29 November 2010

Dear Family, I love you guys. I hope that all is well. I hope you enjoyed Thanksgiving. It's hard to believe that the next Thanksgiving I'll be enjoying it at home with all of you. This week was the usual mixedd bag of highs and lows of missionary work. Monday and Tuesday things were rough and tension was high between Elder Maganda and I. Wednesday it was at it's peak. I was doubting if i could last the next 6 weeks with the guy, but then things cooled down and Thursday through Sunday things were normal. I think if I work hard we won't have any more problems. What I think has helped is that the sun has been beating us severely. Today it's not so bright, but the last two weeks it's been hot. Seriously, you don't know how hot. On Tuesday I actually burned for like the first time in a year. I think it's been the hottest of my mission, and it has certainly been the hottest two weeks of Elder Maganda's life. He's from Uganda and hasn't felt sun like this. From all what I've heard from the Africans that aren't Ghanaian (the ones from Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Sierre Leone, South Africa, Ethiopia, etc.) is that nowhere is hot like Ghana. If there are places hotter I don't think people can live there. Anyway I think it's killing Elder Maganda. I don't know if you can have heat sickness, but if you can he does. Add to the sun the fact that I am working him hard (on Wednesday alone we taught 9 lessons) and by the end of the day he's easy to get along with. Aside from the sun and Elder Maganda this week was also Thanksgiving and baptisms. Thursday my Thanksgiving dinner was fried rice with chicken, egg and bread, and alvaro. This subsistence I've done a poorer than usual job of budgeting and that cost me most of what I had left, but it was very delicious. I love fried rice, and alvaro is my favorite. On Saturday we had a sweet baptism for Sheila Nyamadi, Momma Grace, and Lawrence Wornyo. They'll all be strong members. Also as a bonus the young women were having an activity after the baptism so they shared some waa-kye with us for breakfast before we started our proselyting. Wa-kye is like one of my favorite breakfasts in Ghana, the other is Hausa porridge with these things that are almost like donuts. Anyway I'm doing great. Hope you guys are too. Miss you. Love, Elder Chambers

22 November 2010

Hey everybody. Hope you guys are all doing sweet. Life here in Ghana is the same ol same ol. This week has been super scorching. The sun's rays were very powerful and I got burnt for the first time in months. We did a lot of finding this week and were able to get a bunch of new investigators. The old investigators we are having all have problems and are not coming to church so we are struggling to get people that we can hopefully help to progress before the end of the year. I'm still having struggles with Elder Maganda, but I'll probably have at least the next 6 weeks to solve all those. This sunday we had stake conference. It was a broadcast from Salt Lake City to all of West and Southeast Africa areas. Presiding was Pres. Packer. The other speakers were Eld. Dallin H. Oaks, sister Ann M. Dibb, and Elder Christoffel Golden. Elder Dallin H. Oaks was the best speaker. He was really knowledgeable of the problems in Africa and addressed them very well. He talked about many things, but the one that was my favorite was about adopting a gospel culture. It was about making living the gospel and creating traditions that help us to live the gospel as the shared culture for latter day saints all over the world. It really made me realize how our family has so many traditions and practices that have made living the gospel our culture. It also reminded me that thanksgiving is this Thursday. Well I hope you guys have a great week. This Wednesday is transfers so if anything happens you'll get to know next week. Love you guys a ton. Love, Elder Chambers

15 November 2010

How's everyone doing? This week was pretty interesting. First of all on Tuesday around lunch time President Smith called to tell us that he was breaking up the trio which I was happy to hear, but that my new companion will be Elder Maganda. Elder Maganda is from Uganda and I think he's now in his 5th transfer and I'm his 7th companion. He's not the easiest person in the world to get along with. On Friday we had a temple trip and zone interviews. President Smith told me he wanted to put Elder Maganda with me because he's seen that I'm patient, longsuffering, and not easily ruffled. So I'm sure if everything goes cool with Elder Maganda and I that means I'll be having the worst companions for the rest of my mission... Well anyway this week has been pretty smooth. I can tell that he's really trying to do his best to be agreeable. We had big disappointments all week with investigators keeping commitments. Also my breakfast fell all over the street on tuesday. Going to the temple was great though and on Saturday we had a good baptism for Alex, Evelyn, and Gifty. We'll be trying to find some people this week that can progress to be baptized for December. The only help we are getting from the ward is advice on how to do our job. Their number one tip?--to stop wasting our time teaching people that they think are not serious (but that are coming to church). It's not easy. Love you guys a ton. Hope you are enjoying the football season/autumn. Love, Elder Chambers

8 November 2010

Hey everybody. I hope you guys are doing swell. This week was all pretty normal. Which is to say completely different from being at home, but we were just doing the usual missionary work this week. Going out and teaching and finding people to teach. I can't believe it is already november. Back home it was one of my favorite months. Cool weather, beautiful scenery, football, thanksgiving, all the cool movies and video games come out, getting psyched up for christmas, etc. etc. I can't believe that by next november I'll be home again. It's crazy. For thanksgiving I'm going to amaze everyone by how much more my stomach can contain. Just this saturday I ate so much banku that one more bite would have caused me to burst. I'll be able to eat both of our normal pizzas myself. I'm totally serious about it too. This sunday we had a good turnout at church, we had seven investigators there. Four of them will be baptized on saturday, Alex, Evilyn, Lawrence and Gifty. The ward here is not supporting the missionary work at all. The bishopric wishes we would stop baptizing people. How can we stop inviting people to come unto christ through repentance and baptism? We teach them, they commit, and then they keep their commitments. It's not like we can tell people that they ward doesn't want them so they can't be baptized. Anyway I love you guys sooo much. I hope you are all doing well. Miss you. Love, Elder Chambers

1 November 2010

Hey everyone. I hope you guys had a great week Happy birthday patrick and happy halloween everyone else. This week was hectic as usual. Seriously, at times I wish I had Hermione's time turner. Lately it seems like time is always running out instead of passing by or marching forward. Anyway this week was filled with the normal proselyting except over two areas instead of one and three missionaries instead of two. WE also had to go to the banka like 4 times to try to get Elder Lemmneh's subsistence and/or ATM card. It just wasted time because we never got either. Also whenever we do anything from companion study to planning it goes very very slowly since we are now 3 instead of 2 and Elder Lemmneh is being trained. I don't know if you guys can remember what I was like when family home evening lasted for more than 45 minutes? Well you can imagine what I feel like when it's 10:30 and we've been doing weekly planning since 6:00. Anyway slowly buy surely or something, right? Lately it seems like everyone we meet wants to feed us banku. On friday night we ate two balls of banku. Each one was 8 inches in diameter. Elder Lemmneh hardly ate any so Elder Nwachuku and I ate like literally 5 pounds of banku each. It was not easy. We were full all the way until saturday night when we ate banku again (fortunately it was a normal sized portion). On saturday Elder Lemmneh thought he was going to die because he was so sick. Either he had malaria because he doesn't take his doxycycline or he had food poisoning because he eats raw cabbage every day. Regardless it made us to spend saturday mostly stuck in the apartment. Anyway, he took medicine for malaria and he's now feeling fine. This all happened just two days after we were warning and warning him to take his doxy. He kept saying that that god would protect him because he was a missionary....... well we still tried to expound the doctrines involved but he hardened his heart. Anyways I hope you guys had a great week and are enjoying life. Love you all. Love, Elder Chambers