18 January 2010

Hey everyone I'm doing great. So far 2010 has been going awesome. Last Saturday we had another baptism. Sis. Minerva and Godsway were both baptized. Sis. Minerva is really great she was taught by elders in another part of Accra, but they didn't get to baptize her becuase she wanted to move right away because her business there was a drinking spot. She didn't want be tempted to sell people alcohol at all. She still doesn't have a job here yet but she is very happy to be finally baptized. Godsway was the first person I extended a baptismal date to and also the first person that I've taught from beginning to baptism. He's a real cool kid. He's 23 and is currently working for his cousin who is our second counselor, but he wants to go back to school. Unfortunately one of our baptismal candidates, Joanna, missed her second baptismal date. I don't really know what I can do to help her because she speaks only Twi. According to President Smith we are supposed to only teach lessons in English, and we try to do that, but Joanna has family in the church and Elder Ewudzie and Elder Darko were teaching her before I came so Elder Ewudzie has tried to continue. It's hard though becuase I can't really help resolve any of her concerns when I can't hear what she's saying. We have another baptism for this Saturday, Sis Darko. She wants to be baptized and I know she is ready and understands how important it is, but I'm worried she likes us visiting her too much and is afraid we'll stop if she gets baptized. Her son is currently serving a mission in Nigeria and I think we remind her of him. Thus far she has been keeping her commitments to come to church even though it is very far for her, but in the past she's been saying she didn't want to get baptized until she had learned everything there was to know about the church. This sunday she had her interview though and one of our recent converts (Nana, who happens to have known her for over 30 years) talked to her for awhile and basically told her that she needed to be baptized since she knows the church is true. So I'm really excited for her to get baptized this Saturday, but I know Satan's going to have a lot of oppurtunities to stop her this week so I'm worried about that. This week we are having a "mission tour" instead of our normal zone conference next week. A mission tour is when one of the general authorities decides they want to talk to the missionaries and tour the mission. We are getting to hear from Elder Dickson. He is the newest member of the West Africa presidency, and I think he's in the first quorum of the seventy. It should be really great; I've heard these mission tours are always amazing because the seventies are all great, wise teachers. This week was pretty good. It was hot but at this time of year at least you can say it's a dry heat. I can't say I've really gotten used to the weather, but I have gotten used to constantly sweating. I also haven't gotten used to hand washing, but I have started getting used to being covered in dust. For almost a month now we've stopped using are bikes and been walking. Saturday we walked the farthes into our area we've ever been. We went to the top of a ridge that was pretty much in the bush and were able to have a really cool view of our area as the sunset. Judging from the sattelite map they gave us of our area it was probably about right in the middle of our area but it seems like the far half of the area is just bush. We continued trying to work on our serious investigators, but it has been a challenge to figure out who is actually serious and who is not. We can get people to accept and read the book of mormon, which is one of the most important steps for getting them to have a testimony, but we can't get them to come to church. We try all our persuasuasion and testimony and teaching skills, but the simple fact is that the church is too far away and it is too expensive, too burdensome for the investigators to come. If they don't come to church we can't progress them any farther, so like I said it has been difficult discerning who to focus on in our teaching pool, because we can't tell who is ready to progress. An investigator can't be baptized unless they've been to sacrament 3 times. This is because it is useless to baptize them no matter how strong a testimony they have if they can't be confirmed (which happens at the beginning of sacrament) and if they never come to partake of the sacrament. We are praying for the new building to be built fast, but the date keeps getting pushed back. (Sounds familar for some reason). Elder Ewudzie is praying so hard that he'll be around when it opens because we are sure the baptisms will flow once people come to their first sacrament meeting. I really liked getting to talk to you guys on Christmas, but because the time was so short I didn't really get to ask you guys anything. I wanted to know what everyone was up to, what christmas presents people got, whether it was a white christmas, etc. There wasn't much of a chrismas season here. People don't really get into it. Without all the commercialization and the cold weather it didn't really feel like christmas. I was actuallly also kind of curious if anyone had seen that movie everyone was hypeing when I left. Avatar I think it was. You guys should go see it for me in imax 3d and tell me how it was. It has also been really great to get your emails Mom and Dad. The trip to Kentucky actually sounds kind of interesting. Even though I saw my first african monkey last week going to a braille factory still sounds intriguing. I also really loved the letters you guys sent around thanksgiving time, I hope my replies have arrived by now. It'd be really cool to get emails or letters every once in awhile from my brothers. I miss them a lot more now then I ever did at BYU. Last week I used up all my time at the cafe trying to upload pictures. The problem was the internet connection was really slow and my pictures are for some reason huge. Like 1600x1200. I think two got up on Flickr, but they aren't the most interesting. I have like 400 more to add, but I need to resize them all. Dad, maybe you know a way I could do that easily? MS Paint? Happy Birthday Owen! -- Elder Chambers