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.