Pictures!

Gooood Morning from Swedru! Thanks for the wonderful email, glad to hear everyone is doing great and you had a great conference/Easter weekend! I am doing good, it’s been a bit of a long week as transfer weeks usually are, but I am happy and healthy! Saying goodbyes were definitely not too fun, but as I said I am sure one day I will see those people again whether here as a missionary or after! Basically Monday and Tuesday that’s all we did was say goodbye to people. Oh and pack. But yeah Wednesday transfers came and they went quite smoothly I must say! Luckily it was not a very big transfer, other than Cape Zone which lost like everyone. But yeah it was good. I met E. Johnson at the station and he looked good, ready to go! He is on the opposite side of the mission from me, but it was nice to talk to him for a bit. Yep I am here now though and have made the transition. It was pretty nice and easy I must say (minus the goodbyes). But yeah, Swedru is a cool place! Our apartment is REALLY nice! It has a battery that powers the house when the power goes out, we have a really nice washing machine, we have warm water if you leave the water pump on for a bit, nice tiled floor, it’s sweet! The area is absolutely massive because they pulled a companionship out of here so we now have their area! Haha so it’s pretty massive. We have a really diverse area though. There is city like Cape, small town, and village bush so it’s pretty cool I must say. The really nice chapel pic I sent is our chapel! It’s cool! The bishop here is just awesome; he actually lived in Utah for 8 years. He graduated from USU and Weber, he has two daughters who are like 12 and 9 who both were born in Utah and they can’t speak Twi or Fante haha! But he is a cool guy and really has a handle on the place. We are planning for 11 baptisms for the end of the month here so that is pretty cool eh?! I am still figuring this place and all the people out, but it shall come in time! So far it’s been just great though. E. Kaiser is a cool guy, we are getting along great. We will have a good time together I’m sure. We also have E. Collette from New Mexico and E. Tu Akoi from Tonga in the apt and they are both awesome so it’s all good! Oh and our apartment is tighter than Fort Knox. There is a 7 foot cement wall with razor wire surrounding the apartment and bars ALL OVER the windows and doors hahaha! I feel like Obama! I guess a while ago people kept breaking into the apartment so that is the safeguards they made! Makes me laugh because in Akonfudi we didn't have any security features at all. But the area is safe I promise, I just thought it was kind of funny. That’s the wonderful thing about Ghana, I would feel perfectly safe sleeping outside. Nobody does anything here. Well, usually I guess according to the military grade installations. But yeah, I sold my guitar to the WML in Cape right before I left and used the money to buy some of the souvenirs. I was only able to buy one nativity set right then because that’s all they had, but they are gonna make more and E. Mckeon will get one for me! No wahala (problem)! Oh and E. Larsen told me this crazy cool washer in the apt here is mine now so E. Assibey gets mine. So that’s what’s going on in my finances here haha! 

We had a pretty good Easter Sunday though. Sadly pretty low key, not a lot of things talked about in church or anything, but we had a FHE with some people after Church and talked about the power of the Atonement. Without it there would be no resurrection, there would be no way we could ever dwell in God's presence. We could never overcome anything. There would be no hope. But because of Christ there is hope. He is the resurrection, He is the Life. He is everything! How great a gift God has given us. We must now use it by following Christ and obeying Him in all things that He has commanded us. That is where joy and peace are found. Literally. 

After the FHE we got fed more fufu than can be healthy. Oh man when we saw it we were scared haha. It was about 4 lbs of fufu I would say. But we are men so we hunkered down in front of it, dug our heels into the ground and ate. We finished. Then they put more in. So we ate. We finished. Then another ball was placed. We cried. We ate. We finished. Then we had to eat the fish. We did so and felt pretty accomplished. And tired. But it was delicious so it was ok haha! Fufu is so good! Especially with palmnut soup! Oh it is delicious! So cool that conference was awesome! I heard they announced a temple for Ivory Coast! That is so awesome! Those people don’t mess around at all when it comes to temple work! Man they come in their numbers and perform soooooo many baptisms! More than any other country I have heard! And they don’t even have a temple yet! So I am pretty dang happy for them! West Africa is just racking up the temple count! Good job! But yeah we probably won’t get to see conference until next month. Or read it. Maybe I can read some from lds.org but that’s never as nice as reading it in a Liahona or watching it.

Oh glad you enjoyed the pics! We went into the bishop’s office for Ward Council and I saw a modem on the wall so I whipped out the camera and sent some! Then I felt bad about not paying attention to the meeting so I put it away after sending some...haha next week I will send more! That was a really powerful Ward Council in case you were wondering (probably not). But yeah, that is a pretty nice pic of me in a wig eh? I look like a biker or something. That is Jennifer's wig, I have some other nice pics in it but those will wait until next week I guess! That’s pretty cool Obama finally decided to come to Utah. Hey it only took like 8 years eh? Man they call Cape Obama City because he and his wife visited a while back and only went to Cape, not Accra or anything. So they like Obama there! Fun fact I guess.

OH did you know ELDER CAVANESS is going to be my roommate at UVU?!? E. Larsen told me and then Cavaness emailed me! That will be pretty sweet! I really like him. It will be fun. But one perk of being in Swedru is that it’s on the way to Accra and so the ZLs here (yes, I am still a zone leader) always see the missionaries leaving off since they land at the stake center for a bathroom break. So we went to see them all off and I got to see E. Cardon one last time! That was pretty cool. They were all really nervous about going home! So weird to see those guys leaving! Crazy crazy!

Yeah it is cool here! Best apartment I have been in! We don’t even wear shoes in our room because it’s so nice! The church is nice but it’s actually pretty old. Still cool though! The internet café here is good actually, quite fast. We cleaned a new church building today for the other elders in our apt, so that was fun. I got a haircut from E. Kaiser and it looks good! I really don’t know yet how the shopping is here as we are a bit out of Swedru itself. But we will see today! Right after emailing we will go shopping. I think it’s probably pretty good, not as good as Cape I’m sure though. But that’s what’s going on here! This week we will have MLC and so that will be cool! I will be working to get to know the area and people this week so it will be good! Thanks for everything you do, you are the absolute BEST! LOVE YOU!!!