E-mail dated 5/4/09

Well it sounds like the exciting events of this week have already leaked into the home. Yes it is true that we had a thief (pronounced TEEF here) break into our apartment and steal everything valuable. Thankfully I carried my camera with me that day so I still have all of my pictures. This thief was smart and stupid at the same time. The four of us in the apartment have figured our how he did everything, all we need is to find the person. Actually I don't really mind about the stuff, it just bothers me that our safety was violated. I remember when my car got broken into at home and I was so mad over just a small CD player, that I was thinking what I would do if I saw the man. But this time I didn't have any feelings of anger or frustration, I just felt insecure. But don't worry we have welded the doors shut and it won't happen again. The only thing that will NEED to be replaced is some more gym shorts. The little bugger stole two of my three.

Other than that the week was pretty smooth. Mator's baptism will have to be postponed until the 23rd of May. The main reason being that we want people to show up to the baptism and if we postpone it we can combine the service with the other missionaries. It would look a little rediculous if only the missionaries and the man getting baptized showed up (which would have been a very likely possiblilty). Hence you see the postponement.

I taught the primary for the last hour of church yesterday. That place is so much better that Elders Quorum. I would much rather teach little children how to sing "popcorn popping"!!! As you know children can't be entertained with the same thing for an hour so I had to start teaching for the last 15 minutes. I did a pretty good job on my favorite Bible story . . . Jonah and the Whale. I really don't know why I'm sharing this with you . .. oh well.

The missionaries in our stake are working with Less-Actives? Less-Active work is . . . not my favorite thing to do. I have to treat less-active here as investigators because they really don't know anything about the church. Getting them to come to church can be a challenge as well. Actually now that I think about it the whole branch is less active. We probably have about 150 "active" people in the branch but our attendance is only 100 every week. Those 50 that don't come to church rotate every three weeks. Oh and all the less active work is on the missionaries. No branch support in this one. Man, this place has a lot of work. But on the bright side, we did have three Less-Actives come to church on Sunday. Woot!!

So on Sunday. I will call you guys at around 4 or 4:30 (GMT, or Liberia time). But have a calling card just in case it doesn't work. But I'm pretty sure it will work (the backup is incase the delay is to bad)

Crap, I just deleted the rest of your email, and unless I want to rewrite everything I can't get it back to answer your questions. So we shall reserve them all for Sunday. Have a good one.

Elder Degen