June 8, 2015

"I really love the people here, a lot!"

Happy Summer to you!!!!! So odd to think that school is out back home and everyone is getting ready to go boating and swimming and whatnot :) I am also especially glad you got the pics I sent! We did indeed have plenty of fun this week, I will explain! First of all we had a YSA [Young Single Adult] movie night on Tuesday. We told everyone to bring their nonmember friends and we would watch Meet the Mormons and have snacks. So we did it in the evening around 6:30 and a good number of people came! Not as many as we were planning for, but just about what I was expecting would realistically come. It went well though. Usually people don’t really pay much attention to movies when we watch them but everyone was very interested in Meet the Mormons. Just goes to show what an awesome movie it is! We had popcorn and a drink called sobollo, which looks like grape juice but is made from ginger, pepper and some flower. It’s an acquired taste, but is one of my favorites now haha! It was cool though because the different YSA's all prepared it which was helpful. Also, a treat I learned here in Swedru is popcorn with milk powder instead of salt...who woulda thought. Then Wednesday we did indeed go to Cape. Yeah MLC is always in Cape. We left a bit earlier than we usually do because I needed to buy some more shaving cream and Old Spice body wash, gotta love Cape! We got there around 8:30 only to find that none of the stores were open! So sad! So we had a lot of spare time and so I took the opportunity to go visit a few members in Cape that I have missed. It was so nice to be able to see them again. Cape Coast has definitely been my favorite area for sure; the people there were just awesome. So that is the nice thing about having the meetings there is I am able to go back every now and then and it seems I always see somebody I know. But at MLC we talked a lot about what the mission needs to be better instructed on as a whole. The big thing we talked about was actually teaching from Preach My Gospel. There is not really a set way in the mission to teach the lessons, everyone kind of has their own unique way to teach and President wants it a little more standardized. Not to the point everyone is reciting, but so everyone can teach in unity. It’s hard to have people taking two weeks after transfers to become used to their new companions style of teaching. PMG clearly talks about what needs to be taught and expresses how you don’t have to teach every little gritty detail. I liked E. Mckeon because when I was with him we got really good at teaching as PMG tells us to teach. Very effective. We also talked about the importance of the garment and how the garment is sacred but not secret. Thursday we had a zone council meeting with the district leaders and sister leaders and just talked about what’s going on in the zone and then after I went on exchanges with E. Larsen, the one I trained! It was pretty cool, except it rained all day and so we were not able to teach a single lesson! Everyone, literally everyone, was sleeping! We just walked all day Thursday and Friday! Pretty annoying haha! We did have a sweet Ward Council meeting to plan for the open house though and the stake public affairs guy was there giving us pointers and info. It was cool. No we have not gone on the radio, IDK if that will actually happen haha. It doesn’t look like it. But on Saturday we did have the big YSA activity. We kind of modeled it off the one we did in Cape for the stake back in November. We played games as you can see. The food one was a gari eating competition. Gari is made of ground cassava. It is used for a variety of things, but if added to milk, sugar and peanuts it makes a breakfast food called "soakings." They are pretty gross, but people like them haha. So one side of the table was blindfolded and had all the ingredients in front of them and had to prepare and feed the people on the other side. The kid with the pile did not vomit haha, just couldn’t do it all hahaha. It was pretty funny, I took a video of it so you got that to look forward to one day. It was pretty stressful regulating the whole thing, but it turned out to be a lot of fun. Sadly, the YSA's did a terrible job of bringing people...so it was just them and no investigators. But also on that same day, just before the activity we had the baptism for Ruth, Vera and Precious! They were 40 mins late, and then bishop was another 2 mins after them, but we did indeed baptize them! I baptized Ruth and E. Kaiser baptized the other two. It went well and was great! Sadly due to the time, we were not able to take pics of them before the baptism...so that’s too bad!!! 

Some big things happened on Sunday, namely Bishop Acheampong got released! We found out earlier from him in the week. He has been called to be the 2nd counselor in the Stake Presidency. So that’s pretty cool but also pretty sad. The new bishop is Bishop Fossou who was previously a High Counselor. We were pretty happy, he is a great guy, he was the branch president here for 7 years so this isn’t his first rodeo. It will be good with him and so I am excited to see what happens. But that’s been the week! I am doing good, just had kind of a bitter night last night. One of the missionaries is hard on Ghanaians a lot of the time, which is sad to me. I really love the people here, a lot. Sometimes he will say things to them or do things and it just feels personal to me because I really do love them. So I had to talk to him about it. He took it fine, but it was just kind of stressful for me. But yeah, today we had a zone activity at our chapel. We did a potluck and it went well! We made no bake cookies for everyone and lots of good things were brought! Tomorrow we have zone conference and it will be sweet! You asked about the beach; it’s about a 40 minute drive away from us, so not too close, but it’s in Winneba which is part of the zone. We are kind of inland a bit. I will be sure to take a pic with some kids for you as well! I took over 100 pics at the activity haha! Thanks for all you do, you do so much!! I love you! Have a great week!!!