July 27, 2009

This week went by really, really fast. I don't have alot to report, but this week we gave our interview training. It was a lot of work and it was really tiring trying to keep everybody happy and having fun and at the same time get them to learn things. It was about seven hours long, but we pulled it off and it turned out really well. 22 missionaries is alot of missionaries!
Monday we picked up Alim to take him to the Vels to eat dinner and he got into the car and said that he's done smoking weed and he'd thrown all his weed smoking stuff away and that he wants to get baptized on August 1, so pray for him that he can fight the temptation of smoking weed so that his life won't be controlled by this addiction. The Vels were awesome, they invited him to come for dinner with them on Sunday and they gave him their telephone number so if he needs someone to help him or he just needs something to do, he can call them and they'll come pick him up. Alim said afterwards that they felt like parents to him because he doesn't have any.
Alim is from Sierra Leon and he came here when he was seven and how he is nineteen. He almost died in Sierra Leon...he was a child soldier and a ton of bad things happened to him there, then he came here with nothing and was in a foster family that treated him terribly...when he was sixteen he started to live on his own. He's been through alot and he has no one, he has no family and is all alone in this crazy society. My heart breaks everytime I hear more of his story. That really goes for almost every African I meet. They all have very sad stories of the wars and the struggles in Africa. It is heart wrenching. It sure makes me grateful for the life that I have been given when I realize just how good my life has been. I've got no complaints.
We are headed for Utrecht tomorrow for Zone Conference and then the next transfer Elder Russel M. Nelson is coming and Elder Kopiska from the Area Presidency. I get to go to really personal meetings with both of them!!! Cool, eh?