December 5, 2011

Maaaakyioooooooooooo!!!! Mpaakyew wapumtesen?!! Mennin se bibiara bohkoh. Life is cool in Sunyani town.... Sunyani is so tight. It’s not big by any means. The town center is busy, but you can walk from one side to the other in like 15 minutes. Kumasi was just gigantic, so it’s cool to have this smaller scale place to serve in. Before I forget, Happy birf to H!!!!! That’s crazy..... wowzers. Things are moving along huh?! As for this week deea... it was sweet! We had FHE with a family and it was tight, talk about delicious fufu!!! We played gospel pictionary with them. Funny what little games like that do!!! Sweetest thing about the week: I have become a reggae artist. Remember the recent convert who joined the church after meeting a member on FaceBook? Well, he turns out to be an aspiring reggae musician. I mentioned that I wanted to do a musical number for the party at Christmas, and he was like yeah, I want to too. So we decided to have a jam sesh and it was so tight! He is seriously good! He has got soul, which is all that really matters, especially in Reggae! So he plays the little drum thingy - a gimbay? - and I play the guitar and we both sing. We had like 4 jam seshs last week. Haven't had a serious jam sesh fo eva!!!! So it’s tight to be able to do that and it actually be ok for a missionary to do! So far we have a sweet version of The First Noel down, as well as Joy to the World and Angels We have Heard on High. We have even started to make good friendships with some of his rasta buds because of it (he was super rasta before he was baptized). One of my favorite people right now is a recent convert named Joseph. He recently saw the missionaries, called out to them, and completely changed his life. Now he has such a strong testimony, is doing his best to read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover, and is referring people to us left and right. hmm..... what else. Went out to a place like an hour outside Sunyani, called Berekum. It was a pretty big place, untouched by missionaries. It is about half the size of Sunyani I would say. It would be cool to go open that place up! We have some solid investigators that are progressing, have a baptismal date for Christmas with a guy named Johnson!! We'll have a white Christmas in Sunyani!!!! So, can't really think of much else. Serving in Sunyani is as awesome as ever. Tomorrow we go down to Cape for ZL council. I'll see my boy Nzuki!!! I love that guy. Probably the biggest thing I learned this week was something I talked about in my farewell talk, but this week it just rang so true. I read that quote from Ezra Taft Benson again, the one about how Christ changes people from the inside out, while the world tries to fix problems from the outside in. It’s crazy.... every day I walk through some pretty big problems that are just unsolvable. Poverty, societal problems, corruption, politics, etc. Some people get mad at us that we are trying to change people before we try to help with all of these big big problems that are around us. But that’s the thing.... Christ didn't come to the earth to fix all of the problems with human society. He came to change people, one by one, which then allows the world to change. It’s not about fixing all of the huge problems around us, it’s about helping people, one person at a time, to find happiness and righteousness and charity. Then the world can change. My man Tom Delonge said something like "if you change the world around you, you can change the world itself." Being in some hospitals this week, seeing some other problems, and having people say some things to me made me realize that this work really is the greatest work in the world, even if other people can't see it. We might not be erecting highways and hospitals and destroying poverty. But we are helping people bring themselves to a better state of being, one by one. So, the problems will always be there, but the gospel is still true. Love you guys!!! -Elder Brown