May 16, 2011

We had a pretty good week in Kumasi. We waited one week for Degraft's baptism so that we could join the UST elders and have two other candidates ready for this coming Sunday, the 22nd. So we will baptize Degraft, Cosmos, and Miller. Cosmos is so tight. He really wants to know the truth. Every lesson he asks deep deep questions like what it really means to repent, listens to our answers, studies the scriptures, goes and prays about them, and always comes back knowing it’s true. It has been awesome teaching him. Can't wait to see him baptized and at work helping the Kwamo Branch to be established and grow. They finally started the tiling inside the chapel this week; there is a possibility we could move in by the week’s end. Probably still won't have services there for at least a little while longer, hopefully the tilers make quick work though.

Last Monday we had a sweet sweet lesson at the B's house. We got to their house around 7 or so for the lesson, and we started teaching Charles first because Josephine was busy cooking. Charles is a recent convert, just moved here with his family from Accra. He is a really busy businessman. We were able to answer some questions, and then it transitioned perfectly into our planned lesson with Josephine, his wife. We discussed more about the Restoration and The Book of Mormon, and it could not have gone more perfect. She has read quite a bit in the Book of Mormon already, and is loving it. We taught her again this week, read 3 Nephi 11 with her, and she committed to baptism for the 5 June. She has come to church with Charles a couple of times, and is really enjoying church as well. She even cooked us some nice fufu on Monday, and then some delicious rice and stew when we came again Saturday. We are going back tonight to have FHE with them, we are bringing "The Testaments" to watch with them. Hopefully it goes well!

We had some crazy lessons with Clifford this week, man that guy has been prepared for the gospel. Like I said, he came to Stake Conference last week and loved it. We taught him on Tuesday, finished lesson 2, he said that he can't wait for his baptism. Then we taught him on Thursday, and he said he literally couldn't wait for his baptism, that he wanted it to be even right then if we could. The guidelines in our mission is that someone has to come to church 3 times at least before they can be baptized, and since he had only been once, we told him we weren't sure... He was pretty distraught, saying that he can't wait. We taught him The Word of Wisdom and the law of chastity that night, it was crazy because he already knew them, literally he knew. He told us all these stories about how he got a new job a while back, and when he got there there were posters on the walls that were pretty risque, and he took them all down, and he said "you could just feel the Spirit more there after that, and everyone I worked with knew it, too". So that was pretty cool.

I got to be a tro-tro mate Thursday night coming home! The mate is the guy who sits in the tro, hangs out the window yelling where the car is going trying to get people to enter the car, and is the one who collects money from the people on the tro-tro. We got in our tro-tro going home, and the driver didn't have a mate, he was trying to drive, call people, and collect money all at once. I asked if he needed help, and he said sure! So I hopped in the mate's seat, hung out the window yelling "Kejetia-Adum! Kejetia-Adum!Kejetia Adum!" and collected money from all the people on the tro-tro. It was pretty awesome haha. Everyone was laughing at the oboruni acting as the trotro mate. I did an ok job I think, maybe my calling is to stay in Kumasi and be a trotro mate!!!! :)

Everything else is going great, can't really complain! I played pretty well in our football matches today. Had a couple of assists and two goals, so I was quite the scoring machine :) Haha, I am getting better small small. No other big news really, zone conference is tomorrow (YES!!!!), it will be President Sabey's last (weird). I hope maybe we will have a big mission conference before he goes or something, that would be sweet. I was laying in bed last night and I was just thinking "I love my mission". Mission is not easy, to be honest. But I can honestly say that as of last night that, that switch really turned to where I literally love my mission. I thought it again this morning when I woke up, when I was washing my clothes. I wake up and I just think, wow, I love everything about this right now. It’s not easy koraa, but I have really gotten to a point where I am loving every second. Really, every second. Even the hard times, I am just loving it. So life is good :) Have fun in Ireland mom, have fun in Tejas to the rest of the crew, do work at the spring game H, and just keep loving life!!!! I love you guys more than you know!!!! Thanks for everything :) Me do mo paa, na minnim se asore no ye nokore, na me do ma ebusua papaapa!!!!!

Love from the hills of Asante region,

-Elder Brown Kwesi Poku

May 9, 2011

Note from the family: We spoke to Elder Brown on Mothers Day and had a great connection. He sounded great and said to say Hi to everyone, and thanks for the support. He sent a short note the next day:

Guess I will give a little update on the week since I have some more time after emailing other people. Again, send my regards to everybody around town, I love and miss Denton and the Denton 2nd ward! We are teaching sweet people right now. Degraft and Cosmos will be baptized next Sunday (we postponed Degrafts so Cosmos could join, plus the other Elders have some people). Then in the next few weeks a man named Clifford will be baptized, he is awesome. He came to stake conference yesterday and just loved it. Plus the Brobbey family, along with Gilbert. Gilbert is awesome. He only speaks Ewe, a language spoken in Eastern Ghana (Volta Region). He is Bro. Timothy's brother, and Bro. Timothy is actually an Ewe, so Bro. Timothy translates for us. So Gilbert doesn't understand much at church, but he is loving the gospel! Anyway, I guess I will head out for today, love you guys so much!

-Elder Brown

May 2, 2011

Waiting at the Kumasi Bus Station

At the Kwamo Chapel site

Morning! How is it in Tejas? Hope it is as sweet as ever. It was a great week here in Kumasi. Last Monday we went into central market and went to check out the "Kente Line". Its wear they sell all the African fabrics and stuff. It was pretty sweet, picked up a couple of sweet kente ties. They had one that matched my kente scripture bag perfectly, so I picked that one up. We had an awesome FHE last week with the Timothy family. They invited like half the neighborhood and Bro Timothy gave a great lesson about families. Cosmos came! He loved it, he is coming again tonight. Then we had the most RIDICULOUS free meal ever. Holy Moly it was like a buffet, except they forced you to eat more! Haha. The most giant plate of jollof rice ever, two big pieces of chicken, then they wanted us to eat fufu and banku, then they broke out some mineral, and THEN the best part was their secret recipe drink called vitamilk that was the most heavenly concoction that has ever entered my mouth! Honestly it was SOOOO good. It was just every kind of fruit blended up and mixed with milk basically. It was amazing. They are teaching us how to make it tonight. Oh a note on FMs - I don't know if I had told you this, but we are not allowed to take FMs (free meals) from members unless an investigator is there, so we don't eat at member's a lot. But I have eaten more at members here in Kwamo then I ever did in Moree. But anyway, I was meaning to tell you about this FM we had at the Boateng family's house a few weeks ago. We helped make it and man it was interesting, but ended up really really good. Here's how it went. First we boiled some plantain, then we took the plaintain and mashed it up. Then we added something that looked like a cayenne pepper, then some onion. Then we added peanut butter.... then we took some tiny fishes, the whole fish, and grinded them in as well. Then we took something else too and put it in, can't remember exactly. Then we hardboiled eggs and added that too. It was weird, but delicious. It’s called Eto, it basically looked like a very weird version of mashed potatoes.

So the week progressed well. We had district meeting on Tuesday in Asukwa, it was nice. One of the green elders gave the most awesome instruction ever. Oh man we were laughing so hard.... he is mos def green, but he was doing his best! Going through Tuesday was pretty normal, taught Degraft. Degraft will be baptized next Sunday (15 May). He has progressed so well since we got here. He was a referral we got the very first day in Kwamo. It's been great seeing him progress! Wednesday we did some work to help out at the Timothy's house. We shoveled dirt to fill a big hole - very fun! I love doing manual labor here, haha. Kind of weird, but it’s just nice sometimes. Dad always said "well it’s better than digging ditches" when I would complain about some kind of work - and I have dug a lot of ditches here! And yes it’s true, digging ditches is usually worse than about anything else. We taught Clifford in the afternoon - this guy is serious! We got there, started the lesson, and the whole lesson he was just bearing his testimony about the church, asking what all would be expected of him as a member, all sorts of things. It was awesome, especially bc this was only our third lesson with him! It’s pretty crazy to think about, but man, the Spirit really can work miracles in people. It’s so weird, the thing I have learned more than anything on mission, is that I really do not do anything. At all. Yes I go and I walk around and I talk to people and I teach people, but God does the work. In some amazing way, he does, I am literally just an instrument. A month ago I just had the thought to give Clifford a Book of Mormon, talk for about 10 seconds, and then we were on our way. 3 weeks later we see him, he says he has read it and knows it’s true. Wow.... pretty awesome.

Thursday we got the most prepared, amazing new investigator EVER! Seriously, I am more excited about this person than probably anyone I have taught on mission. So last Sunday a guy came to church named Charles. He is about 40 years old, and he told us that he is a member from Accra, but has just moved his family to Kumasi, it was his first time at church. He said they live in a place called Fumesua - which is the town next door to Kwamo. (Basically like going from Oaks of Montecito to that one subdivision where the Stewart's live, the one with all the writer's names as street names). He said he wanted us to teach his wife - Josephine - so she could be a member. We go to their house on Thursday to teach her, and wow, it was awesome! Josephine speaks as good of English as anyone I have met - she even speaks American English. They have three kids. They live in a nice house, and Charles even has a car! I have never taught anyone that has a car before! It was pretty crazy, teaching in their house was the closest I have ever come to teaching in an American style house before. They have nice couches and a big screen and everything. They are such an awesome family. We sit down to teach Josephine, and she has some great questions and things she wants to know more about. Turns out Charles is a recent convert of less than a year, and Josephine said she had been researching about the church since then. We taught her about The Book of Mormon, and she promised to read from the Title Page though Joseph Smith's testimony, and keep going from there. We were supposed to meet again on Saturday, but the family was driving back from town, and there was bad weather that caused a ton of traffic. But the whole family came to church together yesterday! So we are way excited to teach them.

We taught Cosmos some more throughout the week, he committed to be baptized the last Sunday of May. Should be good for that, he couldn't come to church this past Sunday, but he has already been twice. Also taught Miller Adom, he committed to be baptized as well on the last weekend of May. We are lucky to have a lot of good, solid investigators right now! And more are coming I am sure :)

Yesterday we got to watch conference at church - Saturday afternoon session, and Sunday morning. Man it was awesome. Some few thoughts I had from those talks:

-Elder Johnson's talk on affliction: something interesting he said was that sometimes a specific affliction or trial prepares for something in the future.

-The choir sang "Have I done any good" after Elder Bednar's talk. First off the song itself was sweet, they did a great job with it, but when they sang the line "wake up! And do something more, Than dream of your mansions above," I started thinking about how a lot of times, as a missionary here in Ghana I dream of my "mansions" back home a lot. Food, sports, comforts, music, whatever. Somehow a wake up call to me :) Then, literally right after they sang that line, I started thinking of how good Mr. Chopstix sounded right then!!!! Haha :) I did my best to push that out of my mind :) Man oh man... Mr Chopstix.... ;)
-There were a lot of other things I can't remember now. But President Monson's talk on temples was awesome, of course. Not being able to go the temple here is not fun! Seriously I didn't know how good I had it getting to go every week, whenever I wanted. The one weekend just before I left where I went three times in two days was da bomb. Doing baptisms at the Provo temple all the time with Syd and Matt and Dawn was the best too. I like he said NOTHING can keep us from the temple. A 45 minute drive into Dallas really is nothing when you think about it. Even the four hour bus ride to Accra from here is nothing.

So anyway, I love you guys. It’s not Mother's Day here on Sunday... so.... I am not sure if I get to call on Sunday or not.... haven't asked anyone yet. So we will see I guess. I love you guys a ton! Thanks for everything! I sat next to a little kid on the tro tro today named Kwesi (I am also Kwesi). He was about 4 years old and was going somewhere with his mom and two siblings. He could speak English a little, so we had a nice little conversation. I gave him a piece of gum - the mint chocolate chip kind that Grandma H sent me, so good! - and we just had a nice little ride in the trotro together into town. So Grandma H, you made a little Ghanaian kid’s day today :) Love you!!!!

-Elder Brown Kwesi Poku

PS - letters are en route to a number of people - Sydnie, Matt, Audrey, Dawnielle, Rosa, Grandma H, G&G Brown, so be on the look out for those :)

PSS - yes I get to call on Sunday, don't worry :)

PSS - wow, Osama is dead.... crazy