Funerals, firesides and goats....

Someone's goats got into our compound.

Elder Gurr takes down one goat!

Finally free!

March 21-27

Well, another busy week here in Mamponse. We had a multi zone conference and a funeral that we attended. The funeral was for this really old guy, Brother Tokoli. He was making ties for us when he died and so we felt like we needed to go support the family. We were pretty good friends with him. The funeral was interesting, actually it was my first funeral in Ghana. I've never had someone I know here die while I was around. I can say I'm blessed in that regard. Although I did find out a while back that my recent convert in Amasaman had died. Anyways, it was a good service. We also had a sweet zone conference. We learned a lot from President Simpson. He taught us about attitude adjustments. He said that sometimes things will go great for us. The work will be sweet, everyone will want to get baptized, and you can just sit back and enjoy it. In fact, he said that was what will happen if you go to Buduburam. He's not wrong. But he said that other times you'll have to struggle and fight to even find anyone to teach. He said that is when we can choose to change our attitude and to work harder, then things will start to work for us. It was a wonderful lesson. The rest of our week went well. We saw everyone that we are preparing for baptism but we received bad news. Peace will not be baptized until the end of April. She's going to be gone every Saturday and Sunday for the next 3 weeks. Mary has not come to church in 3 weeks now. She also seems less interested in learning with us. We are worried about her. Emmanuel we will baptize on the 15th of April because of some stake activities he'll be going to. All of these people were supposed to be baptized this coming Saturday so we are really sad about that. But We met some new people as well. Two young guys from Nigeria, Frank and Henry. They're super sweet. We taught Frank on Saturday for the first time and he came to church on Sunday. He already told us he knows the church is true and wants to join but we are worried he might be moving soon. That would be sad. We haven't met with Henry yet though, that will be Tuesday. We also had a missionary fireside. Elder Gurr and I taught it. It was more like a midweek activity but we had 40+ people there. That's more than come to sacrament meeting on time. We shared some Mormon messages and talked about ways that the members could share the gospel with others and then be an example of that gospel. It was super cool. That was on Thursday. On Friday, we taught the mission preparation class. That was really fun to do. We have a lot of youth that are getting ready to serve missions. Our ward will probably send out 5-10 missionaries in the next year or two. I enjoyed myself this week, we had fun and did some good. Anyways that's about it. Hope you all have a great week too.

Glad these bugs don't live in Utah.

Do I really care?

Feb 28-March 13

Well this is for two weeks I guess. They've been done pretty darn good weeks too. We now have 3 people that will be baptized on the 1st of April. No that's not an April fools joke either. It also won't be general conference for us. General conference will be a month later. We don't get to watch it live here. Therefore, the 1st is a perfect day for a baptism. President Simpson has asked us to focus on the age group of 15-25 recently in our teaching efforts. He says those are the ones who will go on missions and get married in the temple and raise children in the church. Seems good to me. We've kept pretty well with that. 2 of those baptisms are Mary and Emmanuel. Both are 18 years old and have a lot of friends in the church. Mary's sister is a member in the ward too. Our other baptism, Peace, doesn't fit the 15-25 criteria though. She's more like 65-75, only 50 years off but we were close! She's super sweet. Her daughter is a member and has been bringing her to church. Last Sunday she asked us when she can be baptized. It's was funny. It was in the middle of gospel principles class. We have others we are working with but they aren't progressing as quickly. We are super worried about one. His name is Nana. He has kidney failure and so he's dying. Since his kidneys don't work he has to go in for dialysis 3 times a week. It's ridiculously expensive and some one helps him pay for it. He can't find anyone to support his kidney transplant surgery though. His wife is ready to donate but no one will pay. It's sad. We hope he doesn't die before his baptism but he can't even come to church because he's so sick. Our last 2 weeks have been pretty good. Lots of running back and forth trying to get everything done that we needed. We had an open house and dedicated our chapel last week. That brought a lot of stress on us to get things organized. We had 18 missionaries at our open house to go around and talk to people and show them the chapel. We got a ton of phone numbers out of it but no one actually interested in the church. Just the fake interest that everyone out here will show. That was disappointing but it was good to try something new. Other than that there isn't much new going on here. Just living in Ghana and doing my thing. Hope you all have a great week. Love you guys.

March 14-20

Another fantastic week here in the Mamponse 1st Ward. Actually it was also a great week in the Mamponse 2nd Ward too. I had the opportunity to proselyte in their area with Elder Bigler on Saturday. It was super cool to see all of their investigators and how much Bigler cares about them. I know Jorgenson does too but I saw Bigler not him. There is one man that we saw that we played guitar with. He owns two guitars and wanted us to play with him. So, to show that he cares about this man as a person instead of as a number, Bigler sat down and showed interest in something that this man loves. That's what being a missionary is all about, caring for people. I know I love the people here but do others look at me and think that? Do I show that love or just "feel" it. It made me reflect on the rest of my week. Do I show love to those in my area? I believe I do. Could I do better? Yeah I know I could. Could we all do better? Yes. But that's what this life is for right? So as I go around and see the people we work with I'm going to try harder to show them I care. Show Mary, Emmanuel, Peace, Nana, Gabriel, Bridgette, and all the others I care. It'll take effort but everything worth doing does. Hopefully a few of these people afore mentioned will be baptized here in the next few weeks. And those who aren't? Well they won't be far behind. Everything is good with me and my companion and those we are working with and it'll only get better. Hope y'all have a great week.

Pictures....

The Dump

Elder Gurr

Knife and a baby doll?!

Bike Ride.....