You've gotta love Africa

You've gotta love Africa
Elder Chambers and Elder Kivaya in Oda

Going to Save the World

Going to Save the World
Elder Donovan Chambers

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

24 October 2011


lifes goin here in vegas. this week we have THREE chili cook-offs we get to attend so im psyched for that :) and then next week if all goes as planned we'll have two baptisms! so im equally psyched for that :P

elder matekel is from washington. wants to be an orthopedic surgeon. studied and THE Brigham Young University. Has 3 siblings, i think. him and i dont laugh nearly as much as Marks and i did, but thats alright, we'll also probably cause less trouble than Marks and i did lol.

We practiced for the Turkey Bowl today. Our team looks pretty good actually! (its flag, dont worry :P) we still have a few more weeks to practice, but we might be able to get ourselves a trophy here at the end of this transfer :)

I cant think of any funny stories for you. sorry, like i said, it was a less funny week.

Quote of the week:
"You can live life in two ways: as if everything is a miracle or as if nothing is"
                                                               -Albert Einstein
I'm doing my best to live like the first option.

Miss you all, but love you all more :)
Elder Chambers :)

24 October 2011

Hey everybody! This last week was great. Samuel said that he wanted to be baptized while I was still in Ghana. Since he's qualified we were very happy to have a baptismal service for him. I got to be the baptizer! That was great, it was a long time since I got to be the baptizer. Joe and Hannah are also doing great. They both came to church early yesterday. Man these last two years have been incredible. It'll be so strange to be back home. I'll miss a lot of things about being a missionary and about Ghana. Mostly I'll be missing all the great people and friends I've made. Hopefully one day I'll see them again. See you guys soon! I'm all packed up. Everything fits into the smaller suitcase and it's not even full! I love you guys.

 Love,
Elder Chambers

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

18 October 2011


hey everybody,
Elder Matekel needed a chance to email home so that means i get to try again :)

We've had a busy few days with getting Elder marks moved out and elder Matekel moved in. Today we dropped marks off at the mission office, went shopping, cleaned the apartment, and did a few other errands. It's been a long couple of days without a lot of actual missionary work going on so i'm ready to get back to that! I got a call from Gary this morning, he said that the dr told him that his foot was good to go and that hed be able to get baptized! so that'll be great! they are sad that elder marks wont be able to see it though.

Elder Marks and i got along really well, so at the moment im not having very much fun with Matekel, but im sure it'll get better :) hes from washington. has an older sister and 2 younger brothers. he ran track and cross country and swam in high school. he went to BYU before he came out and hes been out 18 months. He was a zone leader in reno. thats about all i know about him.

The other day elder marks and i went contacting at a bunch of garage sales and some =one gave me a really nice suit and someone else gave me a pretty beat up bike. next monday my project will be to see if i can get the bike working.

Highs of about 85 degrees for the next week or so. im getting kinda sick of that.

we might have to go to a training meeting on saturday for trainers. ive already been to it with marks but Matekel has never been so i might have to go to it again. we're gonna try to get out of it, cause our wards have a service project they want us to go to. but we'll see. i bet the AP's make us go.

I carved a pumpkin with Angel Moroni on it yesterday. its legit.

Funny story of the week: last night i put some IBC rootbeer in the freezer and then forgot about it. they exploded during the night lol. so there was shattered glass and there still is frozen root beer all over the fridge lol.

Spiritual Thought of the week:

Alma 37:37 (the Book of Mormon, for all you non mormon folk)="Counsel with the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good; yea, when thou liest down at night lie down unto the Lord, that he may watch over you in your sleep; and when thou risest in the morning let thy heart be full of thanks unto God; and if ye do these things, ye shall be lifted up at the last day."

This is something ive been working on : "when thou risest in the morning let thy heart be full of thanks unto God". I have found that it really helps to get me in the right mindset for the day if i just roll right out of bed and onto my knees and really focus on the things i am thankful for as I pray. Especially when im way tired and dont want to wake up in the morning, if I do this, and focus on all the things God has done for me, theres no way im not gonna get up and go to work!

Love you all :)
Miss some of you :P

Just kidding :D

Elder Donovan :)

Monday, October 17, 2011

17 October 2011

Here on the mission, the elder that trains you is called your father, however, my father left me for adoption because he is getting transfered to Reno. my step father will be Elder Matekal (ma-tea-kul). i thought he was from another country with a name like that, but he's not, hes just white.  I havent met him yet, so i'll tell you more about him next week.  Im pretty bummed marks is leaving, him and i got along really well, but im sure i'll get along just fine with matekal. hes been on his mission for awhile now, so he'll have lots to teach me.
 
the luau was kinda a fail. we had 400-450 ppl show up, which was good! but we didnt have enough food. and everyone left before the church tour. we had like 30 ppl go through the church tour. it was all due to poor planning, and elder marks and i saw it coming, but there was nothing we could do to help it. we just tried to make it the best possible.
 
ray-t is not baptized yet, but she will be soon. and hopefully gary and bro wood and jessica as well!
 
We just talked with a lady about the church for like hour, so now my time is done, but i'll talk to yall later. love ya!

17 October 2011

Hey everybody! Hope you guys are all doing great. I'm really nervous/excited to come home. This week we are going to be busy so I'm sure it will fly by.  Last week we really enjoyed a zone conference on Friday.  Everyone that gave instruction did a great job.

One of my recent converts in Alajo sent me a sweet african shirt, too.  We have a lot of really great investigators that we are working with.  I think we have about 40 in our area book at the moment.  We had people come to church on Sunday, but not the ones we were counting on most.  This week we will have the baptismal interviews for Joe and also Hannah Azumah (Comfort's older sister).  They are both doing great.  We are also going to talk to another of our investigators, Samuel Ampiah, who has  come to weeks in a row to see if he'd be ready to move his date up because he is progressing quickly.  He has even been getting 2 of all the pamphlets because he's been teaching his girlfriend.  This week we are going to be focusing on the people that have dates so that we will be able to make sure their interviews come through and they can be well prepared for the 29th.

See you guys soon!  Love ya.

Love,
Elder Chambers

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

10 October 2011 w/Photos


Weather lask week: 65, a little rainy/cloudy, much better than a few weeks ago!
Weather this week: back up to 80's
the week started off pretty lame. lots of canceled lessons. I went on splits with Elder Chamberlain one day. hes from westerville ohio, so we had fun :) we tracted out a whole neighborhood (abt 5 hours). got a few return appointments, handed out a few BoM's. we'll see if anything comes from that.
this saturday we are hoping to have a baptism for Ray-T but it might not happen cause we arent 100% sure if she has parental permission yet. so hopefully that'll go down on saturday. the luau/church tour is on friday, i'll fill yall in about how both those go next week.
Idk what i told yall about gary last week but he was having some issues and wasnt sure if he wanted us to continue to teach him. that was sunday. we went by on friday and he was in a much better mood! he wants us to restart the lessons with him and they are feeding us dinner tonight :)
today we went on a hike in the mountains (see attached pictures)(mama, feel free to put them on good ole facebook, thanks, i love you!)
it was awesome! there was snow and ice, and it was 45ish degrees and THERE WERE TREES! great :) i miss trees
funny story of the week: me and elder marks had a competition in one of our sacrament meetings to see who could cry first. you had to get a tear to actually rool down your cheek. i won :)
everyone talks to us a lot about politics. we dont know anything about whats going on so we just do a lot of nodding. and we always agree with whatever the person is telling us lol. we heard some guy was talking about mormons on tv and wasn't very nice. thats not cool.
While i was tracting with elder chamberlain, we had a lady tell us that we read a book of lies, that we are living in sin, and that if we died today we would go straight to hell. elder chamberlain is a spanish missionary. he says latinos are much nicer than white ppl lol
This is the last week of my first transfer! we find out what is happening on saturday. im sure i'll stay. so will elder marks, maybe. our area might get split, we'll see.
love you all!
elder donovan :)








Monday, October 10, 2011

10 October 2011

Hey everybody.  I love you guys a ton.  Hope you are all praying for me.  The week before last we were given some minors to work with by an old lady in our branch.  She normally always brings them to church. This week we worked to try to teach their families, but it was very difficult because out of all their parents none of them can read and only one can understand us well enough to teach him.  The member also struggles to understand english as well so she wasn't much help in translating.  I think that literacy has been the biggest thing hindering missionary work on my mission.  Elder Maloni and I have been teaching a great investigator named, Joe.  He is really humble and really has a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon.  He is preparing to be baptized at the end of the month.  He is just worried about if he can manage to stop taking alcohol.  I'm confident for him.  He's really serious, but he's also hard to get a hold of for us to teach and encourage.  So you guys can be praying for him.  The Azumah family is doing great.  They were all at church sunday, and Hannah's still set for her baptism at the end of the month.  You can also be praying for the sister missionaries here.  They said that they need more prayers.  Love you guys.

Love,
Elder Chambers

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

3 October 2011


Ive been in vegas for a month now. not much happened this week. at least i cant remember anything right now. chris and jessica ended up canceling our lessons and gary is now having doubts about being baptized, and Brother wood still hasnt had anything change at work, so he still cant come to church.  it's a little frustrating but we're still workin just hoping something good will happen for us.  one of my friends from the MTC went home last week. we're not sure why but we're sad for him. People arent kidding when they say missions are a lot of work. but its a cool opportunity to focus all my energy on following Christ and serving people. I really enjoyed all of conference. We watched saturday morning with members, sat afternoon with a part member family, sun morning with matt and his member friends and then sun afternoon with some members (both me and elder marks accidentally fell asleep during this one lol).  it was all good and i actually took notes! haha, that was a new experience for me.
 
Today we went to a local park that had like 3 ponds and trees and grass, and a shady spot to lay down. it was way nice! made me miss ohio. no one has grass out here and there are barely any trees. mostly just grass and dirt. hopefully someday i'll get sent up north someday so i can enjoy some trees and grass again. today its about 90 degrees here but its gonna cool down this next week hopefully.
 
our luau might fail its scheduled for the 14th. we were just told that we might not be able to use the grass that night. all our food sign up sheets never got passed out (we gave them to our ward mission leaders, then they got lost somewhere), and the church tour still isnt planned because the guy from the stake that is helping us is focusing all on the party, even though the church tour is the most important part. anyway, all you ppl out there, make sure you are fulfilling your church callings and helping the missionaries instead of just being pains in the bum. <that was a public service announcement :)
 
seriously tho, be nice to people. look for opportunities to help them. get to know your neighbors. dont be grumpy. it'll make your life better
 
hopefully i have more exciting stories for you next week, love you all.
 
elder donovan :)

Monday, October 3, 2011

3 October 2011

Hey everybody! Hope you guys enjoyed conference.  I heard that Africa is getting 2 more temples!  That's awesome.  We had a baptism for Comfort Azumah age 17 on Saturday.  Her Dad performed the baptism. Her mom was the one that got baptized last week.  They are doing great.  Probably her older sister will be baptized the 29th.  On Sunday all the family came early dressed in their best.  Hannah (Comfort's older sister) came for the first time and really enjoyed it.  We'll be teaching her throughout the month so she can also be baptized.  I'm really enjoying being in this area. It seems like a really fruitful area.  There are plenty of prepared people for us to teach.  Almost every time we go out people we are passing call us over and we have lessons with them.  On Sunday we went to the Dansoman ward so I could interview one of the Sister's candidates.  While I was there they also had me explain to another investigator why breaking the law of chastity means that his baptism is being postponed.

This morning I finished the Book of Mormon another time.  I've read it more than I've read any other book, and I'm really grateful to my parents for that.  I know it's true and it's my favorite book.  I'm really happy to be able to work with Elder Maloni.  He likes to work hard everyday and cares a lot about our investigators.  I'm sure that these next few weeks will really make me miss my mission when I get home.  Everyday we are meeting people that I would just love to see be converted and living the gospel.

Love,
Elder Chambers