Having a great time, loving life!

Yeah good evening-o! I am doing great today, it’s been a really good day, albeit a stressful day haha! I will explain, but first everything is good here in Swedru! Yeah so transfers went really well. On Wednesday we were able to ship our people off safely and we welcomed the new ones on time and everything! My companion has been a zone leader for like 6 months now in Takoradi so it is no big deal for him to be a zone leader! We are having a great time though, he is a super cool guy, I am really enjoying having him around.  He has been out for 18 months now. But some of the other cool people are an elder named Elder Treadway who is a really funny guy and a good missionary. I have known him for a while now. And also the new sister trainer leader in the zone is named Sister Nakafeero. She was in my zone and district in Cape and she is cool. We also have two people being trained in the zone so that’s always kind of fun to have some fresh people. But oh heavens when I talk to them I dread the thought that I was probably just like them. Just so young haha! One graduated on the 5th and now is here! Holy Cow! I guess I was kind of the same. But yeah we do indeed have a sweet zone, I really love it!

Well this week has been incredibly slow for us haha...I think we taught like 4 lessons...ouch! Not a good feeling. But it’s not really our fault, so I don’t feel too bad about it. Mine and Elder Iwuchukwu's first full day together we went and did baptismal interviews in Winneba followed by Stake PEC in the evening, so that day was just gone. Then the next day we planned out a nice long day and literally EVERYONE fell through. Our backups fell through, our backups to our backups and all the members fell through! We walked A LOT that day haha! Just one of those days I guess! There have been a lot of funerals this week and when there are funerals you can kiss lessons goodbye. Saturday morning I was just exhausted from all the walking we did. The other elders were using our chapel for a baptism in the morning and we went. As we were singing the opening hymn the bishop called us and told us we needed to join them for a funeral for an endowed member that I didn’t even know was going on. So we left the baptism, went to the funeral and carried the casket. Yeah that was a first for me. We carried it from the viewing place into a car and then into the chapel. So then we attended the funeral, which was all in Twi. I might have fallen asleep for a minute or two haha! But yeah, it was interesting to watch and participate in.

So this week we were trying to figure out what we could do for a zone activity for today. Came to the conclusion that since we have 3 Tongans in the zone it would be a crime if we didn’t roast more pigs. So on Saturday after the funeral we went to buy some. The guy wanted waaaay too much, 200 cedis for one. So we said forget about that and asked around to see if anyone knew where else we could buy one. We found a place in a town about 30 minutes away and we went there. It was a big farm and they had a lot of pigs! After a bit of sweet talking, we got 2 pigs, bigger than the ones the other guy was selling, for 200 cedis! So that’s awesome! I feel like such a master bargainer now! We got those bad boys in a taxi and took them home and tied them up behind the house. When we came back in the evening we found one had gotten loose, so we retied them both. The next morning before we went to church we checked on them and they were doing good. Then we went to church. Came home and looked and woah!!!! They were gone!!!! They weren’t in our compound! We found a hole in the wall of our compound and their tracks, Wilbur and Hamilton made a prison break! So we asked if our neighbor saw them and he had not, but he spent the next 2 hours looking for them. We went and tried to help find them and finally we did find them! We dragged two unhappy pigs back and TIED them very well!! Oh but they were not happy to be tied up...they put up a good fight haha. But this morning we killed them so that’s the end of those unpleasant house guests. The other missionaries got one of their investigators to cook a stew, we got some of the others to get us yam, cassava and plantain and we prepared a nice spread. We got a coke for everyone in the zone and went to our church and had a good time. We played soccer and feasted like kings! It was awesome! A good time for sure!

So on Sunday it was an interesting day at church. We asked President Stevenson to come speak in our ward as a close of our missionary month and he came. He got there and there were only like 10 people when church started so I was a bit stressed haha. But you know what, by the end of sacrament meeting the place was PACKED! They brought chairs in. The reason? The funeral. People came! We had 60 investigators at church, what the heck!!! We had investigators class in the sacrament hall to fit them all haha. Our clerk taught on the post mortal existence and lots of discussion was had and President was asked some odd questions haha. But it went well, we tried to contact as many of those people as we possibly could. Sadly most of them live out of town. But we were successful in sharing the gospel, so mission accomplished! Pretty exciting though to say the least!

This week we have MLC, so that will come on Wednesday. I think we are going to spend Tuesday night in Cape Coast so we don’t have to wake up so early on Wednesday. So we are going to have more proselyting time killed sadly...but hopefully the rest of the week we can work hard. After baptizing all those people our area has been a bit slow! But we have lots of recent converts we need to work with so that is good! All the things you learn as a missionary are amazing, I cannot imagine going through life without it. It is like steroids for your Spirit and just life in general. But I am glad dad has had a good bday week! Thanks so much for all you do for me here, IDK what I would do without you! You are the greatest parents in the world. I hope you enjoy Reno, hahahahaha! Sorry had to laugh. But seriously, have a great week! Love you sooo very much, you are the greatest!!