February 27, 2012

The week in Sunyani was as sweet as ever, a lot of great experiences happened for me this week. I am realizing just as with every companion I have had how inspired it has been to have me and Elder McFarland as companions. We are learning a ton from each other. We definitely have things we have to do to lead the zone well, and I feel like the missionaries really feel our love and our concern about their welfare and about the work, and it is helping things enormously. And we are having a great time between the four of us in the apartment - me, Elder McFarland, Elder Brown, and Elder Nwatu. The rest of the transfer is gonna be powerful!!!!! We have just been all over the place teaching this week, we have been so crazy busy, and it’s been the best kind of busy. We have appointments from 10 to 8 every day, and even have more people that we are supposed to be seeing that we just can't find enough time for. We have a lot of recent converts we're working really hard to keep going strong - Effah, Atta, Francis, Voca, Richard, etc. - and so that takes a lot of our time with teaching too. I honestly feel like we don't have a free moment through the days. So it is sweet to be that busy, don't ever have to worry about not having things to do or whatever. Appiah is still our stud investigator. We had some great lessons with him this week. It’s funny, because when we go to teach him, we always have stuff planned out to teach him - the Restoration, the Plan of Salvation, whatever - but we never get to it because he has tons of questions and when we do teach something, he just wants to know everything about it. Like this week we had like 3 lessons about the temple. Now he is super stoked to go, we even gave him the "Preparing to Enter the Holy Temple" pamphlet. It’s been cool. He is ready to be baptized this Saturday. Remember Barnabas and Felicia? We haven't taught them in forever, but we dropped by their house on the way to Ema & Rita's place and they were in. We made an appointment to come by again and we had a sweet lesson with them. We had a good lesson about how when we show faith, the Lord provides for us. We had another sweet lesson with them last night where we read Alma 32, he really liked it, and I think it will help them have the faith to come to church next week. Kweku came to church!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My Rasta man came to church!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He seriously did!!!!!! I was so flippin happy. It was about 15 minutes into church, and I look back to the gate, and see a guy walkin in with huge dreads, a full bushy beard, wearing shorts and a t-shirt and flip-flops and I knew exactly who it was!!!!! It was so tight!!! Seriously, I was so happy. His best friend is Wilson, so Wilson should be able to help him, but I was just so stoked to see him at church. Ya Man!!!!!! Jah Bless!!!! (We had 10 other investigators at church on Sunday..... me and Elder McFarland are gonna DO WORK!!!!) Well Saturday was the sweetest day of the week. We started off by heading out early to help with the chapel cleaning. We went there to find Pres Owusu doing it by himself. So we helped for an hour or so. After we asked if we could have a few minutes to talk to him about a few things. After that meeting, we rushed off to see Appiah. We had like 20 minutes to shower, change our clothes, eat, and ride our bikes to his place, and somehow we did it. During that whole 20 minutes I just felt so good. I had so much energy and such a desire to get to Appiah as fast I could so we could teach him what he needed to hear. We got there and started our planned lesson about the Plan of Salvation. It started fine, and then he asked a question about why there has to be poverty - that he thinks that is keeping more people from worshipping God than anything else. It was tough answering it. But basically we just said that God knows us perfectly, he has put us in these situations for a reason, and that we all have our own duties to perform. We talked about how it doesn't matter if God asks us to sacrifice our strength by walking an hour to church because we don't have money for a car, or if he asks us to pick up and leave for two years to Ghana - it is the same. As I was talking about how it was hard for me to pick up and leave on a mission like that, I could really feel him understanding what life is really all about. It was mos def one of the strongest feelings of the Spirit I have ever felt on mission - and he was mos def feeling it too. It was one of the sweetest lessons I have had. And that just made everything better! I have more energy now then I have had my whole mission, and I can't wait to finish this better than anyone has ever finished. It’s not gonna be easy koraaaa but Imma try!!!!! Well I love you guys!!!!! So so much! Thanks for everything, I couldn't do it without you, and keep being the best!!! I love you! -Elder Brown