Mariama kallon biography for kids
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“Learning to Hope,” New Era, Nov. 2006, 10–12
Sierra Leone was a sad place during my teenage years, but it was my home. For much of my life, my small West African country was torn bygd a civil war. The war affected everything. My family and I were constantly on the run, trying to escape the rebel soldiers. It was terrifying every time the rebels came through a city. Someone would see their torches approaching in the night, warn the others, and we would all run for the bush, grabbing whatever we could along the way.
About seven years after the war began, the rebels came to our city. My whole family was running to escape, but my parents, who were just a few steps behind me, were shot and killed. I was so sad to lose them, but I had to keep moving.
My brother, sister, and I moved to a safer place, and for a short while we were all right, but the rebels eventually hit that town, too. This time we didn’t have time to run away. My brother was taken and later killed. My sister and I wer
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When Mariama Kallon was fleeing the rebels in Sierra Leone, she grabbed her scriptures and the plastic bag with her hygiene kit in it.
She still has parts of the kit.
“It blessed the lives of over 25 women in three weeks,” Kallon said of their time in the refugee camp. The women would line up and she would give them each a pinch of toothpaste. They used the bars of soap sparingly to make them last.
They didn’t use the shampoo — it wasn’t labeled and they didn’t know what it was.
Kallon had lost family members during the civil war and ended up with friends who were members of the church. For some of the missionary discussions, she walked three miles to the chapel.
She later served a mission at Temple Square. She brought her scriptures, both changes of clothes that she had and the hygiene kit when she entered the MTC.
Later she was reunited with her little sister and nephew when a Lehi family brought them to the United States, she said during her at
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After Watching Her Sister Brutally Killed, LDS Convert Shares Remarkable Prompting That Brought Her to the Church
At age 22, Mariama Kallon was hearing rumors of something dark in her country. “There are rebels,” the villagers in Sierra Leone would cry as they fled from their homes toward the cities. And as they carried their bundles of belongings, they also cried for what they left behind: “My daughter is killed; my child is killed; my family is killed.”
For years, Kallon lived in constant fear of the rebels without ever coming into contact with them, fleeing from one place to the next to avoid them. When she once again heard that the rebels were working their way toward where she was living, Kallon decided to go somewhere completely out of the way—her hometown. She hadn’t seen her parents in years. “I thought it would be safe for me. I didn’t know the Lord was taking me there to see—to know what happened to them.”
After arriving, she and her sister were trying to find food to