E-mail dated 3/16/09

Greetings,

Everything is going well here in the grand ol' West Africa. Once again I'm learning new names and faces, which can be a little frustrating because I can't always remember thier names (especially if there names are Kokuloku Maluba, but I can remember his name). Yesterday in church I actually recognized some of them from teaching in the week. But I still have a long long way to go. Oh well thats just part of missionary work.

So the most exciting thing that happened this week was we had a general authority visit the mission. (ooh). Yeah by General Authority I mean a member of the area presidency. To be specific it was Elder Cardon, first counselor in the Africa West area presidency. We had the opportunity to have a zone conference with him last thursday. That was a cool experience. He instructed us on how to better help our investigators exersize thier faith to lead them to repentance and baptism. He gave some insights on the fall of Adam and Even and bore powerful testimony of the Savior. The Area presidency is full of love towards the people here in west africa and to the missionaries serving here. I learned alot from him.

The story of the week happened last night. Elder Seawright and myself wanted to experiment with making spaghetti from scratch. Holy cow, we are chefs. Don't judge us and say that spaghetti is easy to cook, because I know its easy to cook. But this time it was Olive Garden worthy. We boiled a chicken and put it in the sauce. We made the sauce out of tomato paste and any and all of the herbs and spices we could find on the street. We even made Garlic bread (try doing that without a toaster or an oven). Man it was so good. The Sunday dinner is back. ha ha. I guess I appreciate sunday dinner more, mom.

Question time now. The climate is a little bit hotter than freetown because I think we are closer to the equator. But anyway you look at it its still hot. The teaching pool in Congo Town is not as big, but we are working on that. Differences between Monrovia and Freetown. Well, most of the differences I mentioned last week other than that its very close to the same. Our apartment isn't hooked up to the National Power, so we have to use our generator if we want power. But the rumor is that we might be getting hooked up soon. I don't play the piano in church because they don't have one (even if they did we have no power to hook it up to). So that means back to the crappy versions of the 5 songs Liberians know.

My companions first name is Austin. They are the only Seawrights in Utah, so that family that milt know is his family.

For march madness, UCONN will win it all with the utes making a suprise run to the Elite Eight (with an upset over Louisville). BYU plays A&M Again? Same result as last year. I'm glad to hear that the utes won the tourney. Well have a good week.

Elder Degen