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"