January 17, 2011

Wazzup fam. Life is good in the neighborhood. PS-the church is true. I'll start off with a sweet little story that happened this week. As I have talked about earlier, pretty much all of our investigators right now are Fante speakers. We have two that speak English right now, Solomon and Christian. We weren't able to meet with Christian this week because he traveled or something. But we met with Solomon a few times; we have taught him a lot, are on the commandments right now, but he has always had trouble coming to church. But anyway, we got to church nice and early on Sunday, and were waiting outside the doors to greet people as they came in. While we were standing there, I sort of turn around towards the wall and just said a silent prayer that Solomon was on his way coming to church and we would see him soon. Before I even finished the prayer, the phone starting buzzing in my pocket. It was a Solomon, telling us he was on the way coming!!!!! He showed up 5 minutes later, 10 minutes early for church. It was so tight, made and Elder Nzuki preeeeeeetty happy. So that was a great start to Sunday.

Anyway, the week was sweet! Pretty normal week, but it was solid. We went to Takoradi today for P-day, w combined with Abura zone to play Takoradi and Sekondi zones. It was fun, we won like 7-1 or something, no big deal. I started off the scoring today, I'm getting the hang of the old futbol. My position is center-mid #8. Tuesday we had a great district meeting, Elder Meinzer instructed on "Will you come to church" and talked about what it really means to go to church for our investigators and for us. I thought about it a lot this week because we were focused on helping some investigators (like Solomon) come to church for the first time. At the meeting, we talked a lot about our district's upcoming baptism. Every companionship in our district is having a baptism this weekend, so we decided to combine for a big district baptism in Yamoransa. It's going to be sweet. There is going to be 20 total people baptized. We're going to make it ultra awesome, nothing is going to go wrong!!!! (we can only pray...haha, maybe the door won't open again). So that will be fun this week. 3 people from Moree will be baptized. Phillip, a young man who has progressed really really well. He will be baptized and also two young boys, Peter and Andrew. Their parents are both members. They started coming to church about a month ago, and are now preparing to go to the temple to be sealed. So it's been cool helping Peter and Andrew prepare for baptism-but it's been cooler as their whole family has been there for the lessons. They have two other boys that are younger than 8, so that will have a sweet time at the temple in a few months!

Wednesday I went on splits with Elder Katoa in Moree (Elder Nzuki doesn't know Moree well enough yet, but he will have to by Friday because I have to go to Abakrampa for the day to interview their ten people for baptism!) It was a pretty normal day, Elder Katoa is awesome. Thursday was cool, Elder Nzuki didn't receive his patriarchal blessing before his mission, so I got to go with him to Ola so he could get that. It was his birthday, and he was veryyyy excited to have an awesome birthday present from the Patriarch. Friday we worked at the chapel in the morning. I realized that working at the chapel would be sweet, and so I just went and talked to the foreman, who gave it the ok. Elders Mortensen and Katoa came to help too, and the Zone leaders called us Thursday night to go on splits with us for Friday, so they came too! It was sweet, we moved a bunch of dirt to fill in an area...pretty serious work :) haha. It was cool though, I think it will help us be more one with the ward since so many members work there. We are going to start doing it every week. Elder Leko came with us for the rest of the day, he is our newer zone leader. He is from Uganda, pretty sweet guy!

The weekend was pretty normal as well. I had to call Elder Adams on Saturday to ask about a baptismal record that he accidentally packed and took to Kumasi. He sounds like he is having fun up there-it is 100 times different than Moree though. Everyone speaks English. It's basically like neighborhoods back in America he said. So he contacts A LOT, pretty much all day he said. He and his companion are also in charge of the "unit" there in Atonsu. It's not a ward or a branch, but it's just a group. They meet for sacrament meeting in Elder Adams' apartment. So he's having fun with that I think. That's the new strategy for the mission, start "groups" in places where there is no place to worship. It should help the mission expand pretty rapidly.

Before I forget, here's some things to send (if you haven't already):
-Pretzel M&Ms (elder mortensen got them and they are awesome!), peanut m&ms, almond m&ms, any kind of m&ms! They get here really good and they are delicioussss.
-Don't send Reeses, they completely melt and become destroyed on the way here.
-EASY CHEESE! Sharp cheddar is fine if there is no bacon and cheddar,
-precooked bacon! Elder Mortensen got it and oh my sweet goodness I need some!
-Cran cherry drink powder. If they don't have cran-cherry, any kind, cran-grape, whatever kind of thing. Send a ton of drink powder in general

Welp I think that's it......Another great week on the mission. Also, it was awesome to open my inbox this week and have 13 emails!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks everyone for e-mailing this week, it was great:)

I love you guys! Thanks so much for everything, sound like you guys are doing great. Hope everything goes well for you this week, it's going to be a crazy week here getting ready for baptism!!! I'm going to be doing interviews everyday, so it will be crazy. Thanks for the great e-mails, packages, letters, and everything! Always feel free to send more stuff :) Haha, esp always throw in some pictures with letters or packages!

Love you!
-Elder Brown