August 16 2015

My week of August 10-16

Monday- The outside of our apartment hasn't been cleaned in a while so we all just weeded, swept, and made everything look nice. It took a looong time. Probably about three hours. But now everything looks nice and the landlord is happy now. Thanks mom and dad for teaching me how to do yard work :)
Then all of our FHE appointments failed that night so we had nothing to do.

Tuesday- we had a great day planned but not everything went the way we planned as usual! The people we thought were going to be serious just ended up arguing about the most random pointless things. But we met some new people. We met and talked to this old old lady named grace. She lives just behind our apartment. She was alone all day which was not good for her. I was glad that we met her because she just uplifted my spirits and made me happy.
Elder Paddon and I have been taking turns contacting and finding people. It's been working out pretty good. We try to talk with everyone so we don't walk passed someone who is ready for the gospel.
Then we had coordination and got some advice from our ward mission leader. It was a good day

Wednesday- Today I went on an exchange with one of my zone leaders Elder Jessee. We exchanged because he was going to help an investigator with her questions and concerns that she's had for a long time. But she was not there so our plan failed.
I learned a lot today. New ways to explain things and new scriptures. It was a nice experience.
There's this less active that has a concern about baptism for the dead and I realized that I don't have to argue about that topic to help him. He just needs to understand the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph smith is a true prophet. Then everything should clear up.

Thursday- This was a crazy day! The youth in this part of Ghana had a big efy thing going on. It was at one of the colleges close by my area. Today the youth focused on missionary work. So the whole day Elder Paddon and I lead a big group and we learned how to share the gospel with friends, family members, and strangers. It was a great experience for me. One thing we did was led that group to a busy place close by. And we had an open venue with them. So it was the youth stopping people and sharing the gospel.
 I was following a couple youth around for a while just to observe. One was very very small and young. He was with another guy who was probably at least 16. The small boy would stop a stranger and start a conversation. He'd stumble a bit, but keep trying. Then the older boy would get the conversation going again so the younger boy could teach. The small boy was so powerful but simple. And that's all the gospel is. All you have to have is a testimony! So don't be scared to share with friends :)

Friday- I led the Book of Mormon devotional. It was helaman 1-4. About standing firm in righteousness and not letting contention into our lives.
This was supposed to be a great busy day full of lessons. My companion and I were excited for this day. But it turned out to be frustrating and slow! The people we wanted to meet with weren't home. Then we took our bikes to the shop to get them fixed but that took too long and right when we left the shop, they broke! We need our bikes to work so bad so we can teach more lessons.

Saturday- Right when we left the apartment, elder paddons bike broke. So we had to walk it down to the bike shop. Again! That messed up our perfectly planned morning. But it's normal because our plan doesn't usually go the way we think its gonna go. But we were able to see Sarah and make sure she will come to church. And we saw prince who is less active. He gave us chicken and Elder Paddon shared an inspired scripture about agency. Hopefully he comes to church and uses his agency correctly! Choir practice was sweet and pec was good.

Sunday- We had magdalene at church which was good. We are still trying to help her with her concern about baptism. I feel like we are so close with her! We also had a very good lesson with Joe. He accepted to be baptized. Well actually he told us to baptize him. So it was great! The sunday was good. we taught some other great people and church was good too. 

It was a good week for us and we will continue to hasten the work 

Elder Green 

August 10 2015; week in L'Korshie

This has been a great week! Transfers were on wednesday and I met my new companion Elder Paddon. Man he is sweet! We are getting a long great and are having great success already. He really came to work hard and that is helping us a ton because now we are able to have the spirit with us which is essential. 

This week i dont have a lot of time so ill just type the highlights of the week.

We have met some surprising serious people as we were contacting. Theres this one lady who we found thats sweet. At the beginning of the lesson, we just asked her to share with us her favorite scriptures. She had her bible and all the scriptures she shared were about the apostasy and it led perfectly into the lesson. we actually had a lot of experiences like that. We shared a scripture to a less active and it was the exact same thing that he was thinking about earlier in the day. Things are just going right in place. 

We had fufu and i ate most of it ;) delicious! 

I love you guys! sorry for the short email this week!

Elder Green

weekweekweekweek

Monday- We had a couple FHEs planned for the night but we were only able to make it to one. It was a good fhe. The member talked about agency. But the cool thing is i found out that it was my friends house from the mtc. So I took some pics with his mom haha.

Tuesday- President called me in the morning and told me that he wants me to train. So in a week, ill get a greenie strait from the mtc. Either an American, South African, or Zimbabwean.

Wednesday- I went to a meeting for the people who are training this next transfer. We were instructed and we had fried rice. It was at the temple site.

Thursday- We saw Godwin and I don't know if he will ever visit the church. If he comes, he'll progress. But if he doesn't, I feel like he won't so we will hope he comes Sunday.

Friday- It was our mission temple trip. Oh I love the temple so much. It truly is for the living. I just love the feeling I have while I'm in there. I wish I could go there more often! But it was an amazing experience. Then we had a mission conference. We were instructed on lots of things and it was great for me. I really needed this day.

Saturday- We had a great lesson with a guy that knows that there is a lot of corruption in most churches. He is one of the few people here who believes that God has a body and that He and Jesus Christ are two separate beings. He stopped us on the street last week and told us he wanted a Book of Mormon. So today we brought him one and explained it. He really has a good understanding on things and I feel like if we teach the apostasy well to him, he will become converted.

Sunday- 2 investigators came i think. I starved because i was fasting but then i remembered i had no food in the apartment. So i had to scrounge around the house to find little snacks haha like a mouse. but i survived. 

Week in West Africa

Tuesday- I went on an exchange with the district leader elder schoessow. Because we needed him to do a baptism interview for a small boy named Gordon. He's nine years old and just hasn't been baptized yet so the missionaries before me already taught him. So I was with him and we had a couple good lessons about the Book of Mormon.

Wednesday- We are teaching joe. We feel like we can give him a baptism date soon. He really likes the teaching and asks great questions. When we answer him, he really understands and accepts it.
Last week someone came to us while walking on the streets and he told us he wanted to learn about the church. So we got his number. Today we finally got a hold of him and we found his house. He is actually going back to Kumasi on Friday so that's a bummer. But his grandpa is less active. So we met him as well and now we have another less active to work with.
Choir practice was today. Elder sharp came late so there was no one to play the piano. So I was able to play small and I taught everyone their parts with the piano.

Thursday- The highlight of the day was the baptism. Elder Okwu and I had Gordon (9 years) baptized and the other set had 2 people baptized. Lots of people came and it was successful. The second best part of the day was when someone we just met told me that I have mastered the Ghanaian English and I sound just like one.

Friday- We were contacting a huge compound that had 3 tall apartment buildings in it. We knocked on every single door. Out of all the people living there, we were able to teach one 22 year old. He was so happy that we were there and he told us that we are welcome any time. It was nice to find him but it took a lot of hard work to get to him.
We taught Godwin all about speaking in tongues. He had a lot of questions on that so we read from 1 Corinthians chapter 14. I feel like he can really progress IF he comes to church.
There is a Muslim man that some missionaries have been teaching but he moved to our area so now we get to teach him. The first words he said to me when I first saw him was "when is my baptism?" He said he was reading the Koran and realized that Jesus Christ is the chosen messiah and he is the way back to God. So his family disowned him and he is now hiding from them because they are looking for him. We have a lot of work to do with him but he has a great desire and great faith.

Saturday- Most of our success for the day was in the morning. Joe is continuing to progress. We will be expecting him at church again. We helped a member prepare banku. I just fanned the fire because I didn't want to mess their food up. We are also expecting a man named Isaac to come to church.
A lady called us in the ward and told us to go to her house so she can drive us over to someone who needed a blessing. I love riding in cars. Then we were late for pec and choir practice but its okay.

Sunday- The investigator that we will extend a baptism date to this week came to church. We feel that he will progress well. After church we went to see a member and he gave us 3 referrals so thats great. We have been working really hard on getting referrals. So our hard work is paying off.

It was a good week and i hope you all had a great week!

Elder Green

July 20 2015

Monday- I was recovering from a terrible night of food poisoning. I stayed in bed all day long and just slept. Then the light came back and I showered and went back to sleep.

Tuesday- District council meeting: We discussed small about how to use the Book of Mormon more often and more effectively in our teachings. Sometimes I find it difficult to introduce it right away but I need to remember that the Book of Mormon is our greatest weapon. It is what separates us from all the other churches. I also feel that it brings the spirit more than anything else I can use to teach. So my goal is to use the Book of Mormon as I am contacting and finding people all this week. Because of the Ghanaian English, most people think its the book of mammon. Because mammon here is pronounced the same as Mormon. They are afraid of it so I always have to show them the way they are spelled different.
We met too many drunk people today. We tried to teach a less active family but there was a drunk man there and he was worrying us too much so we had to leave and we will go back another day.

Wednesday- In the morning we taught Godwin. He is a sweet guy that is truly trying to find the truth. He had some pretty good questions for us. One of them was about how someone he knew was saying that there is no Christ and he wanted to know our view about those people. We read the story of korihor to him and it was perfect! He understood and realized that he should never doubt that there is God and Jesus Christ. The rest of the morning we accidentally went to the middle of zongo and got rejected too many times.
After lunch we saw Dina (the less active we saw on Tuesday). This time it was just her so we were able to teach her. I am still trying to find the best way to teach less active members. Any suggestions? She will be traveling at the end of the week so she won't be able to go to church this week :/. We are teaching Harriet which is the 12 year old girl. She stays right next to some members and they bring her to church. We are trying to involve her mom but she is always super busy. We want her parents to come to church with her before we decide what we will do with Harriet. She's a sweet girl.
Then at night we had choir practice. This ward does good at having midweek and other activities. It is fun to sing with them.

Thursday- We saw magdalene and taught her about some commandments. We are pushing her baptism date back because we feel she needs more time and I don't really see a desire from her. She just has her sister and the missionaries pushing her. So we will step back a bit and see what she really wants.
We taught Sarah the less active about the restoration. She said that she really liked the way she felt during the lesson and she wants to keep learning so she can share it with others.
We are also teaching this guy named Joseph. He was being taught by the missionaries about a year or two ago so we are just giving him a second chance. We found him one day and he likes the missionaries. We taught him about the Godhead. I'm not sure what he really thinks about it yet. We will see next visit.
Sarah came to midweek which was great and then she gave us a referral. We have been making it a goal to get more referrals but its very difficult because we can't just go ask someone for one.

Friday- I felt like it was a good day. We taught some good lessons that I felt the spirit a lot. We had a long lesson with esiinam. While teaching her I was so great full that I'm in Ghana. Because I felt like I was teaching someone in the US. They are stubborn papa! Chai. But we just bore testimony to her and used some scriptures and told her to pray. Now it's all up to her to have the desire and pray with a humble heart.
A member called us around 2 and told us to come over. She was preparing banku for us. So we helped her cook it and then we ate it. It was banku and shito with egg and fish. It was nice. When I was finished, I just wanted to go back to the apartment and sleep! Banku makes me sooo tired.
But we stayed out and contacted some people and helped a lady wash her clothes and then we helped another lady prepare kanke.
We had an fhe with a family. It was a SWEET fhe! Because it was an fhe and then in the middle it turned into a member present lesson and then we blessed a child that has malaria and then we had a blast playing the game. It was a nice time and the spirit was definitely there. And then also a lady dashed us coke.

Saturday- another successful day because we were dashed come again. We were just contacting and we went to this house and he told us he is Muslim and then he rejected us but when we were leaving, he said we were doing a good work and just gave us some coke :). Then we were fed banku again. This time it was with okra soup. It was good and then we went with that member to see someone close by and teach for the first time. She really liked us a lot and I think she will progress because she is friends with the member. Then we contacted more people and we also saw Harriet. We met her dad and he was cool with us. But he doesn't want to learn from us.
Later in the evening a member (bro chris) invited us and also the other missionaries over to his house to eat dinner. His wife fed us eba. It's a Nigerian food and is one of my favorites here. The rest of the night I was feeling so sick because I ate so much but luckily the rest of the night was just choir and meetings at the church so I was able to just sit and let the food digest. In the meeting, we were trying to create a third ward out of the two wards we have in the building. I don't know when the split will happen but the wards are growing fast!

Sunday- One investigator came to church. We met him last week at a members house. Then we taught a recent convert and gave a blessing and taught an investigator and then thats it.

Have a great week family and friends! The Church is true, the book is blue, and Moroni is on the ball.

July 6-12: New Zone

July 6-July 12

Tuesday- We had zone training meeting today. It was my first for this zone. The zone leaders were prepared and had the spirit with them. In these meetings, all the missionaries in a certain area come and we learn from each other. We are all trying to improve so its about how to teach better and how to be most effective in our work. Our mission president is making inspired goals for the mission. Awhile ago he told us we need to work to get 2 baptisms, 2 recent converts to go to temple, and 2 less actives to be reactivated every month. Now he wants to add to it. Now we are also working to receive 5 referrals a week, find where 2 new members stay, and have a FHE each week. Even though we don't work for numbers, it's good to set goals to improve our work.

Wednesday- One of the members came out and proselyted with us all morning. Lydia helped us out papa! We were blessed to have 3 lessons with her. We first taught Rosemary about the Book of Mormon again. We want her to fully understand everything and keep her commitments but right now she's not. Then we taught someone for the second time. She didn't understand why she can't just pick out the good things from every religion and that be okay. So we explained to her how Christ only has one religion and how he only established one church. So we need to follow Jesus Christ. The last person was someone we contacted. He's 19 and seems pretty cool. Hopefully the next visit will be good too. In the afternoon we gave a nine year old a blessing because he has malaria. It was a nice one and he will be okay. We went to choir practice also. Ghanaians LOVE to sing! They can sing all day and all night! It was a lot of fun. I think we will be learning how to sing I am a child of god in twi sometime soon.

Thursday- It was a rough day. No one was serious and no one wanted to sit down with us and learn. So it was a full day of contacting basically. But we were able to find a recent convert we didn't know about and we brought her to midweek. So that was all good.

Friday- Sister Lydia helped us teach Rosemary and Magdalene again. It was good to have her there. I feel like it is more powerful when the member testifies of things than when I do. So it was good. They are progressing verrrrryyyyyy slowwwww. It will help them out so much if they come to church Sunday. We had another lesson with a member. His name is Ephraim. He stays right next to Harriet. She is only 12 but she remembers everything we teach her. It's amazing! She is progressing very fast. We just need to get her parents involved in the lessons and that's the hard part. I also met Solomon today for the first time. The last time he was taught I was with the zone leader. He seems to have a good desire to know the truth.

Saturday- we met with a less active Dina. She hasn't been to church for years. She's 18 and I think she feels out of place because she has a child. So we are just trying to review with her why its important to go and everyone has imperfections. Her sister is also less active but she was working today. We then got to see Godwin. He is so amazing because he read the whole book we gave him! And he had legit concerns and we were able to help him answer his questions. It was sweet-o. We later met with another less active and her daughter who is also less active. The daughter will likely be at church but not the mother.

Sunday- Church was good today. 3 investigators came and a less active. Magdalene came for the first time since I've been here. When people don't come, I feel like all the time I sacrifice for them during the week is wasted. Then after church we ended up giving 8 blessings in a row to these old grandmas. It was so funny to see their great faith and little understanding. It was an experience I'll never forget. In Ghana if you give one blessing you better be ready to give a blessing to everyone! 

Pics from Lartebiokorshie

I don't know details about this pictures, but they are from his new area Lartebiokorshie.

Cameron's companion, Elder Okwu

Cameron's apartment