutes into each and every day. And climbing the hills doesn't make it any cooler. Nonetheless (scriptural transition) the work must go on.

I had a cool experience on Thursday. Elder Kpodi and I decided to have a companionship service project for the people that live around the chapel. We bought brooms (which is a bundle of sticks tied together and the only way to sweep is to bend down) and went and visited all the members, less actives, and investigators and asked them what we could do to help. Most of them would tell us nothing but that didn't stop us from helping them. We eventually just started to pick up the trash around thier houses (if you can call them houses) and pulling unwanted plants around the area. The response we got was pretty amazing. Most of them were very curious as to why we were doing this. We contacted over 50 people in the 3 hours of cleaning. some people mocked us of course and some were very grateful. Either way we drew alot of attention to ourselves. One of the ones we contacted we ended up teaching a couple days later and she came to church on Sunday. Service is truly a powerful tool.

We had District Conference here in freetown this past weekend (like stake conference). For the Sunday session the brethren in salt lake sent a disc focused specifically on africa. I was too busy ushering the people in to sit but the attendance was so good. We had almost all of our baptismal candidates there (5 out of 7). They should all be baptized this Saturday, or at least that is the plan. Well I hope you have a great week.

Elder Degen

PS GO UTES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!