Good morning good morning!!!!!

Happy Monday to you all! Glad to hear that everything is going well back home and that you have been busy with the real estate mom!  Man I really do miss a stateside Christmas. The Christmas spirit just aint the same in Ghana! But that’s ok, we will enjoy it for sure! We are having zone conference on Thursday and it will be our Christmas party as well. We are singing a song as a zone and IDK what else will happen! But it should be sweet! Sad news to report is that, no, I have not received the letters or any other packages. Hopefully they are sitting in the mission home with my name on it. It will come; just will take some time I guess. I enjoyed a nice apple pie the other day!!! Oh it was heavenly! I found the directions to the cheesecake as well...sorry haha! But yeah a lot of things have been devoured with favorable results. I need to try the stuffing still though, I am scared after my last attempt haha! I really want to make the biscuits too. Thank you again for all of it!!!! You’re the best!!!! So for Christmas I will probably call a little later than usual, because we may or may not be having a zone activity. I will let you know for sure next week. Expect a call around noon I would guess? This week we extended two baptismal dates to some of our investigators. One is an old woman named C. who cannot speak English. She is very smart and remembers everything we teach her and has come to church twice now. The other is a man named Bro. P. He is an older man as well and actually was good friends with Billy Johnson (guy who got the church here) and Bro. Ewudzie when the church first came but soon after left to live in Nigeria. He has been there 30 years but recently came back and decided to return to the faith he once had at his fingertips. So he is very interested and had a great confirmation to his prayers and knows what we are sharing is true! So they are both scheduled for the 17th of January! Wow 2015!!! What?!?! Sorry, back to business... Haha one stupid thing that happened was on Friday we came back to the apartment to find that there was a funeral literally right outside our bedroom windows. The great thing about funerals is they BLAST music ALLL NIGHT!!!!! OH man music was literally shaking the house from 9-6...Got like 2 hours of sleep....I don’t understand that at all. What is the point of blasting music all night??? Oh well....haha so that was fun. But also we did have a baptism for B.T.! It went well!!! All was good and he was sooo happy! I was able to baptize him and right after he came out of the water he just kept saying "thank you, thank you." He is an awesome guy! He will be a strong member of the church for sure!

Yes today was p-day! It was sub-pday so we had a zone activity. We went to the beach to play games, and when we got there the other zone also was doing the same thing. Kind of awkward because President just said that we shouldn’t do combined zone activities. But the assistants were there and said it was all good. We played capture the flag and E. Odongo split some of his toes open on a stone as he was running! His burn is finally healed and now he has gashes all over. He almost passed out because of the pain! An American guy was there and helped us treat his wounds. The guy is a pastor and is here with his family for a 4 year mission to Ghana!!!! Wow that is crazy! He was a cool guy though; it’s always refreshing to meet somebody from the states too. But yeah E. Odongo is ok now and all is well. We will now go and shop and take care of all other business haha! So far an interesting day though. Well, that is what’s going on here. Life is moving onward and everything is pretty good! I am healthy, and happy! Happiness I have truly learned does not depend on anyone else, but it is really up to you! If you want to be happy you will be happy. There is a lot of drama here in the mission haha, it’s like jr high I swear, but you just gotta not mind anyone else and do what you gotta do! Love you sooo much though! Have a good week!  

A Variety Pack of Pictures This Week :)

Morning Salt Lake City!!!! I am good, glad you enjoyed your little vacation to St. George with the Festivus alumni! Sounds like you had a good time. Yes some of the packages came this week, THANK YOU!!! You are awesome! I got the Thanksgiving one and one of the Christmas ones, the one with the tree and calendar along with grandma and grandpa's! Everything was awesome!!! Wow you guys are just awesome thank you soooo much! I really loved your 4-legged turkey on the card haha!!! It brought back memories of Telestrations. All animals look the same! It looked like a turtle-turkey hybrid. That gives me a good laugh each time I see it! The bacon is a welcome addition as well as everything! But again, thank you so very much! I am glad you got the pictures though; I was kind of scared that they would go into spam or something. But I am really happy they all went through. The rooms are here in old 54-step. The wooden barricade is how we lock the door at night haha. The snake was a green mamba; I was told it was one of the most poisonous in Ghana. That was in Akonfudi. We were at a member’s house and she opened a door and it came lunging out. So E. Assibey picked up a plank and smashed it. It was still very much alive in that picture until I smashed its head. The apartment is sweet though, it’s been really cool. It is a million times cleaner than it was hahaha. And my companion burned his foot right before he left his last area. He was burning trash using gas and it exploded. Luckily it only got his foot! He is doing much better though. Yeah we have a guy that comes and collects our trash so that is better. That is awesome that Emilee saw the former E. Cavaness. I miss that guy! And E. Cowan was in the zone until this transfer. Now he is in "Nketsiakrum." That literally means "peanut town." So yeah haha. I have been playing my guitar; I do find it very relaxing after we end the day to just sit on the balcony and play. The Christmas traditions here are on Christmas day, people dress up in crazy costumes and march around with trumpets and drums. They light fireworks too! I can buy Phantom Fireworks here hahahaha! Yeah I hung my tree and I took a pic so I will send it tomorrow if possible! But everything in there is just awesome!!!

But let’s see what has been going on this week. We had MLC on Wednesday and it was great as usual! Some changes are coming into the mission though. Starting next transfer we will begin having jr and sr companions, something that has not been in the past. Allegedly it was to limit "unrighteous dominion," but as President said, there are probably better ways to do that other than taking away someone to be responsible. So that is happening. We will be having a Christmas devotional on the 18th so that will be sweet, don’t really have any idea what will be happening but it will be sweet I’m sure. I got to see E. Quaisie at MLC as he is a newly called zone leader. He just got released as the branch president in Axim and so it was really fun to talk to him and hear about Axim. I miss that place! But it sounds like it is going well there. They have a new building and a member who I really liked is the branch president now. After that we had our Stake PEC meeting which was really good as well. They are good meetings. We are pretty much narcs on the wards though. We collect info from all the missionaries on how the meetings are in the wards and then go tell the stake president haha. But they are good. President Stevenson is always fun to listen to and he is at those meetings so it was good! And E. Cardon is here now so it is fun to see him as well. We also went on splits this week. I went with E. Seaman, the brand new elder in our apartment. It was pretty fun, reminded me of when I trained haha. You do a lot of talking! He is a good missionary though and it was a really good day, we saw Selina and Ben Tum. They are both doing great and will be baptized on Saturday!!! We also have another woman named Araba who will be baptized on the 27th and she is doing great as well. All of them came to church this week so I was really happy about that. The work is moving forward in the area. It was pretty slow last transfer, but this one it is really picking up and we are finding some good people. Oh and we sat down with Bro. Ewudzie one day for a bit and he showed us a ton of pics of when he came to Utah. He has a ton!!! He has met Elder Holland twice! He had pics with him. He will be going to Utah probably for general conference he said. I will probably still be in Cape around that time haha! It is so weird to me that it is already Christmas again though. The time flies. I am really thankful for this time of the year. It really is my favorite time. Not because of the gifts and so forth, but because it is the time where people really come together in a spirit of love one toward another. It is so wonderful to me! I really miss doing all the kind things we would do back home for others around this time, but helping others come to Christ is the greatest gift in the world. It is such a blessing for me to get to help in this work. I am so thankful for this! You are the best mom in the world, I am very thankful for that! You are awesome! I hope you have another great week! I LOVE YOU!!!

Yes!!!! I am at district meeting with wifi!!!!!

He finally got some pictures sent with the wifi on his camera. (I think me reminding him his camera can do that helped!)  I don't really know what these are, the food ones look pretty sketchy to me (mom)!! 
Super happy to get this many all at once :-)

We are locked out of the church...

I hate to think what this is!

'

Oh dear!!

EWWWW!!

EEEEKKKK!!

???

Church in Bereku

I think this must be the view from his apartment

Looks like Spam, the heavenly meat 

(according to the Cape Coast Mission Missionaries)

YSA Activity

YSA Activity

Pizza!! Looks quite good!

This MUST be his apartment....ole 54 steps :)  Looks like quite the hike! 

 

Service Project

YSA Activity

I have no idea what door this is 

FUFU!

Goood morning to you all!!! Sounds like you are all having a holly jolly holiday season in the cozy little cottage. Yes transfers went well; it was actually kind of fun. I will touch on that later, but if I don’t go chronologically I will get confused haha. So first of all we had Thanksgiving on Tuesday! Yes it was great! So we have a woman in our ward who lives in the US for most of the time but is from Cape. She comes to visit from time to time and she decided that she needed to feed us for Thanksgiving. She wanted to do it before transfers also so we did it on Tuesday. We went there along with E. Stoddard and E. Tuai who serve nearby as well. It was AWESOME we had GIANT fufu with beef, fish and chicken. Along with juice and cookies. It was not quite the same as a nice bird, but it definitely got the job done. A Thanksgiving to remember and definitely better than last year when E. Cardon was sick and I ate by myself haha... I have not yet received the packages but I know 2 of them are in the mission home and I will hopefully get them tomorrow. But onto transfers. Yeah they went well! That morning I was stressed and nervous, but on the taxi ride there I just had a change of heart I guess. I decided it would be as fun as I would allow it. I decided it would be like moving an army or something haha. So that was a tender mercy from the Lord to have a mindset change because it went well! There were a ton of people moving this transfer but it went very well. All got to their  destinations safely and intact. E. Odongo joined me as well and after the Ivies, a senior couple, took us to a restaurant where they bought us lunch! Got chicken kebabs and fries!!! It was delicious! That was very kind of them! Also, yes one of the others in our apt left. Remaining is Elder Etim and he is training a new missionary from England. So that is the apartment. It’s a big change from last transfer, but hopefully it will be sweet. My companion will actually leave on my birthday, so he has two transfers left. Yes, we do say we are killing, so I will be killing my companion :) I feel bad for him, because he got a bad burn on his foot on Monday and the skin is coming off and it’s hard for him to walk. Sis Stevenson said we should not proselyte, so on Saturday we stayed in. Oh I took him to the hospital on Friday, so that’s 3 companions I have had to take to the hospital...hopefully the last as well. But they popped the big burn blisters on his foot and gave him some meds. Now it is just a red raw mess. We also had a baptism on Saturday for D. Yeah we couldn’t go out that day but we did go to the baptism. It was great, except for the fact the font in the church wouldn’t fill because the water pump was broken. So we had to arrange to go to another chapel. We made it work and all went well!!! He was so excited to be baptized it was awesome. He was confirmed on Sunday, but was 30 minutes late to church. I was so scared he wouldn’t come haha, but luckily he and his sister came in. They don’t have a phone so there was no way to contact them. But the Lord provides, that is for sure. We have three with baptismal dates. Two are for the 13th and that is S and B. They are both  doing really well and hopefully we will be able to see them frequently enough to finish all the lessons with them by the 13th. They are both definitely ready right now though. The other is a lady named Araba or Mary, either name, and she was a referral from a member. She is  progressing well and we gave her a date for the 27th. She did not come to church on Sunday, but hopefully we can get her to start coming. The work moves forward though. 

So the problem with the wifi (for his camera) is that our church doesn't have it! Trust me, for the past year I have been looking for somewhere with wifi but sadly it is not too common here... I know how to do it, but I need to find a source!!!! Hayfords has it though; I would just have to pay. Hmmm, maybe I will treat myself to a pizza and some wifi hahaha. Bro. Ewudzie has not told me when he will be going to SLC, I will have to ask him though. Yeah hopefully he will go soon that would be soooooo cool! I am glad the letter came through as well, that didn't take too long at all! Tell Adam good luck on the braces though, not a fun experience haha...But he will like having nice straight teeth I’m sure! Well a new transfer is here, I pray it will go well and the work will move forward. Christmas is here about, which is just so weird. But it is the most wonderful time of the year! I hope you guys have a great week and know I love you!!!! You are the best!!!!