Hello!!!

So glad to hear from you as usual! It sounds like it has been quite the week! I have been missing good old Festival! When I woke up Sunday morning I thought to myself that right then you guys were driving home probably, and it looks like I was right! Sounds like it was a crazy drive home! Pretty cold winter this year eh? That’s crazy! I am glad the fam and neighbors were able to all help out though. But yeah, I am glad all went well and you were able to have a nice delivery day! I missed it for sure, but it’s been a good week down here in Wild West Africa. Oh and I just looked at the Shulz' blog and yeah, that’s a picture of our zone from a week or two back! President was doing interviews. Haha I also saw on the blog some lucky zone got Thanksgiving at the mission home and they watched the Santa Clause!!! What?!!? Lucky guys! Elder Cowen is on the other side of the mission in Winneba. That’s where the Ivie's are. We have the Bybees over here. They are from Hooper I believe, like the Shulz', and will be going home in January. They are awesome!!! It’ll be sad to see them leave. There will be a new couple coming to replace them though named the Julanders haha. Everyone laughs at their name. But yeah maybe you will get to go to the Bybee’s homecoming or something. They are great at helping us. Apparently according to the mission office I never paid for my packages and they say I owe 100 cedis, but I did pay so the Bybees are taking care of that mix up for me. Speaking of packages, thank you for sending them but I haven’t seen them yet, they will probably get here this week! I will be happy to see what lies inside! I was able to pull money from the ATM too no problem, so thank you! 

So Christmas we will be having a mission wide devotional in Cape Coast this Friday, so that should be awesome! We are doing a talent show and each zone has to participate, so our zone is doing a "Ghanafied" version of jingle bells. Should be interesting haha! We will see. But I am excited, it should be pretty fun. This will be the Shulz' last Christmas here, so it will be cool I’m sure. But yeah as for calling, I am not exactly sure but Elder Cardon said that last time they called home they went and bought a Vodafone sim card. The way phones work here is you buy a sim card and it’s like pay as you go. So you buy so much credit. So yeah I will buy a sim card for a few cedis and buy a few cedis worth of credit so I can call for a few hours! I am thinking I will call on Christmas day at around 8:30-9 home time! So that'll be good. I am excited though! But yeah, the transfers will happen on the 23rd, so if Elder Cardon goes I will have to figure out how to call home on my own!  Haha we have not really decorated our apartment. There is nothing to decorate it with! Cardons mom sent him a felt Christmas tree that he hung on the wall and then 25 envelopes. Each one has a day on it so he opens one each day and it is a pic of someone he knows back home. He then hangs them on the felt tree like ornaments. And she sent some stockings so we have stockings hanging on the wall too haha! Oh and yeah all the packages go to the mission office first and then they send them with the zone leaders to our zones!

But I have had a pretty fine week! On Wednesday we went and did some service for a man we are teaching named Samson. He has a farm and we went with him to "weed." Pretty much we chopped down the jungle with swords!!! It was awesome!!! There was land near his farm he needed to clear so we cleared it...with swords! Actually they are called cutlasses. But yeah, it’s a sword. When we got to the land it was thick bush. When we left, it was leveled. Samson is a pro, he did almost everything. He was chopping down trees with one strike. It took like 5 minutes for us to do it. It was awesome though haha! I had to buy a cutlass that morning, so I am armed and extremely dangerous now. Really though, I am dangerous. At the very beginning I was chopping some bushes and the cutlass slipped out of my hands, so yeah, I threw it on accident haha. Only once though. But it was a fun morning! I like how NOW that I’m gone you sprayed for spiders hahaha. There are spiders all over our apartment here, could you send the guy here. Oh and by the way, I finally found a giant rat! I got a nice picture with it, so stay tuned!

We went on splits on Friday with our brothers in Nkroful, Elders Mngoma and Chishinji. Chishinji came to Axim with me and we had a great day! He is from Zambia and he is sweet. He has been out for almost 6 months. He has 7 brothers and 3 of them are members. He had a hard time coming out on a mission due to his family, and he has had a somewhat hard time thus far, but he is such a happy guy and is a really good missionary. I learned a lot from him that day. He has some really powerful stories. There was a woman in his old area that was paralyzed who asked them to give her a blessing. The next morning she called, she could walk. Crazy huh? The priesthood is real. It was sweet getting to know him since he has only been in our district this past transfer.

The work in Axim is going. We have 5 people with a baptism date for the 21st, but honestly none of them are ready. I don’t think they will make it. Hopefully soon, but some of them have some serious issues they need to have worked out. It’s been stressful for me, but that’s all part it. The biggest issue is they all want to baptize, but they don’t have a testimony that it’s true. We can teach them all day, but ultimately it’s up to them to find out for themselves. We are the guides and will be there to help and support them every step, but it really is up to them. And it’s so sweet when they see how the gospel can help them. Like for instance, the man Francis that was just baptized told us how he was walking through his farm and he heard a voice telling him to watch out for the snakes, and when he looked up into the trees right in front of him, there were two snakes hanging down. He gave a powerful testimony last Sunday too apparently. It was in Nzema, but all the members have been telling us about it. That’s what I want for these 5, a testimony. We will just have to help them to develop that. We went over Alma 5 with a few of them, it is a really sweet chapter.

I am soooooo grateful to be out here! It is hard work, but it is soooo worth it! It makes me so thankful for you guys too and what a wonderful family I have. We are so blessed, I can’t even comprehend it! I am so thankful for all you do and it makes me so happy to hear everyone is doing good and that Adam is loving deacons and is such a good kid. That’s just awesome! We have a great ward too, I always think that! You really don’t know how much everyone does until you come out to one of these tiny branches where nobody does anything! We do a lot of stuff out here, hopefully they will learn and take it upon themselves soon though!

But I love you lots! I will talk to you next week!!!!! Yabaya! (bye!)

Takoradi Zone - Lookin Good!!