Letter from Josh 1-26-2009

Hey family!

so ill start with questions again. Mom, my stomach has been feeling fine and if the parasite is still here then its not bothering me anymore, so im satisfied, but it was a good excuse to eat spicy foods for a while. My comp along with most africans (at least from what i have heard) dont like spicy foods. the best of the drink mixs was the white cran peach, by far, the koolaid was good, but not really comparable to that one. There are blankets at the apartment so there is no ned to send one, but i never use them and some nights i go to bed sweating even though i dont have any sheets covering me. i stopped taking the skin meds after my first week here because they werent really helping so i still have like half of them. Also, dont worry about the children here, the vast majority of them are fine, they live in a different lifestyle sure, but they are fine. the ones that would need help are in orphanages or some other facility, but we have those at home too.
As for the distance to the church, yes, it is forever away, but dont write president cause there is nothing he can do about it. the branch is part of the one and only stake here in kenya, and as such bringing a building here is up to them. Pres has tried several times to get them to bring a building here but they wont listen. The stakes problem with bringing a building here is that if they put a building here then they will have to shut the current building down. Most of the members come from here in Rongai, there are only 2 families that come from Langatta. so they would have to send the members in langatta to the upper hill ward (they live closer to that ward then to Rongai). Which in all reality makes more sense then what they are doing now. but the building we are going to was the first building to be built in all of east africa (Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda) and the stake takes great pride in that and refuses to have that building be shut down. So once again we see how the universal sin of pride slows the work, but i trust that the lord knows better than all of us and is just waiting for the apropriate time.
Larry is doing well, his baptism is still set for the 7, and we are hoping that his dad will come. his dad has no problem with larry being a member and said that he really is just happy that larry is going to church. but he is also very active in his own church and doesnt want the discusions himself. As far as other people we are teaching, i'll let you know if we get somebody that is serious. We get several return apointments but nobody else has come to church, once again the distance becomes a major problem but its hard to tell which are just listening to be nice and which really cant afford to come. but since they cant be baptized either way without coming to church, we drop them after a few weeks. but you could pray for us to find investigators that will come to church.
This week went by super fast though. we worked hard! our numbers almost doubled from last week in every area except the ones related to investigators coming to church, that one stayed the same, larry came. We started to go farther than normal in hopes that we would find people that would come to church, we will see within the next few weeks if that happens, but the problem is that as we went farther, it got farther from the church as well, but you never know where the faithful are hiding, so we went and will continue to go.
Anyways, i love you all sooooo much! i will talk to you next monday!
Love,
Elder Harris