Goooooooooooooooooood morning Kaysville!

It’s always so nice to hear from you each Monday! Sounds like it was a good Thanksgiving in your neck of the woods! As for us, we had an interesting week haha!  So on Tuesday we had our good friend Elder Moore come on splits with us. We taught the man Francis Sackey, the one who wouldn’t go all the way under on his baptism. We had to reteach him the Restoration, because he didn't remember any of it.... then he fed us some crazy tasting fufu after the lesson. The fufu was sooo nasty hahaha, there was a TON too! I got a nice picture holding it that I will send in a few weeks. But neither me or Cardon or Moore could choke down the stuff. So, we threw it all in a plastic bag and threw it off a cliff hahaha!!!!!! I got a nice video of it on my camera and will try to send it home, but videos usually are too big to send. Haha but we threw it from the doorway we were standing in and the cliff was like 20 feet away or so. Elder Moore threw it and right as he released it the handle on the bag broke and it skidded on the ground and rolled off the cliff. We were so scared it had burst on the ground! That would be hard to explain to Francis hahaha! But we made it by undetected. It reminded me of the fish at Lake Powell story with dad! But anyway, the fufu made Elder Cardon really sick Wednesday and Thursday. He was vomiting and he couldn’t even open his eyes because his head hurt so bad. We stayed in those days. So I had a Thanksgiving by myself! But it was actually really good! I bought a chicken leg/thigh for 1 USD!!!! I just boiled it and made some of the potatoes and gravy, also made some of the Jello! It was pretty dang good! Not at all like Thanksgiving of course, but I guess it was in the neighborhood. I really missed the pies though, so I am glad to hear nobody got them this year hahaha! As for the favorite Ghanaian dessert, hmmm I really don’t know. They don’t really eat desserts. They have this stuff called Fan Milk. It is basically vanilla ice cream in a sachet and guys riding bikes go around selling it from a big cooler on the front of the bike. They have little clown horns they honk so you always know when the Fan Ice guy is around haha. That’s about as good as it gets, and its only 70 pesewes. But he is feeling better now luckily. Man some of the people here really showed how awesome they are though, we had like 5 people come check on us because they hadn’t seen us! Paul’s aunt, Cecelia, came and checked on us on Wednesday at like 8 because she hadn’t seen us. She made us food, bought Cardon some medicine, everything! It was sweet! She takes care of us really well! She always makes us food and invites us to eat with them! She just needs to find out the Gospel is true. Her problem is she is too stubborn to find an answer, she told us she will never leave her church, even if she gets an answer, so she just needs to be humble. She knows it is true though, that is what’s frustrating. But we have done all we can, it’s up to her now.

I can’t believe it is already Festivus time!!!! Man I miss it sooooo much! You know the Polar Express song that Josh Groban sings? Elder Cardon has it on his music player and I stumbled across it the other night. I listened to it like 5 times. It is the very essence of Festival. Festival is the very essence of Christmas. I really miss being there with you and helping and just having the Christmas spirit everywhere. It really is one of my favorite things in the world. So I hope it all goes well! I will really miss the whole experience. Oh well, it’ll be there when I get back. Christmas isn’t really a big thing over here. I guess it used to be bigger, but they have downsized it a lot recently because it’s a white man holiday or something. This morning though as I was getting ready someone had some Frank Sinatra Christmas music playing outside and it just took me back to the snowy hills haha!

I am happy to hear Adam is loving deacons! Those were good times. It’s crazy to think he is one of the annoying little deacons now haha! Yeah we have the youth do the blessing and passing here, we luckily have some that are able to! It’s nice! That’s cool the missionaries taught in young women’s.  As for us, we teach pretty dang well together. Elder Moore said we had the best unity of any training companionship, so I guess that’s good. The hardest thing people have understanding out here is that there is only one true church. Their whole concept of religion and Christianity is a little whacked out. You would think that since everyone here believes in God it would help in teaching, but honestly it makes it a lot harder. They just have weird beliefs and stuff. I think a lot of it is because before churches came here they had juju as their religions. For example, out here the word "saints" means evil spirits. So they think Latter Day Saints means we worship evil spirits and the Book of Mormon is used for chanting and stuff. Just weird things like that. I think they think of Jesus as more of a positive energy spirit god superhero or something than the literal Redeemer of the world and our Savior and Brother.

Thank you for the bank thing, I will have to go check. I will take out a nice chunk since I apparently have Sams Club coming in the mail haha! I will look forward to it though! Thank you in advance for the packages! I just hope I don’t get transferred in the coming weeks and have to move with the packages (That won’t happen)!  Well, I have a  nice little story to tell that didn’t fit in the email anywhere, so I'll just throw it in here. The other day we were walking around in a little community and we stopped walking by this kid, like 5 years old. We didn’t even notice him until we heard him start crying. We turned around and looked at him and he started crying harder and then the best part....he peed his pants! Yep, kids are not our biggest fans at times. Lots of kids are absolutely terrified of white people. It always helps too when their parents find it hilarious and pick up their crying kids and shove them at us to scare them even more. Oh Ghana haha!

But it’s been a good week! We have 5 people with baptism dates for December 21st! None of them came to church but one this week, so that’s not good, but we will keep working with them! I am hoping it will happen though! That would be sweet! Oh and yesterday we did some clerk work. We corrected some of the members records and entered in all the tithing onto the computers. It was nice! The computer works well, there is a nice office chair, and air conditioning!!! But President Shulz said we can’t email on it because he doesn’t want missionaries abusing the computer, so we are still stuck in Essiama. But yeah, now I know how to do tithing on the computer and change peoples records haha.

The Gospel is awesome! I read a great scripture in Helaman 15 this morning. Don’t remember the verses, I think 7-8, but it talks about how the Gospel changes you. It’s always so sweet to see the Gospel change people. Moro for example, the other man we baptized, really understands the Gospel and has seen the blessings it has brought into his life. He is so eager to learn more and we even gave him a D&C. He is excited to read it and learn. He sees how the Gospel blesses lives. It’s so true, that is what makes the difference in us, the Gospel. Even if we don’t understand the timeline or how things work, just to have faith and know that everything God does is for us! Moses 1:39. That is why we have the scriptures and go to church, that is why Christ died for us, so that we could be blessed and live with Him again! It’s amazing! It’s true! Everyone needs to know it. So few do though. But that’s what keeps me going out here, is knowing that God is always with us helping us and guiding us. We can’t do this work alone, it is with His help.

I am so thankful for a wonderful family!!!! You guys are the best and I will miss you this Christmas and Festivus!!!!! But I am so happy I will get to talk to you! I am so thankful you are my family! I love you guys! Oh, I started carrying that picture of our family at my graduation in my scriptures to show to people. Thought you would enjoy that! But I love you guys!!!! Have a happy Festivus!!!!!