May 30, 2011

Morning! It’s already been a long day for me here in Ghana. Elder
Nathaniel, one of the other Elders in the apartment, finished his
mission, so we had to go with him to the bus station to drop him off
to go to Cape Coast. We had to wake up by like 5 to do that, so we
have been up for a while! So for today and tomorrow Elder Kwapong
(Koforidua, Ghana) will be along with me and Elder Timothy. Elder
Kwapong will know who his new companion is by the end of
tonight - today is transfer today again. Man it feels like I am saying
that every week. Transfers seriously fly by. I am almost 100% certain
I will stay in Kwamo, but you never know I guess. The chapel/apartment
is just about finished, they seriously went to work last week. So
maybe we will move in this week, but we have said that many weeks in a
row now :) But now all the tiling is done, the toilet is installed,
and our sink is there, sooo it REALLY might be this week! Haha. So we
might start church there in the next few weeks. It has been pretty
frustrating proselyting in Kwamo without having the chapel there or
living there. President told me when I was transferred here that we
would move in by the end of March.... we have talked a couple of times
about and he has just told me to keep working, it will all work out.
And we have been really blessed to at least have had these baptisms
the last week. If we can baptize people without having a chapel in
Kwamo, I am sure the work will take off once the chapel is there,
whether I am there or not. But like I said, I figure I will be in
Kwamo for a long while... but we shall see!

So it was a nice week in Kwamo. We were focused on getting Cliff,
Degraft, Cosmos, and Miller already to be baptized and to receive the
Aaronic Priesthood, so we were pretty busy with that throughout the
week. Now we gotta go find some new investigators.... lots of
contacting in the days ahead!!! Oh well, it'll be good for me.
Contacting isn't the most fun or productive activity, but I need a
healthy dose of it right now, we have had pretty full days of teaching
lately, but now the pool is somehow... empty. We have three people with
baptismal dates, but they are people that are we can only meet like
once or twice in a week, so it doesn't take up that much time. Maybe
we will have to do some more work getting the chapel ready this week,
not sure really.

Some random things from the week. First, is on Monday we had FHE at the Timothy's
again. Cosmos came again, and we had another investigator there,
Gilbert, who is Bro. Timothy's brother. Gilbert is the guy who only
speaks Ewe (he is from the eastern part of Ghana, Volta Region - Bro
Timothy is originally from there). He's a way sweet dude, baptism
scheduled for the 18 June (or until Kwamo chapel is open, he wants to
be the first baptized there, since he has helped build it). At FHE they
played the funniest game after. They put a chair in the middle of where
we were sitting, and then one person would leave. Then someone would go
and sit in the chair, then go sit back down again in their original spot. Then the
person would come back and would try to guess who was sitting in the
chair. Gilbert thought it was the funniest thing ever, it was
awesome to see him laugh that hard.

We got a sweet new investigator on Tuesday, named Eric. He is a
referral from the UST high priest's group leader. He used to work for
the ECG (electricity company
of Ghana) as some sort of engineer or something, but he has retired
and after a few years he decided to become a taxi driver. So now he
lives in Kwamo. His taxi rank is right next to the chapel, so
we see him all the time. After teaching him on Tuesday, he came
up to us again that night to introduce us to his son. We are going to
teach him again tomorrow, we will meet his wife too. So we are excited
for him!

Cliff is amazing. I can't even really explain. As we taught him this
week to prepare him for confirmation, I can't believe how prepared he
was. Honestly everything is just unbelievable! I can't even explain.
He has already finished Alma. He is the headmaster of a school, and he told
us that at their PTA meeting, he used the Book of Mormon to settle an
argument between parents. There was some "murmuring" and rumors going
around, so he told the people that Laman and Lemuel had the same
problem, and that we need to learn from them and not murmur about what
comes from those who know what’s best for us. He told them that they
needed to be more like Nephi. Wowzers. This guy got a Book of Mormon
in his hands about 2 months ago. He said all of his teachers are ready
to hear the gospel, so hopefully we will meet them all over the next
few weeks.

So anyway, that’s the big news of the week. Yeah there was tons of rain
this week, the thunder is ree-donk-u-lous here. Honestly just sounds
like bombs going off. It knocked out our power on Thursday and Friday,
didn’t get it back til last night. So we had no water or lights this
weekend, not fun!

So I hope everything is going great as school wraps up, finish strong
H. Glad you returned home safe from the UK mom! Pretty cool you got
a nice little adventure like that. I love you guys, mission is going great, just plugging along as best as I can. Maybe I will be in a new city next week, who knows, but
I really love Kumasi, I love Kwamo, I def don't want to leave koraa.
But we shall see. Love you tonsssss!!!!!

Keep living the good life, aka, after the manner of happiness

-Elder Brown