How blessed am I?

by dad

Alex’s weekly email was surprisingly lengthy. He shared his feelings about the civil unrest that is happening in the Ivory Coast. Most foreigners have been ‘chased out’ of the country. The Ivory Coast Mission is directly west of the Ghana, Cape Coast Mission. In the country of Ivory Coast, all of the non Ivory Coast missionaries have been transferred to other missions. Some have been sent to Ghana. Over the past year Alex has been serving with missionaries from the Ivory Coast. In his words he has ‘formed a bond of friendship that I can’t even describe’.

He wrote...

I often get caught up in the work, the people, the environment and such and I often forget where I really am. I forget what life is really like and forget that for me it’s just 2 years. For the people here (in Africa) it’s their life. For me it’s a story I will tell years from now to my kids or in some Sunday School class. To you back home it’s story, something you watch on CNN or maybe even some show on HBO. I’m here and for the people around me it’s reality.

He shared a story of a missionary from the Ivory Coast that will be returning home soon. He just got word from home that soldiers have raided his city and the neighboring city. Everything is shut down and anyone who stays in the city has a short life expectancy. All banks are on lock down. No one is working. Buildings are being burned and normal everyday people are being killed. His family is scattered. No one is in school or working or doing anything for that matter.

How blessed am I? How blessed are we. No, I didn’t write this to scare you. Ghana is the safest country in Africa by far. Everything is cool here. I guess I’m saying all this because I have caught a glimpse of what life is like outside the bubble that I lived in back home. I will never really know what it’s like. I have seen it first hand, how it effects people who are so close to me, but I won’t personally go thru that. How blessed am I?

The real world is scary. There are bad guys who do bad things. There isn’t always a happy ending. I see things like this all the time but I guess when I focus so hard on how loving the people are or how amazing the kids are I look past those parts. I guess I just got a very realistic view this week of what life is like. I’m not sitting here freaking out, I guess I just had to get all that stuff out.

And now missionary news...

Another week gone. I’m safe so no need to worry. Transfers - e Mackay is the new assistant. (no shock to me). No change for our apt. I’m happy with my current situation and I will stay as long as allowed. 
Very excited to stay with Holmes. Just soaking in this awesomeness while I can. Thanks for all the awesome emails

Julia’s wedding was on Saturday and it was a big hit. She was so happy.

What’s funny is that she wasn’t happy about the wedding she was happy about the baptism the next day. She kept saying tomorrow is the real day. Haha. How awesome right? And sure enough Sunday came and she was baptized. She has been waiting for it so long and you could see the look in her eye. The look that tells you she is as close to God as she has ever been. 
“So fresh and so clean…” I just love being apart of it all.

I got to see Mike (McAllen) this week. Man

was that cool. It was hard to find time to go see him. But we got it done. He is still powerful. He is still in his conversion stage but he has a testimony of what’s important and the rest will fall into place. I love that man.

A a quick update on Gabriel. He’s sweet. We went and met up with him this week and I got my Book of Mormon back and gave him his own. He loves the book very much. He tells us with all of his own stress and problems going on, that whenever he sits down to read from it he is at peace. We answered a lot of his questions. Each time we leave we can see the peace that he has from our message. It’s really all so sweet and it’s hard to explain.

(McAllen and Elder Darrow)

I feel like you all got a lot of what’s going on in my mind. I usually don’t just sit down and pour out stuff like that, mostly because I don’t want to worry mom. You know how she gets. Hahah. Hope that was enough info for you.

Love you guys so very, very much. All is well here.

Alex