Letter from Josh 1-19-2009

Hey!

This week has been good. we have continued to work hard and the days have flown by, but sadly, it seems to no avail. i hate the church being so far away! there are very few people that will actually listen to us and not just invite us in to be polite, and among those that do listen, there are few that want to come visit the church, the rest of them say something to the effect of "believing in christ is the most important thing, so what church i attend doesnt matter, as long as i believe in christ" then the few (by few i mean one out of two to three hundred people that we meet) that want to visit our church cant afford to pay for the matatoo and arent willing to walk the 1-3 hours it would take to get there depending on what part of rongai they live in. We had to move larrys baptismal date back because we still have to finish the lessons with him since he was up country for too long to finish them before yesterday, but he will be baptized the 7 of feb. Zone conference was good, i still like the weekly district meetings better, and as forthe interview with president, he is very long winded and repetitive,two of my favorite things, so it lasted about 15 minutes and i think all i said was that i am excited to be with elder baloyi. Pres is a good guy, but, not the most fun to talk to. the good news is that i got the christmas package at the zone conference! and by the way, i have used the whoopee cushion countless times since, thanks spencer and sam! and whoever had the idea to put the powder juice mix stuff in there is a genious. i got a bunch of letters from the old people in the ward as well, it was very nice of them, but i honestly didnt know who any of them were except for the one from brother oakes. Dad,there have been baptisms in my zone, but not my district/ward, so i havent been able to be there for any of them, but larrys is coming up so that will be good.
so every morning in comp study we are suppose to share what we learned in our personal study, the problem is that elder baloyi isnt satisfied with just sharing one or two of the verses and what they meant tohim. so a few days ago we read all of jacob five as it was his turn to share, yeasterday we read 3 nephi 24-28, and this morning as we got to verse fifteen of 2 nephi 2, i stood up, told him to let me know when he finished his personal study and walked into the other room and started my laundry. not the kindest thing i have ever done, but a half hour later he came and told me he had finished and then shared a few verses that stood out to him. he then went on to admit that he hadnt been doing his personal study for the last few months cause he is "getting tired (he leaves at the beggining of may) and his old companion would just sit and listen to him read whatever he wanted during comp study, so he started to use that time for personal study as well, he was still mad at me for walking out, but i figure that it was for the best.
dad asked for a story, so here it is: the other day we were tracting, and we ran into a guy that told us that this church was of the devil, we bore our testimonys and were about to leave when he started yelling to people not to listen to us. very quickly there was a crowd around us and this man. he then pulled out a copy of the book of mormon and said "this book is absolutely untrue,none of this ever hapened and i can prove it" we asked him to prove it. he said "i spent ten years in central and south america trying to find a basis for this ancient people talked about in this book, but there was nothing to find, and therefore, none of this could be true." his neighbor then said "you have never been out of your home longer then ten days, and you forsure have never left kenya." by this point everybody in the crowd was laughing at the guy and saying other stuff about he was crazy and nobody should trust him. This made the man angry and he walked away, we then answered a few questions and made return apointments for this week with most of the people that had been in the crowd. We will see if any of them are serious or not this week, and i will let you know next monday.
anyways, i love you all, i cant wait to hear from you again next week,
Love,
Elder Harris