The kids love the colorful rubber CTR rings, 

and Elder Hack loves to hand them out!

President Stevenson prepared a "Title of Liberty" and each of the missionaries signed it in token of their commitment to each other.  It's pretty cool!

June, August and September 2014

Departing Missionaries

Hey Happy Tuesday to you all! Sorry, yesterday myldsmail was down for some odd reason so virtually none of us could email...odd! But today it is up and runnin so that is good! Happy to hear all is well and everyone is doing good! Sounds like you have some fun stuff coming up with the camp that should be awesome! Gotta love it when Kartchner does some demos with the kids!  And sounds like Brady will have a good time in Cali, should be pretty cool! All is well here in sleepy Swedru. Rainy season has officially started I think. It’s been raining all day today and started last night. Pretty nice not to be dying in the sun, but still kind of too bad since it makes everything all muddy! Guess I just can’t be pleased haha. But this week has been a good week, we have found more success this week than last, the work is moving forward and we just set a new baptism goal for June and set a goal of 5! We are pretty sure we will be able to accomplish it; we have a lot of well prepared people we are working with. It is true; we did indeed have a wonderful baptism on Sunday. The baptism was at 7:30 am, so the night before we had to sit at the church until 10 to wait for the font to fill...Pretty fun! But all went well and Bishop was able to baptize his mom. There were a good number of people who came for it and everyone was very supportive and happy! I will send some pics, maybe tonight when we will be at the church. I will have my face in these ones ;)  But yeah, it went well and this week we are having 3 more for the woman Ruth and her daughter Vera and son Precious. So that is exciting! This week I had the opportunity to do a baptismal interview for a girl named Angela who is like 10 for the other elders and it was a really cool experience. Usually when you interview children they are pretty nervous and don’t really know what to say, but this girl was so ready and knew everything so well! It was a cool spiritual experience and she was baptized on Saturday. We were able to go watch it and it was awesome! She will be a powerful little member. Oh also, we did indeed have a very wonderful seminar on Friday! It was awesome! There were so many missionaries there and it was awesome to get to visit with people I have not seen in so long and talk to good friends. I spent a long time talking to Elder Mckeon. He is definitely one of my favorite companions I have had, it is kind of a shame we were only together for 6 weeks, but it was nice to talk to him. He gave me updates on how all those awesome people in Cape are doing and everyone is doing good! That woman named Selina who had the debt issue that ended up getting baptized, her 10 year old son got baptized on Friday so that was really exciting to hear! I was pretty happy about that! But yeah, President did a great job instructing on the importance of serving the Lord out of love. Love for Him and love for the people we are teaching. It was awesome. He taught using D&C 88:83-85 and we went through it one by one. I encourage you to go read it, it has a lot more meaning as a missionary I guess, but still pretty cool! But we talked about how much better everything is when you are serving out of love for the Lord as opposed to selfish desires or out of fear. It was awesome and I loved it. Signing the shirt was pretty awesome too I must say. But yeah, we had a great meeting, we got to the station to get a car back and oh no! There were no more cars going to Swedru! Honestly I was not too upset, I was fine to spend a night in Cape, but we did have 4 other missionaries and so we couldn’t sleep there. The Assistants went to get the van because they were going to drive us back to Swedru themselves. After about 30 mins of waiting for them a tro tro pulled up that was going to Swedru so we got in and sailed off. We got home late, but we did get home! So that was a fun little adventure I guess. But yeah, that’s what’s been going on for the most part. We have continued our planning for the activities and Elder Dube is coming, along with the Church News from Accra. Oh and Bishop wants to stick E. Kaiser and I on the radio to do some advertising because he knows a guy or two who will allow us to do that....so yeah we are going on the air apparently haha. This is a pretty intense activity I must say! We are doing a parade around Swedru on the 19th with all the wards to promote it and we are going to hand out flyers to the onlookers.

Well, yesterday was a good p-day other than the lack of emailing. We went to Winneba and went to the beach where everyone played games and hung out. It was pretty fun. Then we went for a FHE with the other elders in our apt to one of their members and got fed fufu and so that was a bonus. So it’s been nice! Tonight we have an activity with the YSA's and we are watching Meet the Mormons and then tomorrow is MLC. Thursday we are going on exchanges and we have a YM/YW soccer game/ward council and then Saturday we have the baptisms! So there are a lot of cool things going on this week, should be sweet! You asked about the things I like getting in packages, well kitkats and twix is a personal favorite. I like the socks and ties. One elder in our apt gets Velveeta and that is AWESOME because every morning now we eat omelets with cheese. I mean, there really isn’t anything I have not liked that you have sent. It’s all great, but those are some of the favorites. And the CTR rings everyone loves! My pants are doing good, they are holding on. I have not bought any clothes in Ghana I don’t think, it’s kind of slim pickins. I needed shoe laces once and looked everywhere and couldn’t find any. I had to ask a member in Cape to get me some and she couldn’t find them either. I asked her to try again and finally she got some and they were pretty terrible. So maybe that is another good word of advice to other missionary moms haha, send shoe laces! I am ok with them now BTW haha. Thanks for everything though, you are the BEST! Talk to you later!!!!!

Last Week’s Letter

Hey Happy Memorial Day (apparently)!!! Haha I forgot that was today, pretty cool though! I am happy to report that both packages made it safe and sound into my hands this week, so THANK YOU!!! You are the absolute best! The shirts are perfect, a little baggy for West Africa fashion, but they look fine for back home fashion so I am gonna wear them with some American Pride rather than tailoring them like most would. Thank you so much for them and for the shoes, which are awesome, and for everything else! We made the no bake peanut butter thing last night and it is gone now...so it was delicious! Oh and thanks for sending the pics, Adam is getting big indeed, pretty crazy! I totally spaced on emailing him last week, so I will attempt to do that today. We were at another internet cafe and I was about to start typing up my email to you and the power went out...so we have moved to a better location. But yeah, the week has been a lot better than last week! We have found, we are teaching, we are continuing to find! Oh and we have 1 baptism for this Sunday! It will be the easiest baptism I have ever had out here! It’s the Bishops mom and he has taught her everything! All the lessons, so we have reviewed with her a bit and that’s it! She is prepared though and has a strong support system in her awesome Bishop son so we are pretty excited for her. Oh and her other family members are members as well so that is a plus. So she is going to be on for the weekend! The family of 3 we were hoping for had to be pushed back to the 6th because we have not been able to see them very much this week and we still have a bit more to teach them. Although they are ready, we still need to teach them before baptism. That’s a good thing though in my opinion, it strengthens people so they will remain strong forever. So we are workin on them! I went on exchanges with a great missionary named Elder Day this week. He is from Delta and has been out for 9 months now. We had a good day, he is a nice guy and we get along well. He is a big hunter and promised to take me hunting when he gets back, so I got that to look forward to! But we had a good day, we taught a Muslim woman who came to church a few months ago, but I don’t think she will really go anywhere right now, she said she wants to be a Muslim but wants to visit our church sometimes. So we will keep working on her to see what happens, but her husband banned her from coming so...but you never know what could happen! We did have a nice day though, and all week we have had nice days. I have enjoyed the week; it has really sped on by! I couldn’t believe it was Monday again! We have been planning some activities for June with the ward as well; they want to make June a
missionary month. So we have made plans for 2 activities a week during the month with the grand activity an open house on the 20th and then a big sacrament meeting on the 28th with President Stevenson and Elder Dube of the Seventy. Yeah so as you can see it’s gonna be pretty serious! We are poppin out general authorities and mission presidents for cryin' out loud! Haha pretty sweet, we will see how it all comes together! The bishop is really taking the lead on most everything which is so cool! He is getting everything coordinated and is doing a fantastic job! We are going to watch Meet the Mormons on the 2nd. Elder Kaiser got it sent to him so we are going to take advantage of it! Then on the 6th we are going to have a day of outdoor games at the church. They have repainted the interior and exterior of the chapel recently so it looks brand new. I hope it all works out and we are able to do a lot of good missionary work from it all. It will be a community event! Fun for all! Oh did I mention that this Friday we are going to Cape? President has started doing devotionals for the missionaries who are preparing to go home to keep them motivated so ours is this Friday. It will be sweet! I am pretty excited about that! It will be cool and also nice to see some people again I have not seen in a long time.

But I am doing good, gotta love the crazy things that happen because they make for good stories later right? ;) Sadly I did not get any meal pics of the pig roast, sorry! But we ate it with boiled casava, tomato stew and coke!  So it was a feast! It was really tasty I must say! Thanks for all you do and say though, you truly are the BEST! I love you so much! I feel bad because my emails I fear are getting a bit shorter, but know that I know this work is the Lord's very work. Nothing is more important than having and living the Gospel. That is what this life is about! How blessed we are to have it in our possession. It is Life. Love you! Have an AWESOME DAY!!!