January 9, 2012

Great to be able to read your guys' email again! I just got pick-pocketed in the Sunyani market... so lame! Elder Speechly was buying some cabbage, and I pulled something out of my pocket, and five cedis came out kind of half way, in a split second, I felt something brush my side, and it was gone! And the thing is, I totally saw the guy do it... but when i started to call him out, I just couldn't do it.... just wanted to avoid any contention... But oh well, it was only five cedis, hopefully he used it to feed his kids or something.... I'll just tell myself that’s what he did :) Haha, so anyway, the week was good. Zone Leader Council is always a cool thing, although it takes two whole days out for us. Woke up early Tuesday, and we were in Cape Coast by 3, we got there crazy fast. So, we just got to chill at the mission home with the Kumasi zone leaders for a while and had baked potatoes and chicken for dinner. Wow.... can't even describe how good it was. We had sour cream. Sour cream!!!! Haha, it’s funny all the little things we don't have here. But Sis. Shulz found it in Accra somewhere, so it was pretty sweet just to have that. The stuff we talked about at zl council was good, a lot of business stuff, but a lot of really important stuff too. Like I say after every one of these meetings, the mission is going in a great direction, Pres and Sis Shulz are awesome. Two of my MTs - Elder Fawole in Sekondi and Elder Bunker in Swedru - are zone leaders now too, so it was cool to see them. Elder Fawole (Nigeria) is the one who emailed me a few weeks before coming out on mission - he always says "Before I saw thee, I knew thee" when we meet up, haha. Got back to Sunyani at like 11 Wednesday night, and was back up and at ‘em at 6:30 on Thursday. We started back up pretty good, got a sweet new investigator who wants to be baptized - Atta. He is older, turns 70 this month. We met him a few weeks ago and he said he wanted to start learning from us after the new year. One of his best friends, Joseph, is a member, so he has a good connection to the church. He even came to church on Sunday. He is going to be a sweet dude!!! Friday was our recent convert day. Taught Hassan, Al-Sadat, Johnson, and Wilson, and had good discussions with all of them. I love our talks with Al-Sadat. He is SO smart. Like seriously a genius. He studies in his personal library for 9 HOURS a day!!!!! That’s crazy!!!!! He has read so much - his favorites are the writing of Plato. He bore his testimony about how much his study of the Doctrine and Covenants is helping him, so that was tight. Made a really cool contact as well later in the day. A guy named Martin, we sat and had a 30 minute chat with him about basically everything in the Gospel. He is a strong Christian, but has been confused by the great apostasy. Each time we brought in a new theme of the restored gospel he was like "hmmmm, that’s interesting...." and thought about it for a while. It was tight. Have an appointment with him tomorrow. Saturday was sweet, Alex came with us, so everything went great. Having members with you to teach makes such a difference. Taught Andrews, contacted a powerful family - Kwasi and Edna - and got a few referrals from Alex. It was a solid day. Also met with Richard for the first time since he travelled to Accra. Church on Sunday was great as well, bore my testimony in Twi small small so everybody liked that!!! And the other testimonies given were powerful. Taught Kwasi and Edna again, they seem to have serious potential - they have two little girls - they remind me a lot of Thomas and his family in Kwamo. Man... missionary work is just awesome. It’s weird saying that because it’s so hard... but it’s just so much fun. Every day I get up happy.... tired, but happy. All of the experiences I am having here are incredible, and Elder Speechly is really helping me remember the importance of having fun in everything.... I had forgotten that almost entirely. So we are getting work done, we are having fun, and life is great. Still a lot of things that make me go crazy, but it’s all gravy brah!!!! Love you guys, so so much!!!!! Dapen akyire.... -Elder Brown ps - I got the letter from my boys from BYU, always great to read those, seems like they are all doing great.