Ed writes that he is now a District leader, meaning that he now supervises the affairs of several pairs of missionary within an area, and for Ed, he is supervising FIVE areas! He sounds really busy and buzzing.
Sometimes pairs of missionaries turn into groups of threes, when one is needed elsewhere, or when one has gone home or about to arrive so this past week Elder Pentreath has been with Elder Humpherys and Elder Kouao."Funniest parts of the week are bike rides because really, we shouldn't be separated, even when we take a bike. At one point we stupidly mounted a bike with possibly the fattest man I've found in Liberia so far and even more stupid, I decided to get on last.. We were travelling maybe a mile and a half on really bad road and I was literally sitting on nothing. My arms were wrapped around Elder Humpherys and Elder Kouao and Elder Kouao had his arms wrapped behind him to hold me close to him. He was basically giving me a piggy back on the back of the bike. In front of us and with all the potholes in the road the biker kept leaning from side to side and so all the way we were laughing and going 'wohhh' ohhhh'.. everyone we passed found it hilarious and when the ride ended and we tried to pay the guy he just said "Lads, that was great, I can't charge you for that".. hahhahah just classic moment =D"
Ed is paired now with a new Elder who has just started being a missionary: "Well, my companion's here and the guy's a beast. =) Elder Zolo is from Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire and he' been a member of our church for 6 years. He has 4 older brothers, 5 older sisters and 1 younger sister. His younger sister and 1 older bro is a member of our church, but no-one else. His English really isn't non-existent, but it's close! He actually kind of understands small-small (I think Ed's English is going?!) everything's just very very slow.."
Another funny story from his week: "Today we had Sister Vivien's baptism, which was just so lovely!! On the way back we were taking a car and our new companions were coming in 15 minutes we needed to clean the apartment and we needed to haul water over to the sisters apartment because they'd somehow rinsed 50 gallons in 24 hours.. we really need the car to speed to have any chance of doing any of those.. well... the car broke down.. ahhhh!!!! There was 5 of us in the back and 3 in the front (in a 5 seater of course) and the guy, he just didn't know anything about cars and so, against mission rules admittedly, I went to the drivers side, we all got lots of different people to help push and we kinda managed to start it up with a bit of playing around with the clutch and the gas.. so little did I know that the driver was a bit offended at the fact that a white man just started his car when he couldn't and so we all got in the back and just squeezed in again when the guy said 'get out one minute I need to do something.." so we were like what? The car's started, let's go! We had about 5 minutes from the missionaries arriving and we were about 10 mins drive away and I was on the phone to the sisters and the guy was telling us to get out the car for 'small time', so we get out, thinking that he just wants to arrange us a bit better in the back, but no! He just gets Elder Humpherys and me out, Elder Kouao's still in the front and the guy starts driving off because he's offended by me for starting his car so he just throws out the 2 white people.. which would be OK and we could then get a bike if it was just the 2 of us, but Elder Kouao was in the front and the car was 50m away before Elder Kouao realised what had happened. He tried to get the guy to stop, simply so he could get out, but the guy thought Elder Kouao was trying to get him to stop so we could get back in, because we were running alongside the car to remain 'in sight and ear shot of our companion'.. (that's a big rule for missionaries) In the end Elder Kuoao realised that the guy wasn't going to stop, opened the door and dived out into a very conveniently placed giant pile of sand by the side of the road... it. was. priceless... very stressful at the time, but we ended up getting a bike as a 3-some again and luckily the new missionaries were delayed and so everything was OK.. Elder Kouao but his arm up on his leap to freedom though bless him.. it's been such a crazy, crazy, funny week =P =D"
"Make sure that there's lots of duck tape around all the parcels from now on by the way because apparently the rats are getting stronger and breaking into EVERYTHING at the post office these day.. one elder just got half a letter because a rat wanted the rest to make a house =P"
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