Our main room in our apartment!! So spacious and luxurious!

 Another pic of our room/my bed.

 This is the kitchen, small but with two people not bad at all! We had some dishes in the sink, but we usually get them done right away!

 The fridge sits alone.

 This is my desk! Lots of stuff!

 The inside of a guy's house we know

 His Ceiling

 This is a typical house in a village. Not many like this in Axim, but in Bokazo there were alot.

 This was when I was with Elder Moore in Takoradi. This is from their apartment window. That house looks like it belongs in San Diego or something! It was so nice.

This is a road we walked the other day. Typical Ghana.

 THANK YOU FOR THE PANCAKE MIX!!! It was sooo goood! Made some apple pancakes here with a side of apples!

 Some Acheke. Its an Nzema dish. Its pretty much like salty rice, but it has veggies and, obviously, fish. "Dont eat me Elder!"

 This is some acheke that Francis made for us, it was really good! That is fish on top.

Haha the guy we baptized Francis fed us a few weeks ago. We had fufu and there was just random meat and fish in there as well. Shrimp, fish, and this thing. It was a ribcage. To what I dont know, but you can see the heart on the left side. The meat was actually really really good. I am guessing it was cat just judging by the size. If so, cat is dang nice!

LOOK! Its a swing over the OCEAN!

Yeah!!

Ankobra Beach - Beautiful!

My personal favorite!

Happy Monday!!!

Yeah I am really glad that me and Cardon are staying here, we work well together! There are transfers every 6 weeks, so the next one is right before Christmas, so we will see!  And I remembered my cord so I will send pictures home!!!! Finally!!!

This week was crazy!!! On Tuesday we were in Takoradi for our zone meeting, which went well. We taught like one lesson that day, so that was kinda too bad. But it was a fun day. And then on Thursday we went to Tarkwa so Cardon could do their interviews. They had 3 people so I just sat with the sweet Tarkwa elders and we watched The Other Side of Heaven and some movie about the church starting in Ghana. It was sweet! We left Tarkwa at like 7 and got to Takoradi at like 9. We stayed with two of the Takoradi elders and then the next day Cardon and one of them went to Cape Coast for a District leaders meeting, so I spent the day with Elder Darlington from Nigeria in Takoradi. It was cool, Takoradi is actually pretty nice, which means I have been out here a while because it would make you cry haha. So dirty and smelly, but by now it is nice. Anyway we taught a few lessons until Cardon came back then we all met at the Stake Center. We needed interviews done in Axim for our people so Cardon and our new Zone leader Elder Ndah went back to Axim and I stayed in the other Takoradi area with our good ole Britsh Zone leader, Elder Moore. He is awesome, so funny I love the guy. We had fun and explored the city a bit.  Found a place that sells those knock off cereals. So today since we are back in Takoradi for Sub pday I am going to buy some fake Reeses Puffs!!!! Saturday I returned to Axim late and then Sunday we had the baptisms!!!!

It was such a good Sunday! One to remember. All 3 got baptized after church and we had a bunch of investigators there to witness it! We taught a really good lesson on baptism to them in the investigators class too, so it really touched them I think. But I got to baptize all three of them!!! What a great experience! Paul, Moro, and Francis. Francis is like 6 foot or so, and I baptized him last. It took 3 tries to get him under haha, his head would not go down!!! And I almost slipped trying to bring him up the first time because he lifted his feet off the ground! That would not have been good!!!! But we got him under on the 3rd try haha! He is kind of a funny guy and after we got changed and closed, I went to explain to him why we had to do it three times. I asked him if he knew why and he told me "Oh yes, I felt the powers of the RAGING river!" haha what a typical Ghanaian thing to say. But we cleared it up for him.

That is crazy Adam will be 12! That’s so exciting though! I remember my first time passing the sacrament, seems like yesterday. That’s cool he will get to go to the temple as well! I am happy you got to go to Bush's homecoming! I am sure he did great, he was a great missionary. That’s funny dad knows his dad, what a small world. Hope you are able to get the paintings soon! Tell him I say Oh Toh Den.

Today we are in Takoradi again and we are staying the night because we have a big meeting with President Shulz and stuff, so since it takes so long to travel back, we are just staying here. We went to the beach as a combined zone in Takoradi today, which was sweet. I took my white shirt off and changed into shorts and a t shirt. When I came back to change back, somebody stole my shirt and left me a piece of crap white shirt! I was mad! No idea where it went, but luckily I packed a spare one in my bag since we are staying over tonight! What type of guy steals my shirt!? Haha oh well. Hmmm I thought I had more to write, but really that’s all, just a crazy, but sweet, week! Ok I will send pics now though!!!! Love you!!!

Hi!

I got the packages yesterday!!! Thank you sooo much they were awesome!!!! Lots of good stuff inside! I am wearing the Ziggy shirt right now, it is so nice! Thank you! In the next package I could use some shaving cream just fyi.  

I agree the year has shot on by, seems like it was just Christmas and stuff! Madness! I hope the Festival stuff goes smoothly though. Tell Adam good job with basketball, I am sure he is doing great! As for the walking, most of Axim is pretty centralized. The church is a ways though, maybe a 20 minute walk. But we walked a TON on Saturday. There is a village called Nsein that is like 45 minutes away, and all of our appointments fell through that day so we decided to walk there. There are a few members who live there and we just talked to random people. One of the members there is a man named Timothy Krutchie. He is like 65 years old and is completely blind, yet he comes to church each week! What a boss! He worked at a cement factory in the early 80's and got a bunch of cement dust in his eyes and they botched the washing so now he is blind. The company didn't pay him his pension and his lawyer stole his money, yet he is always so happy and willing to serve God. It’s awesome. We went and visited him and he bought us a Fanta! Also he had us help him pick some garments out and then the next day in church was Fast and Testimony Meeting so he got up and thanked us. It was sweet. But yeah we walked a TON that day. We had the Zone leaders come on splits with us on Thursday, Elder Moore from England came with us and Elder Bush went to Nkroful. It was sweet! Elder Moore is hilarious, we laughed too much that day. We had too much fun too haha. In the apartment there is a window in between the hallway and the living room for some reason, a big window just in the wall, so we opened it and laid some mattresses on one side of the window and dove through the window onto the mattresses. We got some sweet pictures of mid jump haha. But yeah. Speaking of Elder Bush, he comes home this week! He will have two homecomings, one this Sunday in his new ward and one next in his old. I got his address, but I left it at the apartment!!!! Sorry! Maybe you can find him on Facebook? Austin Bush. He has those paintings for you guys. And our Zone is Takoradi and the district is Nkroful. We are about 3 hours from the mission home, so it’s a ways away. And yeah we have had water everyday this week I think! Sweet!!!  We eat quite a bit of fish here, but as long as it isn't smoked its all good haha!

Axim is doing great, we had one heck of a week! Transfer news came in Saturday and both me and Cardon are staying, so that’s good! We had a really good transfer and our work is showing off. We had 14 investigators come to church yesterday! The branch is so excited to see the missionary work affect them! We will be having 3 people baptize this Sunday! A 14 year old boy named Paul, a 28 year old guy named Moro, and a 50+ guy named Francis Seki. It’s exciting. We are gonna have a busy busy week ahead of us too. We are going to Takoradi tomorrow for a Zone meeting, on Wednesday we will do splits with the Tarkwa Elders, on Thursday we will have to go to Takoradi and spend the night because Cardon has a District leader meeting in Cape Coast on Friday. Then on Friday after his meeting we will go to Nkroful to do some interviews. Saturday the zone leaders are coming to interview our three baptismal guys, and then Sunday will be the baptisms! So it’s gonna be crazy!

We went on splits on Friday with the elders from Agona. Elder Cardon went to Agona and Elder Richards came to Axim with me. He was in the MTC with me and was the one wanting to go home. Man that was an interesting day.  Funny dynamic. Its hard to type, but I promise it is a funny story not an angry one hahaha. You asked how we email. We have to travel to Essiama, about 30 minutes in a taxi. There is no internet cafe in Axim still, so we just have to travel. Not too terrible, but the internet is dicey here.  After my last letter you asked about how they pay for a bride. I am not sure how much the average bride price is, but the parents set it. So we found out that the church considers them married as long as they have met both parents and agreed on the price, and paid at least partially. So this guy just has to make a down payment and he can get baptized hahaha!  I don’t know if you can use cows or sea turtles, but it wouldn’t surprise me haha. No I have not seen any more turtles. Oh but last week after emailing on Monday, we went to Axim beach for lunch. I had a Chicken burger and fries! And while we were eating there were whales jumping out of the ocean!! It was awesome! Big giant whales like 2 miles out. You could see them jump and then giant explosions of water! It was sweet!

Thanks for all you do for me!!! I love you sooo much and will talk to you next week!

Hi!!!!

Man this has been a busy week! Kind of a crazy week, but a good one!! I am happy things are going well at home! I love hearing stories from home, it is nice and cozy haha! But I will be sure to get some pics of the kids with the bracelets when the packages come. I have given out some of the CTR rings, I try to be selective to whom I give, because I want them to actually know what they mean. But yeah I still have some, which is nice! Sounds like Adam is doing good at ball and that Halloween was good! So he went eh? What was he? I had a dream I came home and you hadn't really changed the garage doors so I was mad haha! Random. No we didn't take Malaria classes, weird. We just take our Doxy pills every day and sleep under the net. But life in Axim is going well! We will have 4 baptisms on the 17th! I am hoping to get to baptize somebody! That would be cool! And we are hoping that this couple will be ready either the last week of Nov or the first week of Dec. They have been wanting to get baptized the last 4 years, but were not married. They just got their traditional marriage done in the last 6 months so they are good! Traditional marriage is when the guy pays the bride price haha!

Yes we have still been teaching Justina. I am hoping she will be baptized in Dec. The other day we taught her and she broke down in tears because of her trials. Ghanaians don't cry. It was sad, but we were able to help her a lot. I am kind of disappointed because she didn't come to church this week. That is going to be the hardest thing, getting her to leave her church. But the Gospel is the only thing that can bring true peace and joy. I have been thinking about that a lot lately. I was reading the articles from that Temples magazine you got me a while back, and man the temple is such an amazing place. I encourage you guys to go as much as you can! The blessings are eternal. I wish I could go! I am really grateful for sealings! I know that no matter where we are or what happens to us, we will always be together if we are living righteously! What a blessing!  How can anyone go through this life knowing that beautiful truth and not go forward with it! You should sacrifice all that is necessary to attain that blessing! I have also been thinking a lot about my own self and reflecting. A scripture that has repeatedly come to mind is Ether 12:27, along with Philippians 4:13 and Isaiah 41:10. Read those ones. One of the hardest but best blessings thus far out here has been seeing my own flaws and weaknesses and improving them. This is a refining process, and I know that I can have my weaknesses turned into strengths if I will turn to Christ.

So I have a fun story. We were down by the beach and we looked to the left and sitting behind this building and beside a canoe was this giant sea turtle on its back! We thought it was dead, but as we walked over, it started moving! It was huge! Probably 200 lbs or more. It couldn't move, and I wanted to flip it so bad. But apparently somebody bought it for $20 for dinner! I was tempted to pay them off and flip it! Or just do it and run! But I’m sure its not hard to find the white guy and exact revenge on him haha! Everyone knows where we live already so... But man this turtle was sweet! It was sad and is in somebody’s freezer I’m sure, but that’s not something you see every day. 

This Sunday we watched conference too! Oh except it was in Fante... We watched two sessions, the Saturday afternoon and the Sunday morning I think. The Motab was english so that was nice haha! But the Liahonna should come next month so that will be nice.  

I am happy to get the packages soon! I emailed dad about a Christmas one, remember Little Debby and Mindy Mints are always good haha! And maybe a giant bag of M and Ms? IDK haha!  Thank you for the support. I love you soooo much! I will talk to you soon! Literally!