21 June 2010

Hey everybody! Happy Father's day, dad! I hope you guys are all doing great. I love you guys so much. I hope Owen and Patrick are having a fun summer. I hope maybe the letters I wrote you guys have come. We had a pretty busy week as always. On wednesday we had to travel to koforidua for leadership training (Elder Stout's the district leader). It was really interesting. President Smith taught us about the micromanagement techniques that President Monson had taught him many many years ago. He shared a quote that I like from President Monson: "When we deal in generalities we shall never succeed; when we deal in specifics we shall rarely have a failure. When performance is measured performance improves. When performance is measured and reported the rate of improvement accelerates." Then on thursday we had exchanges with elder kivaya and elder moses in oda so elder kivaya could do a baptismal interview for gertrude. She was so happy at her baptism on saturday, it was so awesome to see. She's really committed. So I spent thursday back in Oda with elder moses. It was a little strange being on exchanges in my old area. I still know it a lot better than Elder Moses, so I showed him a couple shortcuts. Then on Friday we had a busy day trying to see all our baptismal candidates in the Asamankese branches. This Saturday we'll have a baptism for five of them: Celestina, Moroni, Kingsly, Ernestina, and Mary. Moroni's father introduced him to us 2 sundays ago just after he had turned nine. He knows the story of Joseph Smith super well, especially the part about Angel Moroni. It was funny to hear him tell it for us. Celestina is his older sister. So then on saturday we went to Kade and had Gertrude's baptism, like I said. In the afternoon we took the senior couple in Obomasu, the Terrys, to do a few abortion interviews for us. Frank and his wife gave us a huge pot of banku and some okro stew to take with us. The Terrys didn't want to share it with us so we got the whole pot. Elder Stout doesn't like banku which means basically I have a whole pot of banku to eat. I'm still working on that. On sunday we went to Kade for church. It's a pretty small branch. I think about 30 people came to church. They don't have a chapel so we meet in a rented house. We had a really nice quorum class. They gave it to Elder Stout to teach. (Which I guess they do every time he's there.) He taught basically lesson one, the restoration. At the end he asked the class to bear testimonies about how they came to know the church was the only true and living church. After a few an investigator who we hadn't met yet and had just come to church for the first time bore a sweet testimony. He told about how he had been living with a family and was cleaning when he found a copy of the Book of Mormon. He didn't know what it was, but he opened it up and saw it was like a bible so he began to read it. He said that he read a verse that told him if he prayed he could be shown if the book was true. So that's what he did. He prayed and he said that he felt good about it. Then that night he had a dream in which the book grew to become very large and writing appeared on it saying, "a new song that is pleasing to the lord". When he woke up the book was normal sized and the writing had gone, but he knew that the book was true. It was awesome. Then another new investigator said that he too could say that the church is true from the teaching he saw about the plan of salvation in the gospel essentials class. The spirit was really there in its strength. Well that was the week in brief. I just left out some stuff about it raining all the time, being cramped in leaky and faulty trotros for hours, and having people be world cup crazy all the time. I'm pretty tired, I had to get up early wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday, and sunday to ride in trotros to different towns. Other than that I've been having a sweet time. Elder Stout is a great companion and a sweet missionary. The areas have real potential and the investigators are for the most part progressing. We have baptisms scheduled for each week left in Elder Stout's mission so he's psyched about that. The spirit has been with us as we've been teaching and people are gaining faith. It's been so humbling to see things work out like they do. Well I love you guys, and I hope you are all safe and happy. Love, Elder Bradford Chambers