September 26, 2011

Bummer. Friday night we were teaching... The phone starts vibrating in my pocket and without looking my first thought was "Its president.... transfers". I look down at the phone, and I was correct I saw "Pres Shulz" on the caller id. So we call him back at the end of the lesson, and... It he tells Elder Nathan that he is going to be training a new missionary next transfer (a week from this coming Wednesday). So... it looks like my days in Kwamo are few. Bummer. How can I leave this place? In all honestly... this was why I came on a mission. So, I will do my best getting psyched up to go to a new place, with a new comp, doing a new thing. Just don't know where I am going yet. The reason we found out so early is because they are going to be having a special training meeting for all the trainers in Cape Coast on Wednesday. So Elder Nathan gets to shoot down to Cape Coast tomorrow morning, I will be with Elder Thompson, from Orem. He is going home next week, so it will be cool to spend a couple of days with a seasoned vet, learn some stuff from him. Heck I haven't been with a guy older than me on mission for like 10 months. Crazy. So this week will be pretty tough. Hopefully I can just go to work, make sure Elder Nathan has plenty of people to teach, and teach him a few more things so he can be prepared to train this early in his mission. Training after 3 months? Wowzers. He is in for something else :) So anyway.... The work in Kwamo is going on well. We have a lot of investigators right now. They love what we teach... we’re just working on commitment. So I decided to study ch. 11 in Preach My Gospel (Help people make and keep commitments) and I can already see a difference in our investigators' progress. Henry kept both of his commitments the rest of the week (still didn't come to church... but next fo sho :). A lot of our new investigators realized we were serious in teaching from the get go because we were doing little things like asking them to write down their commitment so they don't forget, and informing them that we would like to come to see them daily to make sure they are keeping their commitments. Which... is what Preach My Gospel was trying to tell me to do for the past... well you know how long. So anyway, Preach My Gospel is pretty incredible and every missionary needs to actually read it. And read it before they come on a mission (Hayden). Sweetest thing from the week: We were able to teach the family we’re working with on Tuesday - we are finally really really preparing for her baptism - and had a good lesson. We scheduled another appointment for Thursday, but that fell through. But it actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise. We knew that because we had not been able to teach her the night before church, it would be a true test to see if she would come to church with no one's encouragement, completely on her own accord (Her husband was out of town, and her phone was off, so we couldn't even call to make another appointment or remind her about church or anything). After Elder Nathan and I went through our plans for the day before church started, we prayed that she would be able to come to church with the kids, on her own, without any encouragement from anyone. She was a little late... but she came, all by herself, with her kids along with her. It was a perfect day at church too, investigators class was perfect. She had Lizzy, our recent convert, sitting next to her, then another sister also in the class helping out, and the class was taught by Daniel (just baptized 22 Aug). The father will be out of town this week, so we are going to move the baptism to 8 October - who knows where I will be :( So anyway, everything works out the way it should, and it shows that she will be able to stay active and progress in the gospel. Welp, sorry it’s a bit shorter today, time is short. We played dodgeball and touch football - as in REAL football :) - today. It was way fun. Everything is awesome! You can make a guess about where I might be going next week... You guys are the best, I love you so much! Good luck in everything you are doing and thanks for everything you are doing!!!!!! Love ya, Elder Brown

September 19, 2011

Morning! Just a good day out in Kumasi, no craziness with transportation, because we decided not to go into to town today, nothing really to do there. We took a quick trip to Asokwa to pick up our subsistence, but now we are just back doing the normal things in Kwamo. Actually out at Ejisu right now, it’s the biggest town in our area, about 25 pesewas on a tro tro to the east down the Accra road. It’s the only place with an internet cafe in our area. Anyway, this might have been the fastest week of my mission. They are really just flying by now, it’s crazy. I am doing my best just to figure about time and just go to work every day. I honestly have to think about how long I have been out here if someone asks me. I always just say ".... me ba Ghana dada dodo.". Haha, meaning, I have been in Ghana for too long. But of course it hasn't been too long at all! Things are going great in Kwamo. It’s weird to have been in my first two areas for so long. I honestly feel like I have talked to everybody in Kwamo, so finding new investigators is tough. I would guestimate that Kwamo has no more than 3,000 people in it. There are some other villages around yeah, but it’s hard to get out there, so we normally stay in Kwamo. Kwamo is small. Like... really small. Kwamo itself would be like, a little bit bigger than Oaks of Montecito. Probably about the size of Forrestridge or something. Often when something goes wrong... go find Elder Brown!!!. Like yesterday, I was teaching the youth Sunday School class. As I was teaching, a sister bursts open the door, "Elder Brown! Bra bra!!! Nyimpa bi se yare paa! Bra bra bra!!!" A girl was feeling sick and had gone to another room to get some space. She was just sitting there, shaking, obviously very sick, and no one knew what to do... so they call Akwasi Poku... aka Elder Brown. They wanted her to go to the hospital, but she didn't want to go. Apparently they thought I could talk her into going.... I had no idea what to do either... she was shaking so much, I was just like.. ummm, is it malaria? No idea what to do or say haha. Then I just had someone bring some pain pills, and then me and Elder Nathan gave her a blessing. It helped her out... but then she threw up. Eventually someone took her to the hospital, and I think she is ok. It’s cool to have such a big effect on the people here. As for proselyting, it went on well this week. We have a ton of investigators right now. We do a lot of walking because people always fail their appointments. And like I said, I feel like I have talked to everyone in Kwamo, so going out contacting is not as productive as it used to be. We continued our farming this week. My hands are torn up. I will send you a sweet pic next week, I look like a real man ;) Haha. Just call me Farmer Brown. Our farmer friend/investigator is keeping me going. As long as I can always have one sweet investigator, things are ok. He is the next Eric. In fact, we took Eric to teach him with us yesterday, they live really close to each other. He has progressed so far. His baptism is set for 1 October, and he is super excited for it. Taught him about tithing last night, he is set to do some great things! His wife doesn't speak English, and since we can't really teach in Twi, it makes it difficult to make her feel comfortable with learning from us... but I have faith it will work out! I will just have to be more dedicated in progressing to be able to teach in Twi. Ennye easy koraaaaaaaaaa! But I will do it :) His son comes to church with him though. He is 11, and is making friends with the young men, already excited to be able to pass the Sacrament and such. Told us the other day that he wants to be a missionary one day, I am sure it will happen, he is a serious kid. So this investigator is awesome, and is my golden guy right now. Josephine is doing well too. She is just a veryyyyyyyyyy busy mom. Her husband is so busy with his business that she is always all over the place doing things for him, for the kids, and a lot of other stuff. She is still committed for her baptism, I am just hoping we can pin the family down enough to be able to teach her everything. The testimony is mos def there, but we haven't been able to teach any of the commandments yet. So this family will be our focus for the rest of the transfer. It will take some work, we will probably have to be a little bit of a nuisance, but it needs to happen. The Zolls are doing well to help them learn the ins and outs of being a busy business man and family, and being able to use the Gospel to the fullest. We will have to work hard, but I am sure she will be able to be baptized on 1 Oct. We will be doing our best! Elder McFarland and Elder Larsen had a baptism on Saturday, always nice to help out with that. We had three investigators come to see it. The members are taking the ward mission plan super seriously, it’s pretty tight. Guess what the goal they set for the rest of the year is.... 23. Wowzers! Going for the big 2-3, inspired by MJ I guess. So that means that we have to baptize 23 people before 1 Jan. That’s a lot. But, if the members are serious, why not?! So now we gotta revamp the teaching pool. Elder Nathan is doing really well, the group is doing well and mission is going along great. We are going to head out to a village called Bonwire to check out their Kente stuff after this. It is where all of the Kente for Asante region is made. So it’s a pretty cool town. Welp, I love you guys!!!! Mission is awesome, just doing the small small things I can do. Congratulate Ben for me, and say hi to everyone else that is awesome back in Denton 2nd ward. Aka, everyone! Love you guys.

-Elder Brown

September 12, 2011

Morning morning morning. Its morning there right? Yeah I guess so... it’s like 2 here so it’s what.... 8 there? Idk really haha. Anyway, life is going on well in Ghana land. Played a nice full pitch football match this morning out in Bantama. Transportation in Kumasi is RIDONKULOUS. ABSOLUTELY RI-DONK-U-LOUS. Left the apartment at 7:50.... arrive at Bantama 9:20. Kwamo to Bantama is about the distance equivalent of maybe.... our house to the square. Maybe a little longer, but still. Holy guacomole. Our whole p-days are just wasted on tro tros. So when you get frustrated with traffic on loop 288 (is that still there) just think about Elder Brown, sweaty and packed into a van with 15 other people with the sun beating down, trying to make it safely to the other end of town :) Haha. But it’s all good though. Tro tro rides are fun. I hope I get to see you guys take a tro tro some day.... would be quite an adventure ;) Welp, the week was pretty legit. Nothing too special happened, just solid missionary work. The best part of the week was the progression of one of our investigators, the one who got up and bore his testimony last week. We told him we would come help him out at his farm this week, so we grabbed our cutlasses and trekked out to his corn field early Wednesday. Turned out he needed a lot of help. He hadn't been able to plant the corn at the right time because of some complications, so he planted it as fast as he could without spraying the field with pesticide to get rid of the weeds. So we had to go and rip out all of the giant weeds on the corn field. We did it for like 5 hours on Wednesday, then another 5 hours on Friday, and we have probably only gotten about 25% done. So we have got more work to do this week! Farming is really cool though. Just relaxing to be out there, doing something that doesn't really require much brain effort, and just work hard. We used pick-axes to rip out weeds.... ‘twas a serious work out. So we did that for him twice in the week, then taught him on Saturday night. We were on splits with some ward missionaries (well actually, recent converts ;) Anarfi and Mensah) and me and Mensah had a great lesson with him. Basically talked about how church has made him feel. Said that it is adding a lot of understanding to his life and that it makes him feel good. We were able to teach about how the Gospel of Jesus Christ will bring us Salvation, that The Bible and The Book of Mormon are testaments of that, and that it has been restored in its fullness to the earth through a prophet today, and the Spirit was able to teach him it was true. I told you about the first time he came to church right? That the night before we asked him to pray to know that what we taught him was true, and that we wouldn't expect to see him at church until he received an answer for himself. He was at church the next week. Pretty sweet! He brings his son, Ezekiel to church with him, so there is great potential there!!! Hmm.. what else from the week. Uh huhhhh, !!!! So Thursday, Elder Nathan and I were sitting in our weekly planning session, and we get to one of our families. We just sit there trying to figure out what to do. We had tried to call them either the night before, or that morning or something, and they hadn't picked up. So we are sitting there, and we are talking about them, and just come to the conclusion that they have to be our biggest focus right now. We were trying to figure out how we could help them the best, when at that very moment, the phone rings! Guess who it is? President Shulz telling me I am getting transferred to Burkina Faso! Just kidding. It was Josephine!! She told us that she wanted to meet that night. We invited the Zolls to come as well, bc they taught her with us that one time and loved her, so they tagged along. Luckily Charles was also there and we had a great discussion with them. First, Charles was wondering about tithing, so it was perfect to have Elder Zoll there with us, a fellow big business man, to talk about the blessings of tithing, how to pay it, why to pay it, all that, and Charles was convinced by the end. Then, for Josephine, we taught about the Sabbath Day. It is hard for her to come to church because Charles is always travelling, and coming to church on her own with three young kids is tough. But again, it was perfect that the Zolls were there, bc Sister Zoll could talk about how hard it is to go to church when the husband is travelling, but why it is so important, and how it will bless us so much. So all in all the lesson was perfect. And to end, the Zolls showed a Mormon messages video thingy from Neil L. Anderson, about how "You Know Enough". ‘Twas perfect. And then Josephine had made us stir fry with chow-mein noodles. Stir-fry? STIR-FRY?! Isn't that what I used to hate growing up?! Holy guacomole.... times have changed. Times have changed. Or I guess living in Ghana eating nothing but eggs and bread and rice and cassava does that to ya. Wowzers. Then we go to teach her again on Saturday. The Zolls came again. It had been forever since we had just simply read the Book of Mormon with her, so we read Alma 32, and again, it was great! Then at the end, the Zolls showed another Mormon Messages thing, this one about the temple. It was so sweet.... man.... the temple..... I love da temple. I haven't seen a temple in well, you know how long. The video was perfect, bc the Zolls explained about how right now her faith is small like the seed in Alma 32, that one day it will be knowledge as she understands the blessings that temple covenants provide for us. Pretty sweet. She promised to come to church on Sunday... and she did! Along with her 3 kids. Church yesterday was interesting. So Last Tuesday we had our first zone conference with President Shulz. It was sweet, talked a lot about how to train a new missionary. Because there are at least 45 new missionaries coming into our mission before 1 January. Wowzers. Our mission is going to be so much different. Elder Adams told me that there is another Elder Brown coming, this one from Florida. So we will have 3 Elder Brown's in GCCM. I will be the grandfather of them all! How sweet would it be if I got to train Elder Brown? Let me answer.... ummmm, so sweet???? I think it would be cool just to train for the rest of my mission. Every two transfers just get a fresh dude and train him up the right the way. That would be pretty cool. But we shall see what the Lord has in store! Anyway so we talked about that, but then at the end talked about our new mission goal. President Shulz wants all of the wards to develop a ward mission plan. Now the members are like WAY excited about missionary work, should be fun to see what happens with it. It’s going to be a cool goal. I got sick over the weekend, not fun koraaa!!! Some bad chicken I ate on Friday. But, was still able to proselyte, just not very fun! Glad the Cougs at least put up a good showing against Texas, too bad they lost, but oh well. Seems like the team should be ok. Hopefully I can hear the cheers all the way in Kumasi on Saturday :) My regards to everybody in D- Town. Love you guys!!!

 -Elder Brown Pics

Kwamo group (I got to take pictures during church a few weeks ago to send to the Apostles. Pretty sweet huh?)

Macbeth ad. I mean, farming… and eating raw plantain (not very good

September 5, 2011

Glad to hear the ol' Cougs got the season started off right, even if it was a little shaky. A win against in SEC on the road team is something to think about. Have fun in Austin this weekend. I can't believe its football season again. I mean wowzers... where has the time gone.

Well today has been a unique P-Day. President Shulz is changing things up a bit, now we won't be having a P-Day activity every week like we have been. Every first Monday of the month, we will deep clean our apartments. So, that’s what we did all this morning. Honestly, I enjoyed it haha. Cleaned EVERYTHING and now our apartment is as fresh as can be. Cleaning out the fridge was... gross. But all is good :) Your son might be living in the cleanest missionary apartment in the world. And it has a baptismal font in it.

We had a combined district meeting last Tuesday to get some info from the zone leaders about some stuff. Like I said, President Shulz is changing things up a bit, which is going to help us out a lot. It’s always nice to get together with everyone from the zone, and of course, the Zolls always bring FanIce (ice cream). The rest of the day proselyting after that wasn't too successful. Almost every appointment failed, and one that did didn't go as well as we would have hoped. We have been teaching a family…they are pretty cool and have liked our teachings, especially the father, he even said he wanted to be baptized. We will pray for the best.

Oh yeah, I know how to cook now. Like, really well. I can make tomato stew like nobody's bidness and cook up beans like I am from downtown Mexico City. So I guess that’s really not much, but hey, it’s ok right?

Wednesday we got to go out to a part of our area we had never been to before. There is a fairly big town called Juaben about 20 minutes out from Kwamo; there is one member that lives there, but we had never been out there. On the way to Juaben is a small village called Bonwire (pronounced Bone-wee-eh) that is the main place in Asante region where they weave Kente cloth. The Zolls needed us to show them out there and so we got to ride out there with them. It is a pretty cool little village. Kente is everything! I got a sweet Kente tie, and I am gonna go back on a P-Day sometime to buy some more. You can design them
yourself, so I am gonna draw up some sweet designs :)

Earlier in the day, we had been in Ejisu and had two sweet lessons. One was with a guy we contacted by the taxi station there named Wiradu. He is student at UST, and we had a great lesson with him. He said he was Christian, but he didn't attend any church because
he was just too confused by all of the different sects of Christianity. So we talked about the Restoration and ended up giving a Book of Mormon to him. Taught him again later in the week, and it went great again. Wasn't able to come to church yesterday, but we will meet
him this week and he said he could come next Sunday. Then after him, we went to an appointment with a guy we contacted last week named Adolf. We had a nice discussion, he had heard a lot about the church, not all good things, but he said he doesn't believe them, and even had a friend that is a member. We came back on Wednesday for our appointment and had a good discussion. He had read all of The Restoration pamphlet we had given him, had understood it well, and had good questions about it all. He ended up being concerned that we were too busy trying to teach people about the Restoration and weren't focusing enough on teaching people about Jesus. Sure he has a fair point, but we told him in our first meeting that our purpose is to help people come unto Christ through faith, repentance, baptism, receiving the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. And that can only effectively come when people understand the Restoration. We had a good lesson and eventually helped him realize exactly what we were there to do - teach HIM, what HE needed at that time. Obviously he already knew about Jesus Christ, so all we needed to do was fill in the gaps of how to learn the gospel of Jesus Christ to its fullest. All in all it was a good lesson, and he promised to read, ponder, and pray more.

Thursday we walked so much. Out to Tikurom, out to Fumesua, and then to the far side of Kwamo. We were pooped at night. Two great things happened though. First, we walked out to Tikurom even though we hadn't seen our investigator there for over a week, and couldn't reach him on the phone. He told us he would be in the house all week, and we knew we needed to go see him, even if we had to walk that far. So we walk all the way out there... and he's not there. It was a little discouraging, but as we started to walk back from Tikurom, we met him getting out of a taxi, and he was very happy to see us. His name is Yaw; we’d only taught him once, but he was way prepared for the message of the Restoration and so we had to make sure we didn't let him slip through our fingers. We discussed small, but the funniest part was that he asked us about The Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Haha, so we are going to bring him a CD to listen to this week. He said he was going to come to church on Sunday, but alas, it did not come to pass.

Second great thing was that we found one of our families in the house. It’s been like...over a month since we have seen them. She was so happy to see us, she made us sandwiches :) She was the one who had lived in Ohio for a couple of years. We caught up a little, and then
made another appointment for the next day. She asked us a little about tithing, and then mentioned how she had been thinking a lot about how her baptism needs to happen soon. Hopefully we don't have any month layoffs again so that can happen!

Hmmm, taught Mark the Belgian again. Don't know if I told you about him. He came to church with the Timothys a few weeks back. It is SOOOO challenging teaching him. But pretty cool. He is a way cool dude. So it’s a cool experience getting to sit down with him. He speaks French, Flemish, German, and English.

So before I run out of time, the coolest part of the week was yesterday. It was Fast and Testimony meeting (I am a pro at fasting now, I wasn't even hungry when we got back to the apartment at night) and the testimonies were awesome. All in Twi of course, but I could
understand small small. It was one of those weeks where you felt like you hadn't accomplished much, and were just trying to figure out how to do things better. So then first, Cosmos gets up to bear his testimony; perk-up number 1. Then Emmanual, our ward
missionary, gets up and bears his testimony. He talks about how during the week, when he came to teach with us, someone asked us if we are trying to win souls to the church, or to Christ. He said that when I had the investigator read 2 Nephi 25:22-26, his whole mind changed about what missionary work was, about what the church was about. Pretty sweet to hear that; perk-up number 2. Then, Anarfi, in his black suspenders and bowtie, gets up and bears his testimony, talking about the first time he met me and Elder Timothy as we were taking our garbage to the dump about 3 months ago, and how much better his life has been since then; per-up number 3. Then I bear my testimony, in Twi, and I actually did ok! Then the icing on the cake was after me, an older guy in a wrinkled blue shirt gets up to bear his testimony. It was Blatta, our investigator who has been going back and forth for so long. He talked about how for his whole life he has been trying churches, trying to find one that feels right, and that he never had. But he said that there at the church, that day, he finally felt right; THE perk-up!!!! It was so sweet, me and Elder Nathan just kept looking at each other with the biggest smiles on our faces.

So the week was sweet as usual. Just plugging along the best I can. We have zone conference tomorrow, first one in a long time, first one with President Shulz. Should be cool. Other than that... everything is eye paa! Love you guys, cheer extra hard in Austin this Saturday, and
tell me cool things!

Medomo paaaa

-Elder Brown