Sri Lanka, Laos, Sierra Leone, Bridges and Temples and On and On!

Hey guys

Yeah I got the package. I got it later that night, but it was good timing because I was craving cheez-itz.

Our baptism went well. I don't have my camera with me right now, but I'll definitely send pictures next week. 

 I just got back from the temple, by the way. It's always pretty amazing in there. We're downtown using the computers in the family history research center across from temple square to email. I love it downtown. Some parts are a little sketch, but the areas around temple square and up north near the capitol are pretty nice. That's what I've noticed about the Salt Lake Valley so far. For the most part, the north and east sides are a lot nicer than the south and west. By the way, we found a little spot on top of a bridge near the freeway on the far corner of our area where at night you can look out and see the lights from the whole city and then climbing up the mountains on the east side. I didn't have my camera with me, but sometime this week before we head home we'll stop and take a picture of it. Our area's kinda weird, because it's mostly a half a mile by a mile. It actually stretches out almost ten miles to the west, but it's pretty much all industrial. We got a referral last week for someone who lived in an apartment above a warehouse way out in the middle of nowhere out that way, so we biked four or five miles out there to try and find them. That was pretty cool because we were almost closer to the Oquirrh Mountains on he west side of the valley than the giant Wasatch Front on the east. You got a really good view of the valley.

That's about the only super exciting thing going on right now, besides finding the family from Togo (in West Africa, near Ghana) to start teaching and they're pretty golden. That's just one more country to add to my list. So far I've met, taught, or served with people from  Sri Lanka, Laos, Sierra Leone,  Sudan, Samoa, Tonga, Myanmar, Sweden, France, England, Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, Mexico, Nepal, Guatemala, the Cook Islands, and now Togo. And I might have missed some, too. Those are just off the top of my head. It's so diverse here, it's crazy. That just shows how much the gospel is true because it's not just an american thing or a white person thing. It's for everyone, and everyone can feel that and take part in it. The church is true and the atonement is for everyone and it's real and it's powerful. 

Love,
Elder Lusk

Watch out for "the system" and "the industries"...good counsel?

Hey!

Hope everything is going well with you guys. Thinks are going pretty well here. We met two new families that we're going to start teaching soon. One of them is from West Africa, so that's pretty cool. We've got a baptism coming up next week, which I'm excited for. He's 9 years old and his parents are recently reactivated less actives. The actual baptism is going to be performed by a senior missionary who responsible for reactivating them, but we were the ones to teach him, so we can take some credit. I'm pretty excited for that. Aside from that, the only really exciting thing that happened this past week was talking to the old drunk homeless guy in the street trying to tell us to watch out for "the system" and how "the industries" are out to get us. Gotta love Glendale. 

I want to bear my testimony that I know the church is true, and I know this work is truly amazing.

Love,

Elder Jake Lusk 

Firm as the Mountains Around Us!!

Hope everything is going well. things are going great here in SLC. We just got our transfer info for next transfer, which starts on Wednesday. Me and Elder Barker are staying together in Glendale, which I'm happy about because we're working with some solid people right now. 

 

Tongan update of the week: this week we had dinner with a big Tongan family and they cooked us a bunch of traditional Tongan food, which was absolutely delicious. We had curried chicken and veggies, sapa suey (some sort of noodles with chicken and veggies), taro, which is like really hard, thick Tongan potatoes that act like anabolic steroids apparently, and pork chops all served over rice with mango pineapple coconut O'tai and something called poli'popo (that's no doubt spelled wrong), which is like a Samoan pastry with coconut cream on top. Tongan food is amazing, and as usual, there's a ton of it. The very next day we went to lunch at a little hole-in-the-wall place called Pacific Seas that was a Tongan food place owned by a family of Tongans and had pretty much the exact same thing, not to mention it was a hook-up becuase they're tongan and we're missionaries. If I get a chance, after my mission I'm taking you guys there so you guys can try real tongan food and real O'tai. It's amazing,. 

I feel like all I do is talk about Tongans, but they're great and I love them and I never get tired of them or run out of Tongan stories. 

Anyways, It's really cool seeing how far everyone's progressing and the way the spirit's working in this area.  I'm really starting to love this area. The people are great, and the scenery is amazing if you look above the run-down houses and apartment buildings. The mountains are still amazing, and I never get tired of them. We got caught in a rainstorm the past two days, which is the first big rainstorm the valley's had since the beginning of July, and the worst part wasn't getting soaked and muddy, it was the fact that you couldn't see the mountains. It's always comforting having them right there to the east behind the downtown SLC skyline. It makes songs like "Carry On" with lines like "Firm as the mountains around us..." make so much sense.

I bear my testimony that the church is true and I love this work. love you all!

Elder Lusk.

Jail and dreams and The Lord Provides our Daily Bread

     Hope everything in Winchester is going well.  Also, to follow up on your most recent letter, here's what's the most recent with the guy I was telling you guys about who we were teaching who's open minded to a fault. We actually missed our second appointment with him because we had some other stuff to take care of during district meeting and weekly planning (my comp's DL), so we went over the next day to apologize. It turns out if we had showed up, he wouldn't have been there either because that morning he ended up getting sent to jail. Seems like a common problem with people around here.

     On a much higher note, as much as it's hard in this area sometimes, it's also great. One of our investigators had her prayer answered by a dream (did I tell you about that one?) and is also progressing towards baptism. And just by working hard and being faithful, the Lord will sometimes hand you golden investigators on a silver platter, like going over to visit a less-active and finding out half of their family are nonmembers who want to be baptized as soon as possible. I love missionary work.
     I also cannot express to you just how much I absolutely love the Tongan people. We were biking through the park the other day and we called over by a huge Polynesian family who helped us pile on rice, chicken, watermelon, eggs, sausage, and some other stuff onto paper plates, then brought us water bottles, hot chocolate, bread, butter, and jam. As much as the food is great, sometimes it's hard not to feel slightly bad, even though there's more than enough food to go around. The only price we had to pay was opening their testimony meeting by bearing our testimonies for them. We had microphones and were speaking in front of an extended family about the size of an average sacrament meeting around here (so not terribly huge). I felt the spirit and it help me realize that as much as we're blessed by the generosity and hospitality and straight-up charity and love of these people, we bless them more than we know just by bringing the spirit with them as we join their feast. We are seriously blessed, though, because they gave us a couple more loaves of bread to take with us in our backpacks which was the Lord looking out for us because we had run of of bread that morning. 

     I'll leave you with my testimony that I know this church is true and that the gospel is real and that the Lord really does know us and look out for us. Love all you guys!

Love, 

Elder Jake Lusk