Saturday, November 27, 2010

November 22, 2010

What's up! Very glad to be able to hear from you guys again, as always! Hearing some updates from home always gets me ready to go for the week! I've gotten the first half of the Thanksgiving package (chicken, gravy, soup, potatoes), hopefully the rest of it will come this week! I got a package from Grandma Brown this week too, had some sweet candy and stuff! Anyway besides that, the week was really sweet. We played basketball on a court down by the beach last week, it was fun to be able to ball again. There are some guys that are pretty good in the zone, so it was really fun. I kind of hurt my shoulder playing though, haven't played a sport that involves the use of the arms in a while! That interrupted my morning work-out routine a little, but it wasn't too bad. I've been getting up a little early every day for the past few weeks and working out with the stuff we've got in the apartment. I'm getting totally ripped...haha. Fufu won't do that for ya I think. But I've actually enjoyed getting up at 5:30 and working out for a little while, it's hard, but it gets me ready for the day!

The week of proselyting went really well too. On Tuesday we held our first "Baptism Prep and New Member Class." Elder Adams had the idea to do it last week, so we decided to go ahead and try it. Basically we just want to have another opportunity each week for our investigators and recent converts to get together every week to be able to gain a solid foundation of knowledge concerning what we are teaching them, and then also to be able to become friends with each other and get more comfortable in the church setting. It went really really well. Elder Adams and I taught from 3 Nephi 11 about baptism in general, and it was really good for all who were present. We had a few investigators come, several recent converts, and a few members, so it was a very good mix to have. There is a new teaching curriculum that the missionary department has implemented, and basically our focus in all teaching is supposed to be baptism. We are supposed to talk about baptism in the first lesson with anyone we meet. So every investigator we have, we invite them to come to the baptism prep class, whether they have committed to baptism or not. I think it's going to be a really good way for them to learn better about baptism and about membership in the church in general. We're going to take each missionary lesson and teach at the class, but we're going to make everything stem from baptism. So for this week we are going to teach the Restoration, but we are going to focus on what that means about baptism, and why we need to be baptized into this church. We'll focus on the apostasy and the Restoration and let the Spirit take it from there! It should be sweet, last week's class was awwwwwesome.

Wednesday we had Zone Conference, it was sweet as always. Thursday through Saturday we stayed busy preparing the people who will be baptized this week for baptism. Belinda, Bernard and Kobina are all doing really well, and are just awesome!

We also had some fun messing with tro-tro mates on Thursday. They call the guys who you pay on a tro-tro "mates" and we just had some fun messing around with them while we were driving. I love riding on tro-tros, it's so fun. It's like a mini roller coaster ride everyday.

Jacob, our recent convert, is a barber, so we always go to his place to get our hair cut. He cuts the African way, we're the only oborufo who's hair he has ever cut, so he just does it the way he knows! So yep, my hair looks like P-diddy's or fitty's. No big deal.

We helped Andrew finish his basic family history stuff on Friday. We got all the info into Familysearch for his grandparents who have passed away, and he'll be able to go to the temple next week to do their work, pretty sweet! He got the Melchezidek Priesthood on Sunday at stake conference. He was so excited. So awesome to be able to see that for him. 2 and a half months ago, we didn't even know who he was...Ye da nyame ase. SO AWESOME!!!!!

Saturday I went on splits with Elder Katoa in Moree. It was sweet, we taught a bunch of lessons, and had a lot of fun cruising around Moree all day. Elder Katoa loved Moree. He is so tight too. He's a powerful guy. In physical and spiritual strength! He's one of the reasons I've started working out for an hour every day! Haha.

Sunday was Stake Conference. It was one of those big regional conferences broadcast from Salt Lake, so we got to see Elder Oaks, President Packer, Sister Dibb, and Elder Cristoffel Golden (area presidency, from South Africa) speak. We went to the Abura stake center to watch it. The Stake center was PACKED. Honestly it was pretty ridiculous. They will be splitting the stake here by the end of next year I'm sure. It was sweet to see so many members there together. Elder Oaks spoke a lot about putting off old traditions that aren't in line with the Gospel.

Well that's it for the week. I love you guys, thanks for everything!

Alright well thanks again for everything, I'll be looking forward to the packages :) LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!! and everybody else that reads this too!!!!

Yebehyia,
Elder Brown

Saturday, November 20, 2010

November 15, 2010


Ca ya bien!!! Alright, first things, Elder Mortensen got Bacon n' Cheddar easy cheese in a package last week and you HAVE to send it to me!!!!! OK?!?!?! It's amazing!!!!!! So now that that's out of the way, on to the good stuff :)

So this week was so sweet. Probably the sweetest week so far on my mission. It just flew by, and even though it wasn't really anything special finding or teaching wise, it was just awesome. I never really felt worn out during the day (Except for Sunday, which was Fast Sunday...not nice not eating or drinking when its 103!!!!!!!) and the days were all productive. Tuesday I went on splits with Elder Mortensen and Elder Katoa, because Elder Adams went to a special training meeting for DLs and ZLs in Cape Coast. It was really good. The work in Yamoransa is kind of slow right now, but they are working really hard to speed it back up. We contacted for a little while, taught a first lesson to a member referral, and met with a couple of recent converts. They have a sweet recent convert who we taught right before he left for the mission prep class in Ola. He's definitely mission bound next year. Then we taught a recent convert who I had actually taught several times with Elder Chesa, Timothy. He's a really cool guy too, he was the first guy I taught 5+ times who got baptized, so that was especially cool. Wednesday was basically the perfect day of missionary work haha. Absolutely nothing fell through, we taught 12 lessons. It was crazy! We met will all the people we wanted to, contacted a couple guys who seem really cool and are friends with some members, and taught 4 recent converts. It was just awesome! Never had a day like that, hopefully there are some more coming as we work hard though :) Thursday and Friday were normal, met with Belinda a couple times, she committed to baptism! I'm really excited for her.

Saturday was the sweetest. We taught some great lessons in the morning (Belinda), and then we went out with the Young Men's president, Bro. Hawkson. and visited all of our YM-aged recent converts. We met with Isaac and Steven, the two best friends who were baptized a little while ago. It went really well. Bro. Hawkson just taught them about how they need to be reading the scriptures plenty, about how important the Book of Mormon is. That is exactly what we wanted to talk about, so it worked out well! We also met with David, talked about the same stuff.

Saturday night, we roasted a pig for a dinner!!!! It was Elder Mortensen's year mark, and since Elder Katoa knows how to roast a pig, we did it! We bought the pig from bishop and it was huuuuuge. Elder Katoa said it was the biggest pig he has ever killed and cooked. He actually had some trouble killing it, but he eventually got the best of it. Seein him kill the pig was pretty crazy. Then we went back to the apartment, built a fire outside, cleaned the pig, stuck it on a stick and roasted for two hours! I was a little skeptical about how it would taste, just because didn't put any spice, seasoning sauce or anything on it. But oh my word....it was sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good. I probably ate more meat Saturday night than I had my whole mission. It was ridiculous, tasted like something straight from Fogo de Chao. No joke. Goodness gracious, that thing was better than just about anything. And the experience of cooking the whole thing, from life to meal was awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We'll have to do it as a family on our next family campout....haha :)

Sunday, it rained superrrrrr hard in the morning. I heard the LOUDEST clap of thunder I have EVER heard, hands down. I was asleep, and it literally made me jump out of bed. Elder Mortensen thought a bomb had gone off and we were under attack for about 5 minutes. It was insane. It shook the house. And then since people think rain will kill them here, no one came to church! I counted at the start of sacrament...there was 19 people there. 19!!!!!! Not to say how awesome we are or anything, but about 8 of those were recent converts or investigators :) Andrew blessed the sacrament again (by memory) and we confirmed Jacob (since last week we watched conference, we didn't do it then). Elder Adams and I bore our testimonies in testimony meeting. Elder Adams threw down some Fante (Minyim de asor no ye nokwar- I know the church is true) and everybody liked that. It was a cool testimony meeting, just because there were so few people there. Andrew bore his testimony, that was sweet. We walked all the way to Abakamoru before church to pick an investigator up to take to church, Edward. We walked in the rain all the way out there, and he came with us. He had a pretty good time. One of his best friends, Enoch, is a member, so hopefully something comes from that. He's a really cool kid.

Something kind of cool-there is an Ethiopian in our zone, Elder Mekonen. I remembered that Pres. and Sis. Andrus are serving there right now, and I asked him if he knew them, and he said he did! He couldn't stop talking about how awesome they are and about how much he loved them. He said he would meet and talk with him all the time, he helped him get out on mission. He even said that last year he went to Thanksgiving dinner at their house! Pretty Sweet! Small world, eh?

So anyway, I can't think of anything else awesome right now. I got your package today, the one with the Christmas tree and stuff in it! Can't wait to set it up and decorate it :D You and Sister Adams must be talking, you guys send me and Elder Adams the same stuff :) He just got a package of the same Tyson's chicken last week, and the same mashed potatoes! Its cool though, bc that stuff is awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just keep sending any cool stuff you can find! Especially easy cheese!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Glad the Wildcats won, hope they crush Cedar Hill this week! The Cougs might have a shot in SLC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I LOVE YOU GUYS!!!! Thanks for being sooo awesome! Yebehyia!

Love, from Cape Coast, Ghana,

Elder G. Hebertson Brown

Monday, November 15, 2010

November 8, 2010

Wazzup! Sounds like its been a sweet week in Denton, besides the Rangers losing :( Sorry about that, but oh well, they'll win it in 2012!!!!!!!!!!! Glad to here H was a human highlight reel, wish I coulda been there. And finally BYU! That's just what they needed, a bye week to get regrouped and then pound a terrible team into submission. Sounds like Heaps was pretty efficient. I just hope (but not pray, that's bad) that the Cougs can pull it together for another miracle in Salt Lake in a few weeks. I'm getting a lot of grief from the U fans here and so it'd be nice to have scoreboard for another year. Hopefully the U gets derailed a little bit because of the TCU pounding. Does it look like TCU will have a shot at the National Championship? Hope so. Glad Guyer won, I'm sure the refs were gunning for a Southlake win. Not even kidding, I bet they were.

The work on the chapel is going sweet. Pres. Freeze asked if I was digging a grave in one of the pics, but I was digging a hole for a foundation pole actually! Well I didn't dig all that much, sort of just climbed in for a pic :) It's sweet to see the work going, they put up lights so they can work at night too. And a lot of the people working are members of Moree ward.

So here is the news from the week. First off, we got our water back on (Ye da nyame ase). It would have been sooooo terrible not having it on for a longer period of time. Elder Katoa came on Wednesday, he's so tight! His last two companions were marines, so he's gotten huge. We're all gonna work out a lot this transfer so we can get big like him haha. He played professional rugby in Tonga, so maybe we'll learn a few things about that. He loves to roast pig, so we'll be doing that this weekend for Elder Mortensen's year mark!!!! It's gonna be sweet!!!!!!! He's just a really cool guy.

The rest of the week went really well. We've got a really cool new investigator, Belinda. She came to the church with her uncle a few weeks ago, and she has loved everything we have taught her.

I finished my first journal last week! Pretty crazy....it was the one Grandma H gave me, so now I'm on to a new one. Alright only twelve minutes left, so I'm not stopping to correct anything, if there are errors, kose aye! So the week besides that was cool. We have a phone when we proselyte now since Elder Adams is the DL, so that makes things a little bit easier. Our teaching pool is somewhat small still, but it's growing as we're getting some more referrals and stuff. We met with Francis again finally last week. He's a really really good guy. We met a guy named Akom who is really cool. He's an older guy, maybe late 50's. We go into his room and he's got a Book of Mormon, a Doctrine & Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, and the Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Heber J. Grant and at least five others!!! Crazy. He said his brother who died recently was a member, and that he just likes to read about anything religious. It will be interesting to see how it goes. He is a Buddhist...and since I think Buddhism is pretty dang sweet, it'll be fun to teach him. I can throw down with some of my knowledge of the Dhammaphada :) Aunt Krissy even wrote a quote from Buddha in my little family book which I love!!!!!! Ps I love that book.

Anyway, four minutes left, gotta wrap up. One thing I can't forget: I want a package of just cheese!!!!!! There is no cheese here!!!!!!!!!!!! EZ Cheese, nacho cheese packets, blocks of cheese, anything!!!! E. Mortensen said he got a package of cheese, and that it was the sweetest package ever. So send me a flat-rate envelop chocked full of cheese :) Tons of EZ Cheese and Cheese Whiz all right?! :D I can already taste the bacon cheddar cheese whiz in my mouth :) Well actually I can't because it's not here!!!!!

I LOVE YOU!!!!!!! A lot

Buh bye,

Elder Brown

Sunday, November 7, 2010

November 1, 2010

Hey what's up everybody. It's been a pretty crazy week, it was really sweet though.



We just got transfer news, Elder Wiah is going up to Kumasi to be the Dichemso zone leader, and Elder Adams is the new district leader here in Yamoransa. Pretty sweet because now we'll get to take the phone when we proselyte, that will help so much. Elder Mortensen's new companion is named Elder Katoa, he's Samoan. He was in Abura zone (the other CC zone) for a while so I've met him a few times and he's super tight. we'll have a lot of fun in our apartment this transfer I'm sure.



So anyway on to the week. A lot of sweet things happened. First off is that we met an Area Seventy, Elder Ahadgi, at the chapel site one night. It was really sweet. (He is actually in a picture in the gospel principles book, in the eternal marriage chapter). We talked to him for about an hour and he told us some really sweet stuff. He told us to read 1 Nephi again and compare it to Joseph Smith. Pretty cool. He also has a cool conversion story, he was a stake president 3 years after he became a memeber. A bishop 8 months after being a member....serious stuff!!! Wednesday we went to farm with Bro Buateng from the Yamoransa ward (same guy we went to FHE a couple weeks ago). We thought his farm was right by his house, but nope, it was a solid hour and a half walk outside of Yamoransa. We were supposed to help him harvest some trees he was growing to make charcoal, but the chainsaw didn't work, so we walked back to Yamoransa!



Funny story- I made some syrup about a week and a half ago to use for French toast. All I used was brown sugar, white sugar, water and a little bit of Elder Mortensen's mapeline. But about four days after I made it, that stuff turned into grade A alcohol. It WREAKED. It fermented so fast it was ridiculous. Guess I'll just have to put it in the fridge next time!



Anyway, one day we were walking to meet Jacob at his house, and we passed these kid that were all gathered in a group. We saw that they were all gathered around this one kid who was playing a home made drum set! It was so sweet, he made it out of three water jugs and tomato paste cans and lids. It was legit, and he was super good! He had made a bass with the foot pedal and everything, had made a hi hat out of two tomato can lids and had like 6 other cymbals and drums. It was so sweet. I sat down and played a little bit haha. I got a pic so you'll see it at some point, but man it was so tight. Chris would have thought it was super sweet.

We went on splits with Elder Izekor on Friday and that was really sweet, he's a really powerful guy. He helped us out with a lot of the investigators we were teaching. He said that Moree is sweet and that it looks like we're doing a great job, so we'll work to keep that up!

Our baptism this weekend went well, but not as planned at all. Friday the water stopped running in Yamoransa. We have a reserve tank that we use when the water stops, but it was empty too. So we've gone without running water for a few days. We were showering with water we fetched from a place like half a mile down the road and stuff. NOT FUN!!!!!!!!!!!! Be grateful for running water. You can't do anything without it! Anyway so made it so that the font in Yamoransa couldn't fill. So we had to change it to the beach while we were at church on Sunday. We had already rescheduled it from Saturday or a couple reasons, and so it was pretty crazy to have to change it again from Yamy to Moree beach. Mankessiem were coming to join our baptism, so we had to get a hold of them and everything, crazy crazy. And then of course baptizing in the ocean is just ridiculous. But Jacob was baptized as well as Esther, so it all worked out fine.

Today's P-Day has been pretty hectic. With the water being off and everything our apartment is a mess and we could wash any of our clothes, so it was just weird. We had a banana cake party with the zone, me and Elder Bunker made em. They were really good, and we got to watch the Priesthood session of conference too. Finally got to see some of conference! I loved Pres. Uchtdorf's talk.

Well everything is going sweet here. I'm getting more and more into it, starting to lose track of days and stuff. Is it really November? I love you guys!

-Elder Brown

Go Rangers! (Unfortunately, the Rangers lost the World Series that night---Opening Dayis April 1st! :)