Happy Monday USA! Greetings to you from Cape Coast Ghana! I am doing good here, life is pretty sweet! I got an air shipment this week! The parachute got caught in a tree so I had to shimmy up there and cut it down with a BIC razor, but it’s in my hands now. Thank you SO much! [That’s his way of saying he got the box of goodies we sent him haha!] I got the package on Wednesday! I have been enjoying the BACON! Thanks haha! Oh on the subject (and sorry to be burdensome) but could you send a couple white shirts? If you could I would be SO appreciative! You da best! Maybe like 5? Just short sleeve! Mine are getting a bit seasoned; it’s probably time to retire a couple of them. I was stirring a cauldron of banku last Monday and I ripped a big hole in the armpit of one of my shirts...soo that’s too bad! Probably gonna stir some more tonight seeing as we are going for FHE to eat banku and we will no doubt help prepare it! So that will be fun! I will try not to ruin this one though haha! And maybe you could send some more of those rubber CTR rings, everyone LOVED those! 

Well it’s been a good week here in Cape! Kind of a busy one but it’s been sweet! We gave a good instruction during our combined district meeting on Tuesday. We did it on teaching and based it on what E. Dube taught us last week. We talked about the 5 steps in teaching and it went really well! Everyone enjoyed it and learned a lot. We had good discussion and did sweet role plays!  I got to go on exchanges twice this week! Yay!...The first one was on Wednesday with Elder Cooper from Atlanta GA. We came to Ghana at the same time but he was in Liberia until the Ebola hit. Now he is here! He is a funny guy, we had fun! Then on Friday I went with Elder Lagaiti from Samoa. He is pretty new, but it was sweet. He didn't really speak English when he came but now he can speak pretty well so it’s kind of cool to see how he improved. We had good times though on both days. Nothing too exciting, just some good missionary work haha! Here is kind of a cool story from the week though. So we have a member who is awesome at helping us and she is our friend, her name is J. She is like 22 and has been a member for like 4 years. Well, she showed us a photo album of hers and inside were some pics of her dressed not the most modestly. Nothing too terrible, but still. Soo we decided it would probably be a pretty good idea to teach her about modesty. Well, we did so. We were kind of afraid she would get offended or angry at us, especially because she just kind of stared at the wall the whole time we talked about it. But she ended up being really interested and asking great questions about movies, music, clothes etc. She said she was going to go through all her clothes and get rid of everything not modest which we were pretty dang impressed with! She went and changed right after the lesson too! She wasn't even dressed bad, but she dressed into a more modest shirt. She said she was going to stop watching Spanish soap operas (which are insanely popular here for some reason)! So we were pretty happy at how well she handled it! She saw it as an opportunity to become better instead of just getting angry. I guess she knew we were just trying to give her good advice and  everything. Then we committed her to teach her friend, a less active recent convert who just had an abortion, about it as well. She came to church on Sunday and talked to Bishop and felt great afterwards so we were really happy about that! So these two have been powerful examples of people willing to change this week!

We did not end up having a baptism this week. We were hoping to baptize Special K (Maame Kakraba) but due to some Ghana probs (lack of water) we didn't do it and we are gonna push it back to the 4th. But yeah it’s all cool! We have extended some more baptism dates this week so we have 6 up comings for the next few weeks! Should be pretty sweet! Oh and yeah, this Saturday transfer news will come! I really want to stay, but we will see what happens. I have really enjoyed being with E. Mckeon and yeah we have a sweet apartment. So we will see what happens. The Lord knows best! I will be sad if I have to leave Cape, I really enjoy this place. There are some great people here and the work has been nice! I will be sad! But it’s all good either way! Glad Brady got that job! That is awesome!  And as for the housing, yeah I feel pretty good about UVU!  I am pretty excited, it will be fun. Yeah the water has been back which has been nice. We have been CLEANING all day today haha! So we have had a blast! The apartments we visited during exchanges were a MESS so we decided to make this Monday a zone wide deep cleaning day!  Well, tomorrow we have a zone conference and we will be instructing for 30 mins after President, soooo that’s what we will be up to after our sweet FHE tonight! But yep we will see what a new week brings! Thanks for everything! You da best! LOVE YOU!!!

March 16, 2015

Morning morning morning! I am indeed doing just great, glad to hear you are happy and all is well also! Thank you so much for handling the accommodation situations! It does indeed sound like for some reason that is where I need to go. It sounds like a good place, good location, good ward etc. So thank you very much for being a champion lodging organizer. Ah I don’t really like thinking about all this home stuff...So let’s get down to what’s up here eh? Haha yes so it’s really been another interesting week and we have had the joy of handling some missionary problems again. On Tuesday I was expecting to have a really nice day of proselyting, we had great plans and everything. But around 10 we got a text from the elders in another apartment saying, "come to our apartment asap." We gave them a call and the issue was one companionship nearly got in a big fight. So, we rushed over to take care of business. Yeah this companionship has had problems in the past; they just don’t get along at all. They don’t see eye to eye. Anyway, when we got there everyone was quiet. Luckily the other elders in that apartment kept them separated, so it didn't actually turn to blows. Ah they don’t talk to each other! EVER!! They proselyte but don’t talk, whenever there are other missionaries around they won’t stay together. It’s like no duh you are not getting along, you are not even trying! But later that day we went with the assistants to Hayfords and got pizza so that was fun! And the big fun point is of course the mission tour with Elder Dube! We had a great time with him! I was expecting him to be this tall big guy but he is like 5'5, very friendly though. He gave us some really great instruction about being a focused missionary and not thinking of yourself and also a lot of help on how to teach. We did a role play and he picked on me and E. Mckeon to do it. We had to teach a senior couple about the importance of coming to church in 3 minutes and had to teach, testify, invite, promise blessings, and follow up with them in that 3 minutes in front of everyone haha. It went pretty well. So now I can say I did a role play with a General Authority haha. But we have been doing that in our teaching (minus the 3 minute time limit haha) and it is soooo powerful! Our lessons are so much better now; people really are changing as we do it this way and feel the Spirit! So I have been pretty happy about that! But yeah, it was a great meeting for sure! Learned a lot, Elder Dube is a great teacher and person!

We had a baptism this week! It was for B. President Stevenson came and interviewed him and it went well. We were also supposed to have a baptism for the 8 year old girl named M. K, but we got her into the font and she was just terrified. She was crying, holding the wall and yeah the baptist was just a 19 year old recent convert who didn't really know what he was doing, so we took her out of the water. Sadly, instead of telling her it was ok, everyone just yelled at her. We were like, "no no its ok!" but they didn't think so. So she left apparently scarred. But B. got baptized so boko (sweet)! Luckily for us, one of our awesome members who helps us named Jennifer was walking by M. K.'s house that night and went over to see them and the mom told her what happened then Jennifer told the mom to not be angry. She explained that when she was baptized there was an 8 year old girl there too and the same thing happened. The mom calmed down and everything is ok now. So Jennifer saved us there! Hopefully this Saturday we will try again and I will have to be the one to baptize her as she loves me, so hopefully that will help. Those are the highlights of the week I would say! We have been really working hard to find some new investigators because lately things have kind of slowed down here. We have found a lot of success in finding this week too! So it’s been a rather productive week I must say. This week we are going on exchanges 2 times, so that will be fun! You know, I have to tell you because it will probably motivate me to be better, but for the past few weeks I have been pretty bad at updating my journal, which is really annoying because my whole mission I have just been a boss at updating it I must say. But lately I have been forgetting for a day or two then I have to mass update it. So this is me saying I will be better I guess haha. As for pictures, I think I am doing ok! Sad thing about Cape is there are not as many cool things to take pictures with. But I will try and take more pics of me with people we are teaching and working with. So there is my little St. Patrick's day resolution. Good job on reading the BoM! How is everyone else doing? Anybody sinking down in their chair as they read this part? Let your guilt work repentance and start now! Well, let me know any details on the living situation as they come, and school in general I guess. UVU sounds pretty cool so we will see what happens! Thanks again for everything! You are the best! LOVE
YOU!!!