April 11, 2011

Yo wazzup! Great to hear from you guys as always. It is a hot day in Kumasi, but there has been some clouds, maybe it will rain tonight (we can only pray!). It has just been a normal P-Day, woke up, washed, went to Bantama chapel to play some football. I was dead tired so pretty much walked around the pitch the whole time haha. Now we are in town emailing and getting ready to buy some food! The place we go to buy food (Opoku Trading) is the closest thing to a grocery store here. It is about the size of a large gas station. It has Pringles (6 cedis) Twix (1.80 for one), and Oreos (1.80 for a pack of six). Never really buy those, just way too expensive! But at least they have them haha.

Welp, it has been quite the week here...the week was good! After interviews last Sunday we were able to have a pretty good P-Day. And then the week started well with a good district meeting as usual. One of the elders in the district decided to throw himself a little birthday party after district meeting.

Wednesday we worked at the chapel. We could tell they really needed our help, and we offered to work more. It’s honestly the most effective use of our time right now. We were able to get a ton of work done cleaning out rooms getting them ready to be tiled. Bro T. always feeds us after work, his daughter always cooks, and man is it delicious! It’s funny though, I couldn't stand this stuff when I first came. But let me describe it for you. They made us banku - banku is basically a really thick dough made of fermented ground up corn. You add water to the corn and just stir and cook it until it’s thick. Then you make some soup. For this one, it was okro stew. Okro = okra. Okra, tomatoes, onions, pepper, all that kind of stuff. Then you just use your fingers to cut a bite sized ball out of the big ball of banku, and then stick it in the soup, then throw it in your mouth! You just swallow it whole, no chewing necessary. It really was so good haha.

Thursday night we got to go sleep at the old couple missionaries’ apartment. Man it was like staying in a hotel! The kitchen was like an American kitchen (oven, nice stove, etc.), the living room had AC, there was a water heater, it was the life! Really it was sweet. We still proselyted normally the next day, Elder Butler (Monticello, UT) came on splits with us. He was one of our zone leaders. His companion is Elder Wiah, one of the guys I lived with in Yamoransa. It was sweet being with Elder Butler, he was in the the Army before mission and is a funny funny guy. His prayer in the morning before we left the apartment included the wording "bless us to execute our objectives this day". Pretty awesome. On top of that he really taught me some great things as we were teaching. We also worked at the chapel on Friday. We taught a cool new guy with Elder Butler on Friday, named Bro Kusi. He owns a shop just behind the chapel. We taught him last Wednesday as well, and he promised to read the whole of the Restoration pamphlet. Which he did, answering all of the questions with it. We were able to teach the whole Restoration lesson, and gave him The Book of Mormon to start reading. We were able to see him again later in the week, and it seems he is doing well! He lives in Asukwa, so hopefully he will be able to go to church there soon. We also taught Degraft, he will be one of my favorite investigators for sure. He woke us up with a call at midnight Sunday morning to tell us he was coming to church... funniest guy ever. And he did come to church!

Saturday was solid, we are still trying to find more people to teach... contacting is just difficult. But we did teach a young lady we have been teaching for a little while and had an interesting lesson with her. Her name is Sandra, she has come to church a few times with her friends.

Church on Sunday was really great. It had been a long week and partaking of the Sacrament made me feel so much better. We had four investigators come to church. One of them lives way the heck out in Ejisu, probably 10 minutes past Kwamo, but came to church anyway. That’s a long ways. That is the hardest part right now, the UST chapel is just way too far away for people we invite to church to actually come. So having 4 was really great. Then after church we visited some people, most of the teaching appointments failed, but we were able to have a good lesson to close out the week, with a new investigator named Cosmos (how awesome is that name?) Anyway, we met him in the past week, and went out to his house in Jakye, a village somewhat close to Kwamo. It was a sweet lesson, serious potential with him.

Well, that’s about it really... life is great. Still working hard to start the work in Kwamo, it’s not easy, but that just makes it better! I got a bunch of B-Day packages today, I'm excited for that. I hope all goes well for Brian's graduation, CONGRATS!!!!! Glad to hear the Rangers are tearing it up, and sounds like the Master's was pretty awesome. Missionary work, it’s divine. I am glad to be here. I have serious work to do here, with many different things, and I am glad the Lord has trusted me to do this. I have realized with everything going on here that I have a specific purpose here in Kwamo, in Kumasi, and in Ghana, and that it is going to take everything I have to accomplish it. So just keeping sending all of the love, prayers, and emails (and packages :)) and I will keep doing the best work I can do to make you guys proud! Thanks you so much, I love you guys!!

Love,

Elder Brown

PS - I got packages today. Three from Grandma H, one from you guys. Also a letter from G&G Brown, and a letter from Mom. Thanks everyone :) :)