Hi! It sounds like it’s been a good week and will be a good week! This has been a good week out here in Jurassic Park as well! I didn’t buy the knock off Reeses Puffs, because I decided to go with the knock off Cap'n Crunch called Sammy the Sailor. I bought some milk powder and enjoyed it for the week each morning haha! It was soo good!!!! I am glad you enjoyed the pictures! There were a lot! Yeah last Sunday was awesome and we did confirm them yesterday! Hopefully they will all get the priesthood this week! Just depends on if the branch president interviews them. Speaking of the branch president....

They had a big leadership training for all the wards and branches in Takoradi last week Saturday. So apparently our branch president and 1st councilor got in a big fight over some money or something and were screaming at each other and he said he wanted to stop being branch president. The poor guy runs the branch by himself and really doesn’t get any help from the councilors or anyone. The clerk can’t use the computer so he even puts all the records in. On top of that he is a teacher and is always really busy. So he was feeling really stressed. But he got calmed down and he is cool now. But on Tuesday we had a Zone meeting with President Shulz and he came and did interviews. He called me and Elder Cardon to be the Assistant Clerks in the branch so we are going to help with all the records and basically all the computer stuff. So I am glad we will be able to relieve that stress from his job. He is a really good president, he just doesn’t really have any help and is really busy. Oh and his name is Adolf so he has that going for him haha. On Friday I went on splits while Elder Cardon was in Agona doing interviews. I was with Elder Reihle from DC. We had a pretty good day, only taught a few lessons though. But we taught this guy named Ebenezer who we met recently and he came to church. He is smart and interested. We were teaching him a good lesson about the Restoration and it was going good, and then some guy came and joined us and wanted to cause trouble. He must read American news some small bit or something because he just kept saying stupid things like. "I’m sure you know about Mitt Romney and the reason he lost is because the people in America are suspicious about where your church gets its money from." He was just obsessed about where the church got its money from. Then after that we detracted from the Restoration and talked about tithing, he just went off about how nobody in America likes black people and stupid stuff like that, so that was sweet. But Ebenezer was awesome and was like, "No man, I have been to the church. It’s good." So he is a boss. We will see if he keeps it up. We also taught the boy Paul’s auntie. He is the one who got baptized. She came to church and she has sat in our lessons before. I think she knows the church is true but she is just stubborn and won’t leave her Anglican church. We had a really good lesson with her about how if you want to know the truth and act on it, God will answer your prayers. She felt the Spirit you could tell, but she is just stubborn. Hopefully she will humble herself though and accept it.

That is so weird that Adam is 12! Seems like yesterday it was my first time doing fast offerings and passing the sacrament. Good for him, that is sweet. About the lds.org thing, I know I had to create a mormon.org profile before I left, is that what you are talking about? We don’t ever use them or anything out here because people really don’t have computers. Seems like everyones phones can access facebook though, everyone is on facebook.

I am excited for the christmas packages! I will do my best to wait, But it will depend on our fridge haha. See the thing is if you leave any food out, even if it is wrapped and sealed, the ants will swarm it. So we have to put everything in the fridge. If there is room in the fridge, I will save it. If not, then I will have to open it and cram each thing individually into the fridge haha. So we will see! I still have some of the candy from the last one in the fridge. The kids loved the glow sticks and I have started on the bracelets. Got a picture of Paul and his handicapped cousin with them on, so I’m sure you and whoever made the bracelets will enjoy that picture.

For Thanksgiving I am planning on buying a frozen piece of chicken today! So we will boil it or something and have it with the potatoes and gravy you sent, maybe I will even make the jello! It will be just like being home for Thanksgiving! Except for the pie and family and stuff haha. Good luck with Festival.  That is a good quote you sent, and is timed right haha (quote: It’s ok to be a glow stick; sometimes you have to break before you shine). Thank you!

I hope you have a good week, thanks for all you do for me. You are the best parents in the world!!!!! Love you!

 Paul, Moro, Francis, me, Elder Cardon!

 What an awesome day! So blessed to be there!!

 A close up.....Awesome!

Paul and his aunt. She is not a member, and was really standoffish to us at first, but we have begun teaching her and she has potential I think. He lives with her and talked her into coming to the baptism!

 This poor guy. Ladies and Gentlemen, the sea turtle. I wanted to flip him over so bad, but someone had bought him for dinner.

 Haha this picture makes me feel like a bad person.

 But apparently not bad enough to take two.

Cody wanted some pictures of the wildlife, so here is an Aponche(goat)!

Poor Sea Turtle!

 I bought these two kente ties for like 16 cedis. Havent even worn them yet haha! They are sweet though!

 A recent convert gave us each a tie. Cardon got a normal tie and I got this SWEET Christmas tie. It even plays music if you push on Santa haha!

Here we are with her! Her name is Elizabeth. She is like 80 years old and got baptized in July. (And I have on my sweet Christmas tie!)

 The glowsticks are a hit. We gave them to some kids, like Paul that we baptized. They were walking around showing all the neighbors and stuff. We had an older lady run up to us and demand we give one to her. We laughed and asked how old she was and just straighfaced she said, "I am 51 years." Hahaha sadly we were out. But this little guys name is Joshua. He is a legend. He never cries or gets upset. He is awesome. Always happy to see us, so we gave him a glow stick and it made his life.

 Some more of the Rock

 These kids were playing the jugs like drums and the others were dancing. It actually was really cool! We went out of our way to walk over to them and take some pictures. You can see how the one jug is facing me right? Every time he would hit it a blast of air would come out and hit me in the crotch. Took me a minute to figure what the heck was going on haha.

 Window diving haha!

 Our main room in our apartment!! So spacious and luxurious!

 Another pic of our room/my bed.

 This is the kitchen, small but with two people not bad at all! We had some dishes in the sink, but we usually get them done right away!

 The fridge sits alone.

 This is my desk! Lots of stuff!

 The inside of a guy's house we know

 His Ceiling

 This is a typical house in a village. Not many like this in Axim, but in Bokazo there were alot.

 This was when I was with Elder Moore in Takoradi. This is from their apartment window. That house looks like it belongs in San Diego or something! It was so nice.

This is a road we walked the other day. Typical Ghana.

 THANK YOU FOR THE PANCAKE MIX!!! It was sooo goood! Made some apple pancakes here with a side of apples!

 Some Acheke. Its an Nzema dish. Its pretty much like salty rice, but it has veggies and, obviously, fish. "Dont eat me Elder!"

 This is some acheke that Francis made for us, it was really good! That is fish on top.

Haha the guy we baptized Francis fed us a few weeks ago. We had fufu and there was just random meat and fish in there as well. Shrimp, fish, and this thing. It was a ribcage. To what I dont know, but you can see the heart on the left side. The meat was actually really really good. I am guessing it was cat just judging by the size. If so, cat is dang nice!

LOOK! Its a swing over the OCEAN!

Yeah!!

Ankobra Beach - Beautiful!

My personal favorite!

Happy Monday!!!

Yeah I am really glad that me and Cardon are staying here, we work well together! There are transfers every 6 weeks, so the next one is right before Christmas, so we will see!  And I remembered my cord so I will send pictures home!!!! Finally!!!

This week was crazy!!! On Tuesday we were in Takoradi for our zone meeting, which went well. We taught like one lesson that day, so that was kinda too bad. But it was a fun day. And then on Thursday we went to Tarkwa so Cardon could do their interviews. They had 3 people so I just sat with the sweet Tarkwa elders and we watched The Other Side of Heaven and some movie about the church starting in Ghana. It was sweet! We left Tarkwa at like 7 and got to Takoradi at like 9. We stayed with two of the Takoradi elders and then the next day Cardon and one of them went to Cape Coast for a District leaders meeting, so I spent the day with Elder Darlington from Nigeria in Takoradi. It was cool, Takoradi is actually pretty nice, which means I have been out here a while because it would make you cry haha. So dirty and smelly, but by now it is nice. Anyway we taught a few lessons until Cardon came back then we all met at the Stake Center. We needed interviews done in Axim for our people so Cardon and our new Zone leader Elder Ndah went back to Axim and I stayed in the other Takoradi area with our good ole Britsh Zone leader, Elder Moore. He is awesome, so funny I love the guy. We had fun and explored the city a bit.  Found a place that sells those knock off cereals. So today since we are back in Takoradi for Sub pday I am going to buy some fake Reeses Puffs!!!! Saturday I returned to Axim late and then Sunday we had the baptisms!!!!

It was such a good Sunday! One to remember. All 3 got baptized after church and we had a bunch of investigators there to witness it! We taught a really good lesson on baptism to them in the investigators class too, so it really touched them I think. But I got to baptize all three of them!!! What a great experience! Paul, Moro, and Francis. Francis is like 6 foot or so, and I baptized him last. It took 3 tries to get him under haha, his head would not go down!!! And I almost slipped trying to bring him up the first time because he lifted his feet off the ground! That would not have been good!!!! But we got him under on the 3rd try haha! He is kind of a funny guy and after we got changed and closed, I went to explain to him why we had to do it three times. I asked him if he knew why and he told me "Oh yes, I felt the powers of the RAGING river!" haha what a typical Ghanaian thing to say. But we cleared it up for him.

That is crazy Adam will be 12! That’s so exciting though! I remember my first time passing the sacrament, seems like yesterday. That’s cool he will get to go to the temple as well! I am happy you got to go to Bush's homecoming! I am sure he did great, he was a great missionary. That’s funny dad knows his dad, what a small world. Hope you are able to get the paintings soon! Tell him I say Oh Toh Den.

Today we are in Takoradi again and we are staying the night because we have a big meeting with President Shulz and stuff, so since it takes so long to travel back, we are just staying here. We went to the beach as a combined zone in Takoradi today, which was sweet. I took my white shirt off and changed into shorts and a t shirt. When I came back to change back, somebody stole my shirt and left me a piece of crap white shirt! I was mad! No idea where it went, but luckily I packed a spare one in my bag since we are staying over tonight! What type of guy steals my shirt!? Haha oh well. Hmmm I thought I had more to write, but really that’s all, just a crazy, but sweet, week! Ok I will send pics now though!!!! Love you!!!

Hi!

I got the packages yesterday!!! Thank you sooo much they were awesome!!!! Lots of good stuff inside! I am wearing the Ziggy shirt right now, it is so nice! Thank you! In the next package I could use some shaving cream just fyi.  

I agree the year has shot on by, seems like it was just Christmas and stuff! Madness! I hope the Festival stuff goes smoothly though. Tell Adam good job with basketball, I am sure he is doing great! As for the walking, most of Axim is pretty centralized. The church is a ways though, maybe a 20 minute walk. But we walked a TON on Saturday. There is a village called Nsein that is like 45 minutes away, and all of our appointments fell through that day so we decided to walk there. There are a few members who live there and we just talked to random people. One of the members there is a man named Timothy Krutchie. He is like 65 years old and is completely blind, yet he comes to church each week! What a boss! He worked at a cement factory in the early 80's and got a bunch of cement dust in his eyes and they botched the washing so now he is blind. The company didn't pay him his pension and his lawyer stole his money, yet he is always so happy and willing to serve God. It’s awesome. We went and visited him and he bought us a Fanta! Also he had us help him pick some garments out and then the next day in church was Fast and Testimony Meeting so he got up and thanked us. It was sweet. But yeah we walked a TON that day. We had the Zone leaders come on splits with us on Thursday, Elder Moore from England came with us and Elder Bush went to Nkroful. It was sweet! Elder Moore is hilarious, we laughed too much that day. We had too much fun too haha. In the apartment there is a window in between the hallway and the living room for some reason, a big window just in the wall, so we opened it and laid some mattresses on one side of the window and dove through the window onto the mattresses. We got some sweet pictures of mid jump haha. But yeah. Speaking of Elder Bush, he comes home this week! He will have two homecomings, one this Sunday in his new ward and one next in his old. I got his address, but I left it at the apartment!!!! Sorry! Maybe you can find him on Facebook? Austin Bush. He has those paintings for you guys. And our Zone is Takoradi and the district is Nkroful. We are about 3 hours from the mission home, so it’s a ways away. And yeah we have had water everyday this week I think! Sweet!!!  We eat quite a bit of fish here, but as long as it isn't smoked its all good haha!

Axim is doing great, we had one heck of a week! Transfer news came in Saturday and both me and Cardon are staying, so that’s good! We had a really good transfer and our work is showing off. We had 14 investigators come to church yesterday! The branch is so excited to see the missionary work affect them! We will be having 3 people baptize this Sunday! A 14 year old boy named Paul, a 28 year old guy named Moro, and a 50+ guy named Francis Seki. It’s exciting. We are gonna have a busy busy week ahead of us too. We are going to Takoradi tomorrow for a Zone meeting, on Wednesday we will do splits with the Tarkwa Elders, on Thursday we will have to go to Takoradi and spend the night because Cardon has a District leader meeting in Cape Coast on Friday. Then on Friday after his meeting we will go to Nkroful to do some interviews. Saturday the zone leaders are coming to interview our three baptismal guys, and then Sunday will be the baptisms! So it’s gonna be crazy!

We went on splits on Friday with the elders from Agona. Elder Cardon went to Agona and Elder Richards came to Axim with me. He was in the MTC with me and was the one wanting to go home. Man that was an interesting day.  Funny dynamic. Its hard to type, but I promise it is a funny story not an angry one hahaha. You asked how we email. We have to travel to Essiama, about 30 minutes in a taxi. There is no internet cafe in Axim still, so we just have to travel. Not too terrible, but the internet is dicey here.  After my last letter you asked about how they pay for a bride. I am not sure how much the average bride price is, but the parents set it. So we found out that the church considers them married as long as they have met both parents and agreed on the price, and paid at least partially. So this guy just has to make a down payment and he can get baptized hahaha!  I don’t know if you can use cows or sea turtles, but it wouldn’t surprise me haha. No I have not seen any more turtles. Oh but last week after emailing on Monday, we went to Axim beach for lunch. I had a Chicken burger and fries! And while we were eating there were whales jumping out of the ocean!! It was awesome! Big giant whales like 2 miles out. You could see them jump and then giant explosions of water! It was sweet!

Thanks for all you do for me!!! I love you sooo much and will talk to you next week!

Hi!!!!

Man this has been a busy week! Kind of a crazy week, but a good one!! I am happy things are going well at home! I love hearing stories from home, it is nice and cozy haha! But I will be sure to get some pics of the kids with the bracelets when the packages come. I have given out some of the CTR rings, I try to be selective to whom I give, because I want them to actually know what they mean. But yeah I still have some, which is nice! Sounds like Adam is doing good at ball and that Halloween was good! So he went eh? What was he? I had a dream I came home and you hadn't really changed the garage doors so I was mad haha! Random. No we didn't take Malaria classes, weird. We just take our Doxy pills every day and sleep under the net. But life in Axim is going well! We will have 4 baptisms on the 17th! I am hoping to get to baptize somebody! That would be cool! And we are hoping that this couple will be ready either the last week of Nov or the first week of Dec. They have been wanting to get baptized the last 4 years, but were not married. They just got their traditional marriage done in the last 6 months so they are good! Traditional marriage is when the guy pays the bride price haha!

Yes we have still been teaching Justina. I am hoping she will be baptized in Dec. The other day we taught her and she broke down in tears because of her trials. Ghanaians don't cry. It was sad, but we were able to help her a lot. I am kind of disappointed because she didn't come to church this week. That is going to be the hardest thing, getting her to leave her church. But the Gospel is the only thing that can bring true peace and joy. I have been thinking about that a lot lately. I was reading the articles from that Temples magazine you got me a while back, and man the temple is such an amazing place. I encourage you guys to go as much as you can! The blessings are eternal. I wish I could go! I am really grateful for sealings! I know that no matter where we are or what happens to us, we will always be together if we are living righteously! What a blessing!  How can anyone go through this life knowing that beautiful truth and not go forward with it! You should sacrifice all that is necessary to attain that blessing! I have also been thinking a lot about my own self and reflecting. A scripture that has repeatedly come to mind is Ether 12:27, along with Philippians 4:13 and Isaiah 41:10. Read those ones. One of the hardest but best blessings thus far out here has been seeing my own flaws and weaknesses and improving them. This is a refining process, and I know that I can have my weaknesses turned into strengths if I will turn to Christ.

So I have a fun story. We were down by the beach and we looked to the left and sitting behind this building and beside a canoe was this giant sea turtle on its back! We thought it was dead, but as we walked over, it started moving! It was huge! Probably 200 lbs or more. It couldn't move, and I wanted to flip it so bad. But apparently somebody bought it for $20 for dinner! I was tempted to pay them off and flip it! Or just do it and run! But I’m sure its not hard to find the white guy and exact revenge on him haha! Everyone knows where we live already so... But man this turtle was sweet! It was sad and is in somebody’s freezer I’m sure, but that’s not something you see every day. 

This Sunday we watched conference too! Oh except it was in Fante... We watched two sessions, the Saturday afternoon and the Sunday morning I think. The Motab was english so that was nice haha! But the Liahonna should come next month so that will be nice.  

I am happy to get the packages soon! I emailed dad about a Christmas one, remember Little Debby and Mindy Mints are always good haha! And maybe a giant bag of M and Ms? IDK haha!  Thank you for the support. I love you soooo much! I will talk to you soon! Literally!