Pictures from Griffin

This first picture was actually sent to my mom & dad by Griffin's mission president. Here he is with the Ghana Cape Coast mission president and his wife:



These were sent from Griffin:
Looking over the fishing hub in Moree- July 2010:

Elders Adams, Brown, Keller and Chesa on P-day in Abura- July 2010:


Elder Brown with some Primary children- July 2010

July 26, 2010

Alright, questions first so I don't forget to answer:

They sing in English because they don't have Fante hymnbooks. The Relief Society translated a few hymns that they sing in Fante. I haven't played the keyboard yet, but I'm going to soon. We go into Cape Coast every P-Day to go to an Internet cafe. We eat a lot of fish. I haven't seen many"sights" yet. No castles or anything yet. Every P-day we go into Cape to use internet, go to the market and get anything we need. We'll play a lot of football and we've had a "feast" where we watched a movie in the chapel and that's about it. We're supposed to go to the beach to play football today, but we're going next week instead. We pretty much cook all our food separate, but never really make anything big anyway. I cook a lot of eggs, oats, noodles, and rice and that's about it. They have this custard kind of stuff that's good for breakfast. I'm gonna try my hand at making some real African Stew this week, so we'll see how it goes.

So this week was a little different. It was good, but just different. I went on splits with the guys from our apartment three times. So I was only in Moree three times last week. It was good to proselyte in Yamoransa a few times though. I actually went to church in Yamoransa yesterday too instead of Moree.

Some kids in Moree freak out when they see me and Elder Adams walk by. But a few days ago some kids went absolutely ballistic when they saw us! It was ridiculous! We just walked by and they started screaming like they had just seen a ghost or something. And they backed up against the wall and were like cowering away from us. I had never seen two kids so scared in my life. I didn't know I could be so scary...

Probably the coolest lesson of the week was with a guy we met on one of my first days here. He came up to us as we were going home and said he wanted to meet with us. He told us where he lived, but he was never home. He gave us his number, but he never answered the phone. So we sort of just wrote it off as a guy who wasn't serious. But then on Thursday we decide that we should just give him another call and this time he answers. He seemed sort of distraught on the phone, but he tells us that he living at different place and that we could come by that night. So we go by, and it ends u that his wife had died unexpectedly two days before. He's only like 30, if that. So we taught him about the Plan of Salvation and he just ate it up. It was really cool.

Well anyway this one will be a little shorter because I want email some other people back, I haven't been able to do that! (sorry everyone who has emailed me!)

Oh yeah, in the next email tell me which day I was born on. I was thinking its Saturday, but I want to make sure. Fante names are given based on what day you were born on. I hope it was Saturday because if it was my name would be Kwame. Just call me the biggest bust in the last 15 years, Kwame Brown.

Yabahyeuh,
Elder Brown

July 19, 2010

Hello hello! How is it back in the good ol US?? I'm really glad I'm getting to email right now, we came in the morning and the internet wasn't working. We sat at the computer waiting for a connection for an hour...wasted a couple cedis but oh well, it's working now!

So the week was pretty good, nothing too crazy happened. Probably the coolest thing happened with one of our football contacts. During the last football game, we contacted this guy named Steven. We were sort of doing last ditch contacting during the games because we didn't have any solid investigators from the matches, and we came upon this guy. We taught him three lessons this week, and after the third lesson he told us that he believes that Joseph Smith was a prophet and that the Book of Mormon is true! So only five days after the initial contact, he told us he believes the Book of Mormon! It was really cool.

Me and Elder Adams ate at Brother Pratt's again (our 1st counselor in the bishopric). He made us rice balls and soup. The rice balls and soup were pretty good. I eat so much bread here it's ridiculous. I'll eat almost a whole loaf a day.

We're teaching another guy named Sammy who's a stud too. He's a taxi driver that speaks English really well. He's Brother Pratt's best friend. We taught the Restoration and the Book of Mormon lessons on Friday and he was pretty much bearing his testimony the whole lesson rather than having us teach him. He's had a Book of Mormon since we started teaching him, and he loves reading it.

I don't know if I mentioned this, but all of our church services are in Fante. SO me and Elder Adams aren't really sure what's going on at church haha. They'll sing the hymns in English though. We're taking Fante classes from a teacher in the ward, Master Mackay. We've had a few lessons and we're learning a lot, so hopefully I'll be able to learn it really well really fast! Master Mackay is tight, he will always have his kids go buy us a Coke before our lessons haha.

Random things of the week:
-The kids' favorite toy is to take a really long stick and push a little spool along the ground. They'll do it for hours haha.
-There's goats, chickens and sheep running all over the place in Moree. The people will paint the chickens pink so vultures and hawks don't swoop down and grab them.

Well anyway it was another great week! We played some football today for P-day. I scored but it was only because the goalie tripped or something haha. Sounds like it's going great back home. I got some tight stuff in Cape Coast today. I got this ultra fresh white watch for 7 cedis (like 4 dollars). Hayden would be very jealous. I got a football jersey (with matching shorts haha) for 10 cedis. It's a Chelsea jersey because everyone in Ghana loves Chelsea, because Michael Essien plays for them. I could've gotten a Lebron James jersey for 10 cedis haha. And I got the sickest Puma hat every for 50 peswas! That's like 30 cents! No joke! Haha, you can get some sweet stuff here for super cheap.

Well anyway, I've got to get going! I love you guys!

Elder Brown

July 12, 2010

So the first full week in Cape Coast was awesome. It's tough, but it's great. Mondays are P-Days. Tuesdays we have district meetings, and our district only has four guys in it. And this Wednesday we had our first zone conference. Zone conference was awesome. It basically was a mission conference because there were like 6 zones. Anyway, zone conference was awesome. President Sabey talked about the mission goal that just wrapped up (each missionary baptize a husband and wife) and how incredible it was that the mission fulfilled the goal. With 3 weeks left, there were 33 missionaries, who hadn't baptized a husband and wife, and all 33 missionaries were able to baptize a husband and wife by July 4th, the last day of the goal. Now the goal is to finish the World Cup goal- baptize someone we found during a world cup game. We have a few investigators we found during football who are progressing. President Sabey is really awesome though. We learned a ton. He really stresses obedience. Elder Holland spoke to the mission a few months ago, and apparently he said that he could feel that our mission is the most obedient he's ever visited, and President Sabey wants to keep that up. So he stresses it...but he doesn't really have to talk about it. If that makes any sense at all haha. He would just mention it, and then talk about something else for the next hour, but we all knew the most important thing was obedience.

So besides Zone Conference, the week was really good. Tuesday I had my first FM (free meal). There's a rule in the mission that we can only eat at members' homes if there is an investigator there. So we had our first dinner appointment at Brother Pratt's house, he's the second counselor in the bishopric. He made us rice and stew...pretty basic Africa food. It was really good (reeeeally spicy). The only crazy thing about it was that we got some meat in it...and I'm not sure what it was. He had his best friend over that we were teaching, his name is Sammy Mensah. He's super tight. He speaks really good English and is doing really well with lessons. We started teaching his wife too.

Thursday and Friday were pretty normal...taught some good lessons, met with good people. Saturday was long. We usually proselyte for 9 hours a day, but Saturday was like 12 or 13. There was a world cup game on, so we had to stay late to do football finding. We found some good people, we taught 7 lessons in the 2 and a half hours during the game. Remember the tro-tros I talked about? I almost got ran over by one on Saturday night. We were coming home, and our taxi had stalled right before the spot where we normally get dropped off to catch the tro tro back to the apartment. Right before we get out, a tro tro comes and stops right next to our taxi, which is sitting in the middle of the road. The tro tro driver is yelling at the taxi driver in Fante, and we get out. As I'm paying the taxi driver, the tro tro driver decides to take off. He sort of wedged Elder Adams between the taxi and the tro tro and ran over the end of his foot. He was able to slip out before he got too wedged in. I was about a half an inch from getting completely pinned by the tro tro, he stopped when we started yelling, and I bolted to get away from the two cars, taking off the taxi drivers rear view mirror. I just sort of walked off, and luckily he didn't come running after me. It was his fault anyway...haha.

So I did my first stupid thing on Saturday. There's a lot of masons in Moree- as in actual stone masons, not Freemasons...there's not going to be a Dan Brown book based in Moree ;)- and so there's always a lot of cinderblock kind of bricks laying around everywhere. So we're waiting outside of this guys house, and I see some bricks, so I was like alright, I'll just sit here for a second. I go to sit down on a brick, and it completely collapses, along with like two or three behind it!! Apparently it had just been made like 30 minutes before and hadn't hardened yet...I felt like an idiot haha. But there was no one around...so I didn't get yelled at or anything haha. Not that I would have, the people in Moree are so chill. We went back later and they were already remade.

Sunday was the longest day. Church is at 9. And since the World Cup final was last night, we were going to stay out til almost 9 PM to do football finding. And since it was Sunday, we couldn't buy any food. So by the end of church me and Elder Adams are straight up starving. And we still had 9 hours til we could eat! I was thinking I just should've fasted! So we go to ward council meeting, and at the end of that we're both like "what are we gonna do? We're not gonna be able to make it 8 more hours" Right when we say that, the executive secretary rolls in with a box of mineral (soda) and some soda crackers. Manna from heaven! I never knew a Coke and 4 crackers could go so far, but I wasn't hungry at all the rest of the day, and neither was Elder Adams.

Today we had our first Zone activity. We watched Mountain of the Lord, and had a "feast" -jolof rice and minerals. There's some really cool guys in the zone.

Random things:
-About 70% of the people in Moree have the last name of Mensah.
-About half of the men are named Kwesi and the other half are either Emmanual or Francis (Maybe an exaggeration, but you get the picture)
-The most common foors are fufu and banku. Fufu is made from casava, and is this sort of doughy ball. You pinch off a piece and dip it in a stew. Banku is basically the same thing, but made out of corn. I like Banku better. Jolof rice is the best thing I've had. It's basically rice with really spicy sauce, with vegetables and sometimes meat mixed in. It's kind of like African jambalaya I guess.
-I'm picking up on Fante little by little. Me and Elder Adams are going to start taking classes from a teacher in the ward, Master Mackay.
-The ward I'm in is pretty decent sized. About 100 people or so come to church every week.

I got all my shirts tailored by this guy down the street for like one cedi each- I'm looking very fresh at all times now :)

Love you guys! Yabyeuh!

Elder Brown

PS- yabyeuh is pronounced ya-bay-shee-uh and means "we will meet again" or "see you later"

First Email..July 5, 2010

Griffin now has access to email. The guidelines are that anyone can email him, friends or family. He can send emails to any family. His email address is: griffin.brown@myldsmail.net

Hey! Well I'm out in the field now...it's crazy. My area is a little fishing village about 10 minutes east of Cape Coast, it's called Moree. It's right on the coast and it's the only area in the mission where you do your baptisms in the ocean, so hopefully I get to do some of that!

My apartment is in the middle of a village. The apartment has one other companionship living in it, and the four of us is the extent of our district. My companion's name is Elder Adams. He's from Reno and has been out for about 5 months. He's a really cool guy and we get along really well. The other guys in the apartment are Elders Keller and Chesa (SLC, Nigeria). We cook on a little camping-style propane grill and have no hot water. It's a pretty cool place to live :)

Thursday was our first day of proselyting. We have to take a tro tro (a 12 passenger van from the 70s that they cram about 25 people into) and then a taxi to get to our area every morning. The first couple days, Elder Adams took me around town and introduced me to some members and investigators. It's a legitimate fishing village. Tons of people are gone right now because it's fishing season. The houses are all one bedroom kind of things, and there are a bunch of 2 story compounds with about 10 one room apartments in them. There are no street names (there are only about two roads in the entire town), so it's going to take a while to remember where everyone is. There's no chapel in Moree, so the ward meets in a school building in the middle of town. They're breaking ground on a chapel across the street this month though.

It's the cool season right now, so it actually doesn't get too hot during the day. I handle it pretty well. January and February are the hottest months. My diet in the apartment is pretty much oatmeal, bread, indo-mie noodles (ramen), and eggs. When we're in Moree, we'll eat this really good ice cream stuff called FanIce, this doughnut kind of thing we call bowl fruit, and bread with peanut butter. They sell water here in little plastic bags called sachez's. It's the only pure water you can get. You bite of a corner of the bag and suck the water out. One thing that is convenient here is that littering is what you're supposed to do. People are paid to walk around and pick up trash. So there are no trash cans. You just throw your trash on the ground.

The little kids here are awesome. They're so funny and so dang cute! They all chant this little song when we come by "Abruni, how are you? I'm fine, thank you." Abruni means white man, and that song is the only English they know, literally. EVERYWHERE we go, the kids sing that!

They speak Fante here, and I'm learning a little bit every day. Everyone says you can pick it up pretty easy, so hopefully I do! We have a couple people we're teaching that are doing well. Most of all the people we teach come from member referrals.

It's just so cool being here. I absolutely love it. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Love, Elder Brown.

Highlights from Letter #2...June 20, 2010

For your information, the words I put in italics are Griffin's words from his letters. The non-italicized words are mine :)

Highlights from Letter #2-

• The MTC is good, but I'm ready to go out in the field!
• Me and my companion get along great- he's really talkative and jovial, so my mellowness sort of balances it out.
• We play football (soccer) everyday and it's always fun. I scored two legit goals the other day!
• I'm loving my time being here and learning the culture of these people
• We went to the temple on Thursday and it was awesome.
• The celestial room is incredible. It's huge compared to the size of the rest of the temple. It's 3x the size of Dallas'.

Griffin's companion wrote a note in the margin of this letter. He said: "I am Elder Abodo from Nigeria. Elder Brown is my first companion and I wish he will be throughout my mission."

To learn more about temples, click here

Griffin's First Letter...

Here is a transcribed copy of Griffin's first letter! I won't post every letter, but since this is the first one, thought you would like to see what his first experiences were. This letter was written about June 13th I think.

I'm writing this on Sunday, the third day here at the MTC. It has been so crazy being here. I really didn't know what I was in store for at all. The guys I was supposed to meet up with in New York finally showed up about 10 minutes before the flight took off. They're all from Utah- Elders Dodd, Bunker, Rosquist and Hatch. The MTC was about 40 minutes from the airport in a town outside of Accra called Tema. The temple is actually right in the middle of Accra, so I haven't seen it yet.

There are about 35 missionaries here in the MTC, all of them native Africans except for me and the elders from Utah, plus one sister from Fiji. There are about 10 sister missionaries and about 15 total missionaries from DR, Congo or Cote d'Ivoire that speak French. They are pretty impressed that I can speak a little Francais, haha.

My companion's name is Elder Obodo, he's from Nigeria. His first name is Best. He's a funny guy, he's always talking and making people laugh. Pretty much none of the African missionaries have gone to the temple yet, so it will be a fun experience to see so many go through when we go on Thursday. We worked on Family History today so that they will be able to do their families work. Elder Obodo will get to do all the work for his father (Baptism all the way to endowment) when we go next week, and he asked me to go through for his grandfather this week.

Anyway, it's been great so far. It's hot, very hot, but it's ok. We've been pretty much consigned to the MTC so I haven't experienced much of Ghana, but being around the elders from all over Africa has been amazing...
Just some random things that are interesting here:

• They love singing hymns. They sing all the time. And they basically have the hymn book memorized. They can tell you where any hymn is in the hymnbook. Their favorites are "Dear to the Heart of the Shepherd" "Oh What Songs of the Heart," and "Praise to the Man"
• They always say "You're welcome." But not after you say thank you. They're literally wlecoming you. If you walk into your room, they say, "You're welcome." When I got here and told them I was from America they said, "You're welcome." It just sounds funny because we don't use it that way haha.
• The food is good. I'm sure it's not totally native (we had French fries yesterday) but I'm getting a good feel for it. We had fufu last night. It was pretty good! The fruits are different colors. The oranges taste exactly like oranges, but they look limes. The pineapple is white but it is soooo good. They eat a lot of rice and we've had chicken or beef pretty much everyday. It was funny when we had fufu. Joice (real name Rejoice), the cafeteria manager gave me, Elders Bunker, Hatch, Dodd and Rosquisdt bread instead of fufu. They said we weren't ready for fufu! Haha, but they gave me some when I asked.

It has been great. We are going to the temple tomorrow and I am very excited for that.

Love, Griffin

Fufu is a popular native dish in Ghana, from what we've researched.

Hey Everyone...

I have created this blog to provide updates about Griffin's adventures in Ghana! Check on the sidebar for information on how to write or send packages to Griffin. Check back soon for updates.