February 14, 2011

Happy Valentine's Day! Everything is normal in Cape Coast.

So I guess I should clarify...No one in Ghana has any idea who Jimmer is haha. I was completely joking about that. But that's so tight they are doing so well- hopefully they finish the season on a run, lock in a number 2 (dare I say 1???) seed and run deep in the tourney. I'm sure 60% of the people at the TCU game will be BYU fans, so that will be sweet. Enjoy it while it lasts! And YES! I have to participate in the March Madness! I will figure out a cool way to make picks without having any knowledge. Something Ghanaian style.

I got two packages today from Grandma H, but still not any of the latest ones from you. Maybe I will get them tomorrow at zone conference, usually they will save my mail to give there bc its the easiest. Elder Nzuki got his package from Grandma H, he's never tried most of the American snacks before, so he's excited for that. (side note for everyone who sends packages-you can LOAD up the flat-rate envelopes. Weight doesn't matter, there is no duty at all. Cram them completely full, when you think it's full, cram more! You should see how much people fit in those things :)

Also, send pictures of everyone- family, friend, the ward, whoever and whatever, from whenever. Tons and tons! The first thing all missionaries do when they go on splits is ask to see pictures, so I need more haha.

Alrighty, so now the weekly report from the field! The biggest news in Ghana Cape Coast Mission is that...We found a place that sells authentic, legit, true-blue OREOS!!!! No joke. Elder Bunker and Elder Alba found a place is Mankessim that sells them, so they supply our district with Oreos now haha. And they are cheap! 2 cedis for a whole container with like 24 Oreos! Somehow a lady gets them from her Bro that lives in Chicago that works for Nabisco. It's awesome. So...anyway, on to important stuff.

It's always hard to get going on Tuesday after a P-day. At the end of our companion study, Elder Nzuki chose to sing hymn 342. But if you look in the hymnbook there is no 342! It's our GCCM mission hymn. It's to the tune of "Adam-ondi-ahman". The first verse is the same as the first verse of the real song (Adam-ondi-Ahman). Here are the rest of the words:

verse 2: The field is white in Ghana's land/we fill our high commission. We're leading families hand in hand, to follow the Savior's holy plan/in Ghana Cape Coast Mission.

verse 3: We're teaching those the Lord has shown/they're those with ears to listen. They're future leaders who we know/will help the church to greatly grow/in Ghana Cape Coast Mission.

verse 4: Our lives a light in unity/in us lies no division. We're rooted like the might oak tree/in faith, obedience, charity/in Ghana Cape Coast Mission.

I'm really glad he chose it, singing that song is awesome. We usually sing it at zone conference (President has to fight tears every time we sing it...heck I do to). But it always helps me to get more excited, enthused, to be here in Ghana, in Moree to be serving here. I think of families I have helped to follow the Plan of Salvation, to make it to the temple and be faithful forever. I think of guys who are going to be future leaders- bishops, presidents, who knows- here in Ghana. And I think of just how awesome this place is! Sure there are difficulties, it's not perfect by any means, but it's awesome. Ghana is da best.

So we sang that song at District meeting too, district meeting was good on Tuesday.

I was having some serious digestive issues last week....the diet here is just not too exciting! I did make an awesome stew last week though, if I may say so myself. The staple of our diet is tomato stew. We put it on rice or noodles, and eat it pretty much every day. I must say, I'm starting to like most of the stuff I hated growing up. I loaded up my stew with fat chunks of onion, green peppers, and even carrots. I even found some cucumbers and threw them in (oh yeah, send me the recipe for that delicious cucumber salad, I think we might have all of the stuff for it here). And then I got a nice can of corned beef and added that to the stew, so I made a delicious meat sauce, and enjoyed it with spaghetti all week. Onions and Peppers? YES! Haha those are like my favorite now.

Wednesday was good. We have a new investigator that is so tight. His name is Solomon, we contacted him a couple of weeks ago. He is about 21 and speaks English pretty well. He is already almost in 2 Nephi and came to church on Sunday, even bringing two friends. He is the man. He has already come to translate for us in lessons, and he knows so much already. He is a stud! He has committed for baptism on the 5 March.

Thursday was pretty good too. In the morning, the power was out, so we couldn't iron our shirts. We had a cool thing happen Thursday night. President has been emphasizing lately to proselyte the full 9 hours every day. In Moree, because we travel away from the apartment, we proselyte for 9 hours straight, from 9:30 am-6:30 PM, not taking any breaks for lunch or dinner. Thursday our last appointment for the day, at 6 PM, failed. We were right by the taxi station to go back to Yamoransa, so we were tempted just to head back to Yamoransa right then (it was about 6:10). We were about to go, but instead decided just to go see if a guy we hadn't seen in a long time was home. He was there, and we set an appointment for tonight (it is with Francis and his wife). I hadn't seen him in probably 2 months, he was just never home. And then, on top of that, we ran into one of our recent converts, Bernard, who we hadn't seen in two weeks. So it was sweet, the day had been slow, it would have been easy to head home early, but I'm glad we stayed for the full 9 hours, it made the day worth it. Finding Francis and Bernard were probably two of the most important things we needed to do, and it didn't happen til we showed a little extra faith!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! and HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD! I hope you guys had awesome days. I thought of you on both days! I went on an exchange with Elder Mortensen, and we sang "You've had a birthday, shout hooray" for our closing hymn to companion study for you Mom! So I hope that made your birthday in 2011 extra sweet! and Happy Birthday to Sammy! Hope you are enjoying Disneyworld and that your baptism goes sweet! Send me some pictures of that!

I think I am getting fat. This is not good! Just kidding, I'm not really, but every time after I eat fried rice and chicken (the most delicious thing ever), I look in the mirror and my belly is quite large. But it always goes down after like 30 minutes. It just makes me scared at first. I don't know how in the world I could get fat here...I honestly must lose 2 pounds in sweat every day.

Saturday, we had another Movie Fireside for the ward. This one was even better! We watched the Joseph Smith movie (the one at the JS Memorial building at temple square) with them. The movie is awwwwwwwwwwwesome. And the best was that Brother Frank translated for it. He is the most awesome guy ever He works at the MTC, but he comes back to Cape Coast every 3 weeks, he lives in Moree. He went on his mission to Cote d'Ivoire, so he speaks French, and he speaks perfect English. He is THE MAN. His life is the church, seriously. He was the best translator for the movie ever, and like 40 people came so it was perfect. About 10 recent converts, so it was exactly what we wanted again! Very very cool.

Me and Elder Nzuki taught institute Sunday night; they do it by ward here since it is hard to travel to the institute building in Ola (the University of Cape Coast is in Ola). Andrew came and a few other guys, it was fun. The institute teachers in Moree moved a few weeks ago, and they haven't found anyone to replace her, so me and Elder Nzuki just took over.

So, other than that...life is good in Ghana. We had a FanIce party for Valentine's day with CC and Abura zones, it was fun. Tomorrow we have zone conference, we are combining with Swedru so I will get to see my boyz Elder Keller and Elder Bahme for the first time since they got transferred in October. I'll also get to see my MT Elder Rosquist, I'm excited to see him too, he's so tight. I hope Hayden killed the ACT. (Give me some golf news! Elder Alba's parents sent him a little advertisement of the latest Taylormade driver today...it was sweeeet to see).

Well, I love you guys. A lot. I'm so happy everything is going so great for you back home. I can tell life is good for everybody. I know it's not easy, but that doesn't mean it's not good! Man mission is crazy, but I love it. Time is not even real right now. I love you! Each and everyone of you! Love you, thanks for the pics, I'm sure the packages will be here soon (I'll pray for tomorrow :))

Me do mo paapaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaapaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-Opanyin Brown

February 7, 2011

Morning morning morning! Random fact, 90% of the time you say good morning to a Ghanaian they reply "Fine morning" or "morning morning morning." I'm sure you were wondering that, Ghanaian English is the bomb!

Anyway, thanks for all the emails this week. I had like 13 or something when I signed in, always sweet when that happens! It's been a good p-day in Cape Coast. We played football in the morning with Abura and Assina Fosu zones. We found a sweet pitch in Yamoransa this week, so we decided to play there. It was awesome getting to play in Yamoransa, not having to travel 30 minutes in a trotro just to get to the pitch. We even got to walk to the pitch in moftee(aka street clothes), so that was cool. Let me just say, the few opportunities we get to wear moftee outside the apartment (walking to a service project, things like that) are awesome. Wearing my fresh levi's and my white macbeth shirt, and my gray macbeths is awesome. We don't get to wear moftee on P-days, have to wear white shirt and tie into town to email, buy food, and all that. No biggie though. I didn't score today, was a little off my game, but I had two assists, so I kept on the score sheet at least :) I probably have an 8 or 9 match scoring streak going on. I lock down in the midfield! Haha I'm not that good really...Last week we played bball on the beach, always fun. You can just call the Ghanaian Jimmer. He's all I hear about hear! Even Ghanaians are talking about Jimmer! No jok! When we contact people they say, "wati, are you from the church that owns the school Jimmer goes to?" It's pretty crazy. People show up to church in Jimmer jerseys...! (In Griffin's email this week (2/14) he said that he was joking about the people in Ghana knowing about Jimmer--guess you could say "We got Jimmered" :)

We had another great week in Moree, still can't complain. It's the dead of dry season though...veryyy hot. Elder Nzuki's fan broke the other night, he couldn't sleep at all. He said he took a shower at 2 am to cool off. I guess it is a lot cooler in Kenya. But there was one day it was a little overcast that was nice. As hot as it is, whenever we get to hot, we can climb a hill in Moree just by the beach and get a few minutes of a refreshing sea breeze, it's really nice. A member has a sweet house on the hill, and you can climb up on the roof and sit there, it's awesome. When I sat sweet house, it's two rooms, dirt floors, no bathroom, but the view is awesome :)

Tuesday was good, I gave an instruction at district meeting about revelation- the stuff that we learned at a Leadership training a couple of weeks ago. The new focuses they are giving us from Preach My Gospel are really helpful, they are working very well. At night we hopped in the 1 cedi tro tro for the one hour trip to Mankessim for an exchange with them. I went with Elder Alba (SLC, UT) in Mankessim and Elder Nzuki went with Elder Bunker back to Moree. It was a really good exchange, Elder Alba is young on mission (Elder Bunker trained him) but he is doing really well. Mankessim is a really sweet city. It's a little smaller than Cape Coast, almost everyone speaks English. A lot different from Moree. It was nice to have a day of proselyting in an area where I understood most everything that was going on. It was market day there, so the town was just cram packed with people from all around selling stuff. I almost bought some sweet shades, Ray-Bons (not to be confused with Ray-Bans) but they guy wanted five cedis for them- they really try to just take oboruni's money, and usually they do. If you come to Ghana, we'll ahve to do some serious talking about how much to pay for stuff! Tuesday night in Mankessim, they showed us a sweet chop bar in town. A chop bar is a Ghanaian restaurant, usually consists of an old woman pounding fufu and another lady cooking some groundnut soup in a pot over an open flame, and then you sit on a little wood bench to eat. But this one was sweet, it was a legit building, and reminded of an actual restaurant back home. It had a counter where you went to order, they had four pots of soup you could choose from, and the fufu was ready on demand. Then you sat at a real table, and they had a bowl on the table where you could pour water to wash your hands, and even had a roll of paper towels! And a salt shaker! And the fufu was pretty good too.

I did a baptismal interview while I was there in Mankessim, a cool guy named John. His brother had been baptized a little while before, and so his brother baptized him in the ocean on Saturday. Elder Alba played golf in high school, so we had fun talking about that. He sounds like he was pretty good. We decided that we are going to play in Takoradi when we go there the last week of the transfer for our football match. I'm getting so excited, even though its five weeks away!

Thursday was normal, the only thing interesting was that we taught a lady named Ekua. I think I have talked about her before, but it is an interesting situation. She is a referral from a less-active. Friday we worked at the chapel in the morning. I love doing that. Just good ol' fashioned manual labor. We basically dig ditches every time. Cool thing though- while we were digging, we started talking to a guy named William. He isn't a member, but we were able to start talking to him about normal stuff. He lives in Yamoransa. We talked to him the whole time, and at the end, invited him to go to church in Yamoransa on Sunday. And guess what? He did! Pretty sweet- that is the whole point of us working there.

Saturday was cool, we held a fireside at night at the chapel. Watched The Testaments. It was good, at first there was only like 7 people there, but by the end of the movie there was about 30, with probably 6 or 7 investigators, a few recent converts- and we got two new referrals. So I would say it was a success! We are going to start showing a movie every Saturday night at the chapel. We have one of the really good English speakers translate the movie, we stop it every 10 minutes or so to explain to the Fante speakers. I am honestly going to have The Testaments memorized by the time I get home.

We started a mission fast Saturday when we got home. With the current mission goal (baptize a referral from a recent convert and help a recent convert prepare names to go to the temple) there are still 31 missionaries who haven't completed. The goal ends February 28th, so we are working hard for that. Our whole zone is finished- our zone is one of the more "fruitful" areas of the mission. Kumasi is a lot more dry than the south. Fasting is always tough in 100 degree heat, but it was ok. Seeing the kids selling the pure water sachets on their head throughout the day is straight up torture though. It was a food fast though (I almost lost this whole email! luckily my good friend Mavis helped me out with the old computer though). Anyway, at then end of the day, we found our friend Christian, one of our old English-speaking investigators. He had somehow disappeared, but he walked by us at the chapel in the evening. He had traveled somewhere for a few weeks. Not sure how serious he is, but he was really happy to see us. We shall see. We have quite a few more English-speaking investigators right now, we have done a lot more contacting to do that. We figure if we contact, we will only be able to teach people that actually do speak English! None of them speak very good English....Just gotta keep working on da Fante.

Welp, I love you guys. Life is good, it's not easy, but its good. We are working hard here in Moree, nothing to complain about. I think our next baptism will be the 19th of February for Godfred, Phillip's best friend. Oh yeah, Phillip received the Aaronic Priesthood yesterday, he is excited to get to baptize Godfred and bless the Sacrament. Phillip is so awesome. He's gonna be a stud.

I love you guys! Thanks for everything!!!!!!!!!!! I haven't gotten your packages yet, but I"m sure they are getting here soon. They might even be in the mission home right now, the assistants forgot to bring mail to the football match today. Sorry you had so much craziness with the flights, but that's great everything went well with the blessing. Just saw you sent a bunch of pictures, so I'll be excited to look at all of those!

Love you!

-Elder Brown

January 31, 2011

Morning, morning, morning. We're going to play basketball at the beach after this, always excited to ball it up.

Anyway, this week was pretty good. A hundred times different than last week, but it was another great week. Monday we had a French toast party with CC, Abura, and Assin Fosu zones. There was like 40 missionaries there, so it was sweet. We also played volleyball, Elder Katoa is an ANIMAL. If that guy came to America, he would be like the best outside linebacker ever. He is such an athlete. He is so giant, but he is so fast it's crazy. Anyway, with transfers, there were no changes to our whole zone! The only thing is that there was an area that didn't have elders last transfer, but now they do again. But no on left the zone...really weird! 9 months in one area is really long, I just feel like a citizen of Moree haha. Elder Bahme and Elder Keller (two guys in my district from my first two transfers) are coming down from Kumasi/Sunyani to be companions in the coastal town of Winneba (Swedru zone), so that means I will get to see them at some point in this transfer.

So with last week being so busy and cram-packed, this week being a normal proselyting week was kind of weird haha. On Tuesday our first three appointments failed and we didn't really know what to do, but it ended up ok. We taught some good people that are serious, Kofi, Godfred- who is Phillip's best friend- we taught Phillip, and then at the end of the day we taught Solomon.

Wednesday was tough...in the morning, our first appointment failed, but then we had an appointment to go to Belinda's house and help her mom make Kenkey (its like a really thick corn dough, you eat with stew). We did clean Nana's house for him, though. He's 90....it was really cool, he was so thankful.

On Thursday, we went to Belinda to teach her. Phillip came with us to translate for some lessons on Thursday. He did so well! Honestly some of the best translating anyone has ever done for us. We also had a young men's activity on Thursday night. The auxiliary leaders here don't really know what an "activity" is, so we have started to help out trying to teach them. There has never been a Young Men's or Young Women's activity since I have been here. So we bought some stuff to play table tennis and played on a table at the chapel. It was sweet. People LOVE table tennis here-and they are reallyyyyy good-but it costs ten pesewas to play one game. So bc it was free, a lot of the YM came, and a lot brought friends. It was fun. We have been playing table tennis for exercise in the apartment for our exercise haha. Its gotten pretty intense. Elder Katoa is amazing, and Elder Mortensen is a little better than me, so it's always fun.

Friday was pretty good. It was sweet because we ran into one of our former investigators (an English speaker!) named Augustine. He had progressed really well, came to church, was praying about the church and about Joseph Smith and stuff, but then he just fell off the face of the planet. We would call him, go to his house, he was never around. He was a referral from Andrew, and Andrew didn't even know where he was. But we ran into him, and he had been in Sekondi for about 3 months. He was excited to see us, and we taught him on Friday. It was good, hopefully he starts progressing again. He even gave us a referral, his friend named Richard.

Saturday we worked at the chapel, I love doing that. Just sort of lets you get your mind off things, but it is like the best thing we can do for the missionary work in Moree. The members see us working and they introduce us to their friends. The members who work on the chapel show us all of the non-members that are working there, and they all want to learn more about the church that they are building for. It's hard work, but it's fun!

So then everything else was cool. Not as crazy as last week, which was good in some ways, not good in others, but it was just another solid week. Can't complain. I am working harder at Fante, I actually somehow taught a lesson in Fante yesterday to a recent convert, but it's still hard. I'll just keep plugging along at that. So the work is still going great in Moree, nothing to complain about, thanks for everything. Hopefully I get some packages when I see the zone leaders today! I love you guys, thanks for everything you do. Just keep being awesome and sending sweet emails! I'll try to do the same :)

Love you!

-Elder Brown