May 23, 2011

Morning morning! Glad that life is still going as normal around the
world... there had been a "prophet" in Ghana or Nigeria or somewhere
that prophesied Jesus was coming on 21 May, it was the talk of the
town this weekend in Kumasi. There was a big billboard in Dichemso
that was telling everybody to repent because Jesus was coming on
Saturday, but... I guess he didn't! Haven't seen the billboard again
yet haha. Anyway, ‘twas another great week in Kumasi. Our baptism went
as planned yesterday - four candidates were baptized: Cosmos, Degraft, Clifford,
and Emmanual, plus one from the UST elders. It was a really sweet
baptism. Of course there was craziness before though. We went to fill
the font before church, and the water pump fuse had blown... so the
font wouldn't fill. So we did it the old-fashioned way - fetched water
from a nearby spigot, and carried it to the font! It took the whole of
Sunday School and priesthood, got a serious work out at church! But
then the service was extra nice since I had the satisfaction of having
filled the font myself haha. This baptism was one of my favorites so
far on mission for sure. It is sweet how everything worked out perfectly.
They will all be confirmed this coming Sunday. All of them were
interviewed by the bishop after their baptisms to prepare for the
Aaronic Priesthood - the UST ward knows how to do business!!! We
didn't even have to ask the bishop to do that.

As for the Kwamo chapel, it looks like
we might move in this week! The tilers are busy at work and all that
is left for our apartment is to install the toilet and sink, which
should be delivered to the apartment today or tomorrow. So hopefully
it works for us to move to Kwamo this week! And then probably the
chapel would be finished by the next Sunday for our first Sacrament
meeting - that is if everything goes perfectly. Which it never does, of
course.

Give my congrats to Jake Gwilliam on his mission call, and wow... was
it seriously a year ago we went to the Colonial?? That is crazy. Time
seriously flies. Glad Hayden's spring game went well, even if he gave
up a td to Connor Crane, I remember that guy was tearing it up his
sophomore year though. I've never heard of the guy that is replacing
JW at QB, but I am sure the ol' Wildcats will continue to romp next
year. Crazy to think football will start up again in a few months. Any
big news with BYU football? Did they get any huge recruits?

Hope Mom is doing great in the UK!!!!! Weird that we are in the same
time zone right now! She is probably enjoying fish and chips by the
river or something right now. While I had a nice meat pie under the
African sun for lunch :) Haha. I splurged and bought some sausage to
put in my stew I will make tonight - 5 cedi's for 4 sausages! So they
better be tasty.

So the big news for the week was the baptism. We have three other people with
Baptismal dates now - Gilbert (the guy who only speaks Ewe), Elizabeth, and Josephine.

We had zone conference on Tuesday, it was nice. Big news: President
Sabey got rid of the no-free-meal rule! So now we can take FMs haha.
We talked about asking questions to get to know the people to start
our lessons rather than just making statements. We focused on that in
our teaching throughout the week, and it seriously helps.

So anyway, I love you guys! I figured out a nice African treat last
night - I call it African Milkshakes. You take some gari (processed
cassava powder), and a lot of cocoa powder, and water, then a lot of
evaporated milk, then stick it in the freezer for a little while, and just
before it freezes, you eat it. Tastes a lot like a milkshake! Or what I
remember about a milkshake... haha. So keep having fun in England mom
(me and Elder Mortensen, my bud from Yamoransa apartment - he is in
Takoradi now - were talking about trying to go to the Olympics next
year in London, that would be way sweet!), and don't go too crazy in
Texas everybody else back there! Go eat Mr. Chopsticks and Chipotle
for me this week, and send all of my love and greetings to everyone in
Denton!!!

LOVE,

Elder Kwesi Brown

PS - funny story from the week. We went to watch The Testaments with
one of our investigators this week, Jesse, and when we started the
movie, the English version was not working. French, German, everything
else worked, but not English, it was so weird. He wanted to watch it
really bad though, so he said he would just watch it in French with
the subtitles. But then I thought - well maybe the ASL version will
have the English working, and we can just deal with the little person
in the corner doing the signs. We tried it and the English came, but
the guy doing the signs took up the WHOLE screen and the movie just
played in a tiny box in the corner! It was so funny, but Jesse REALLY
wanted to watch it, so we watched the whole movie that way! It was
awesome!! Haha. Jesse loved it by the way.