Elder Ferrara Labor of Love

 September 15, 2013 This week is Luke's Birthday!! HAPPY 18TH BIRTHDAY ELDER FERRARA!

Luke was responding to a question about their food and ethiopian flat bread that is fermented..."Yeah there is plenty to eat here. I think I am loosing a little weight but for the most part it is pretty easy to maintain weight here. There are supermarkets, but a supermarket here is more like a tiny grocery store in America. We get most of our food from the little family street stores. The food over here is nice though, everything is basically home-made because you buy the food from tiny street shops that are family owned. The bread is super good and especially the juice and jam. I think dad would love the jam they have over here. I tried one the other day that was orange marmalade. It was so strong, it surprised me! there is the pulp in the jam and it literally tastes like a orange on bread. My favorite is the plum jam though. It is super good! We mainly just eat toast, peanut butter, jelly, eggs, and milk. Sometimes for a treat we will go out to lunch or something. Here in Addis it is a little more "Americanized" so you can find some pretty nice food. It is really expensive though. I don't think peanut butter would taste very good at all with Injera. haha. It tastes like sour bread so I already have a hard time eating it."

In our letter we mentioned that Brian is playing football and he comes home with "battle scars" every game. I was asking him about his "battle scars": " I think the biggest battle scars I have are just mental. The water and appliances are so unreliable it gets frustrating sometimes, and it is hard to stay positive. Especially when you really want to take a warm nice shower.  I actually really enjoy the walking because it helps my mind to stay going. If you stop and sit you realize how tired you are and it is hard to stay motivated."

What he says about the people and his work: "Yeah when we tract you knock on gates. They live in little square hut things and usually there are 4-5 in one compound. Contacting on streets is not really effective here because there are a lot of crazy people. haha. It is really hard to find families here so that is our main focus. We try to really focus our efforts on the families. There are paved main streets, but people do not know how to drive at all. I guarantee if you drove over here you would have a heart attack. haha. People are crazy drivers over here. I think there is only one person out of our whole branch that has a car. If you have a car here you are rich. Tax is so bad here you basically pay double what you pay in America for a car. Most transportation is just by taxi, or walking.  But yeah almost everybody here lives very simple. You rarely ever see fancy things or anything extra in a persons home. We just had another conference with our mission president and he said something I really liked. He was talking about how when we have trails we need to step into the fire and let the Lord refine us. Our mission president is such a good guy and when he speaks it is so powerful. He is a great example to look up too. A general authority (Elder Hamilton) came to speak to us and it was really cool to be able to shake hands and speak with him. Our mission president told us that it will probably be the only time in our lives that we will be in a group that small listening to a general authority. There was about 25 of us. He gave us a lot of good advice and shared a lot of really great ways to become a better missionary. "
All together everything is going really well. Just like everyone says there are ups and downs but if we stay positive and be humble we realize that this is to shape us for our future. I think one of my biggest passions is to be able to have a family of my own. I think one of my greatest fears is not being a good father. So I think that is one of the things that really drives me forward is knowing that this will help me to become the best father I can be. 

Love,
Elder Ferrara"