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Dear Family and Friends,
So week 2 in Ghana.
Expected:
- its hot and humid
- i sweat a ton...buckets of water
- ive lost a ton of weight already
- i already have a bad farmers tan
- no one speaks english...
Unexpected:
- i am not very hungry ever...
- there is no animal life here... like i was expecting to see like cool stuff like elephants and stuff, but there seriously is like nothing.
- not very many mosquitos (still taking doxy though just to be safe)
- at night, its not that hot in our apartment (more like a shack) its a nice like 80 degrees
- some people cant even read their own language... hmmm its hard to teach them
So my companion is Elder Stilson, he is from usa, from utah too! Emry county, he is from the bush of utah hahaha he is a total like hillbillie haha but we totally get along well. he is really funny and we joke about what we would do if there was a zombie apocolypse in the world right now. If that happened, write a note in our house of where youre going so that we will know where to find you. We are gouing to fly a [plane from ghana to NYC then from there to Utah and jump out over our house cuz we dont kknow how to land. our plan is money and we'd totally survive and be able to make it back home to america. :)
So here in Ghana, lots of people are religious. Actually, thats an understatement, everyone is religous. Its like Jospeh Smith's time. its really cool to compare that time to ghana when we teach. We teach a ton! But its very hard because most people dont speak english or cant even read... so we have to teach like we are teaching to 5 year olds sometimes... But its really fun!
We are teaching this guy named kwarteng. He is super intelligent so its really fun to teach him. I really hope he gets baptized because he would be a really great additton to the branch. When we were teaching him, I recited Joseph's account of when God and Jesus Christ came to him. While i was speaking those powerful words, i began to have tears in my eyes as the spirit enterd the room. After i finished and bore testimony of the experience, he said, this must be true, i can see it in your eyes that it is. I want and hope that I can gain that knowledge just like you. It was so cool. the spirit is what teaches them and converts these people. We are 18 year old kids and people still join! that itself is a testimony of the truth of this gospel. I know this with all my heart.
On another day, we were teaching a group of school teachers in a big room. there were 4 teachers. they were priobably like 30-45 years old and here are these two white 18 and 19 year olds ministering to and teaching them about the gospel of Jesus Christ. these are teachers and very scholarly in the bible, thankfully so is my companion, so we were able to answer all of their questions with scriptures. I thought of Jesus when he teaches the people in the temple when he is only a little boy. thats what i felt like. we are just 2 little boys teaching these people but we represent Jesus Christ and are doing as he would.
I went through a pretty rough time the first week here in Ghana. Homesickness, culture shock, missionary life, all of these things are bearable when they are by themselves, but man, that first day here in Nsawam they just all combined on me and i was overcome so so deeply. I really struggled emotionally. But through the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, i have been able to overcome them and get through the hard time i was going through. The Atonement is real and has real power. I am a witness of that and will declare that truth for the rest of my life. No matter what we struggle with in life, Christ can help us get through it through the Atonement if we let Him. ive listened to the song, You Know Better Than I- from the movie Prince of Egypt. Man, that songs lyircs touched my soul. Sometimes, you dont know the reason for a trial, and thats part of the trial. that is one of the factors that refines you and pushes you to rely on Jesus Christ more fully. Ive really come to know for myself that Christ will come and succor us in our struggles. The Lord knows better than I and sometimes, thats all you can hold on to, i know thats all i had when i was struggling, but because he knows better, he can lift us to places we never thought we could go. I trust Him and rely on Him every day and i kneel much longer now that the light has come.
So about life in Ghana:
Man, the food here is crazy!!! I help pound fufu when we are at peoples houses and man, is that a lot of work. they put plantain and casava (a potato like root) into a wooden bowl and then you use a big stick to pound it into a dough ball which you then cover with soup and meat or crab or someting and you pick a peice out with your fingers and swallow it whole. I can usually eat it and it doesnt taste that bad at all, but man sometimes my throat just rejects swallowing it whole but man, you just gotta push through and shove it down. Ha ha. Oh yeah and they load it up with pepe, it is so spicy siometimes that your fingers burn for a while after... its like dipping your hands in fire. :)
Ghana is a very religious place, there is a big speaker that goes off every morning that is some dude yelling in twi about his church hahaha it is so funny tio listen to hahaha (even though i can't really understand most of it haha)
We hiked a nearby mountain today in search for monkeys. this small boy named david was our guide and altough we didn't see any monkeys, we found a popo forest and we picked popos in the jungle, then went to a bush villiage to get a knife and cut and ate them. it was a pretty wild experience ill admit. Oh also, we saw this millipede and it was only like 3 inches long but its the biggest bug we've seen... there arent many big bugs here in Ghana which i was very suprised about but also very thankful. No monster spiders or anything like that. they have tarantulas but they are very rare to actually see. Luckily there arent any mosquitos around either, especially in our apartment. we have a bit of a roach problem but its not too bad and we are getting poison for them. My shack that we are living in is pretty grimy not gonna lie, but im used to it. But hey! we have a shower spicket! It hangs from the ceiling so sometimes, when im in the shower, i close my eyes and pretend im in a rain shower at a really nice hotel somewhere... mmmm those are nice thoughts, then I open my eyes and realize that I'm in a shack in africa. But i somehow am still super happy about it hahahahahahahha good stuff :)
Till next week folks!
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(Above: Max, in the background, helping make fufu in a bucket, pounding it with a big stick.)
