I now have an idea about how Jesus Christ felt....

Elder Entsie, Brother Okine, Nana & Elder Goodrich

May 16-22

Well today marks 22 months that I have spent in the country of Ghana. Some of the best months of my life. This week was no exception to that. It's had its up and it's downs but I wouldn't have it any other way. Tomorrow is our transfer so we received our transfer news on Saturday. Actually President Simpson told us early on Friday when he came to do an interview for our baptismal candidate. But it appears that Bigler will be leaving Mamponse. He's going to go to Achimota. That actually borders my first area of Akweteman. He is going to whitewash that area. That means he and his companion will both be new to the area. They are starting from scratch over there. I'll miss him a lot. We have had some great times together here. We were both hoping he would stay and see me go home but it wasn't meant to be. Instead, Zhou's new companion will be a guy from Nigeria. I honestly have no idea how to spell his name. I believe it's Nwandu. He's a cool guy. Should be a lot of fun. 

As for he highlight of the week, we had a baptism. It was for a man named Nana Addo Boakye. He's a super sweet guy. He's about 40 years old but if you looked at him you wouldn't know he was that old. He has been living with kidney failure for the last 7 years and it's ravaged his body. He has to go for dialysis 3 times a week and it has drained all of his monetary resources. In light of such a horrible condition, he decided it was time for him to find salvation. That search brought him to Mormon.org and he was given as a referral to us to teach. That was about 18 weeks ago. We have seen him suffer and push through his illness to make his baptism possible. He is one of the most prepared people I have ever met in my whole mission. He was so ready for this. As he came out of the water I saw him smile the biggest smile ever. Now keep in mind, this man has almost nothing to smile about in life. Then after his confirmation he came up to me, grasped my hand, and thanked me with tears in his eyes for not giving up on him and pushing him forward. I'm not one that is usually at a loss for words, in fact I pride myself in being fairly eloquent, feel free to disagree, however I couldn't find any words to say at that moment. In 22 months I have baptized a fair amount of people, I have taught hundreds of people, met thousands, yet no one has ever shown the love and thankfulness that Nana did. I guess this is how Christ felt when he healed the lepers and yet only one came back to thank him. I still love everyone else I've had the chance to know, but that one moment created a deeper bond between Nana and I. 

That about sums up the week. Other than that we just had a normal week of teaching and biking around in the hot Ghanaian sun. Hope everyone has a great week.

Mother's Day and Baptisms....

May 9-15

Hey guys. Happy Mother's Day. Another great week here in the Mamponse 1st ward. Highlight of the week was the 3 baptisms that we had. We baptized an older lady named Peace and her two grand sons, Francis and Sheriff. Peace's adopted daughter is a member in our ward and has been telling Peace to come to the church for a while. She decided it was finally time and now she's baptized a mere month later. She is the sweetest old lady ever. We have another baptism coming up this next Saturday too. It's for a man named Nana. He has been dealing with kidney failure for the last 7 years and through his trials he decided that what he needed was salvation, not money. And so here he is, ready to make this step in his life and perform this ordinance. We are super excited for him as well. We have some fantastic people we are working with right now. A lot of them are progressing very fast and will be ready for baptism soon. However, with the current baptisms, we are still looking out for more people to teach to keep us busy. Basically things are going great right now. Finishing off the last of my mission as strong as I can. That's about all, sorry this is so short. Also it was so awesome to talk to everyone yesterday. Again, happy Mother's Day to everyone

Celebrating with real pizza!!

The Storm.....

Kwasi showing Elder Entsie and Elder Goodrich around the area

April 24- May 8

I apologize for not sending an email last week. Not much happened last week though. We found a few new investigators and continued working with those we have right now. Everything was just kind of normal. 

This week was pretty sweet though. We have been working with an old woman named Peace for a while now. Her daughter is a member and she has been coming to church for a while. Well when Peace comes, she brings her 2 grandsons. These two boys, Sheriff and Francis, have also decided as of yesterday that they would like to be baptized as well. We are going to baptize them all together this coming Saturday. We couldn't be happier for them. Peace's daughter has also started to learn with us. Hopefully she'll want to be baptized soon as well. Another member of the ward, Emmanuel, has a mother who desires to get baptized as well. Gladys, Emmanuels mom, will probably be baptized in 3 or 4 weeks. She's hard to meet with but we will find a way to get around that I'm sure. The others that we are really working with right now are Nana and Gabriel. In other news, yesterday we got hit by an absolutely massive storm. It didn't last long but it was a monster in the sheer volume of water that it brought. While we were in elders quorum we watched the storm down multiple power lines causing the power to go out all around our area. Apparently it wasn't just us either, all of southern Ghana took a big hit. We came home from church to find half an inch of water in our bedroom. Elder Entsie and I spent a good amount of time rescuing all of our items, clearing our room out entirely, and then mopping up all the water. Oh and mopping water was extremely difficult because our mop was outside drying when the storm hit. It was a brutal day. It was a good welcome to the rainy season, a little late but goo nonetheless. Not much else really going on besides that though. Hope you all have a nice week.

Baptismal Dates.....

April 11-17

Well it was a fairly normal first week of a transfer. Going around introducing my new companion to everyone in the area. My companion is Elder Entsie from Winneba. He lived in Winneba most of his life but has been living in Kumasi for the last 3 years. He's been out for about 6 months now and was trained by Wallin. He's super cool and I'm stoked to have him as my companion for my last two transfers. Elder Bigler has a new companion now too. Elder Zhou from Botswana. We have a pretty sweet apartment. As for our week we were mainly just meeting people and trying to get our two candidates ready for their baptism this coming Saturday. We were able to have Mary interviewed on Sunday but Emmanuel won't be available until Thursday. They are both really prepared for baptism so Entsie and I are excited to finally get them into the water. Other than that not much of an exciting week. Got in a few good music sessions with Bigler and Zhou. Both play guitar so we all play at night sometimes when we get home.  It's pretty cool and we have a lot of fun with it. Other than that I haven't been up to much. Hope y'all had a great week.

Transfer Week

April 4-10

Well we had a week. It honestly wasn't all that grand. With general conference being last week, we weren't able to see our investigators at church and set up appointments with them. Also, we usually get 3 or 4 referrals from members each weekythat we can go see. However, we had none of that this week. Then to top it off none of our investigators could see us this week. We did a lot of biking around and trying to see people. It's pretty usual though. The way a transfer usually goes is the first and last week are rough but the 4 in the middle are great. So I'm looking forward to this next transfer so that things can take off for us again. I'll be doing it without Gurr though. He'll be leaving me to go to Ofankor and be companions with Elder Dini, my MTC companion. I'll be getting Elder Entsie. He's a Ghanaian from Kumasi and he was trained by Wallin! I'm super excited to get him. He can teach all of our investigators in Twi and then they'll understand it better and it's gonna be sweet. We're going to do a lot of good work together. I'm sad to see Gurr go though. I miss him for sure. Entsie will be my last companion before I go home which is a little weird but I guess it happens to every missionary. My time is running out. Well that's my week. Hope y'all are doing well.
Love you all.

General conference

Multi-zone Pig Roast!

March 28-April 3

Well what a great week it has been. We didn't get to see everyone we wanted. Things didn't go our way most of the time. We had to deal with some guys working on our apartment that didn't know what they were doing and basically just wasted our time. But none of that matters because we had the privilege of watching conference. We watched every session except for the Sunday afternoonsession. But the rest of them we had the opportunity to witness. We stayed at the stake center from 8am until about 7pm with no food or water just so we could see the 3 sessions being shown on Sunday. And though we were not physically nourished, we were spiritually nourished more than we could even handle. My head was about to burst by the end because of the amount of information that had been dumped on me in the few hours we were there. How wonderful it is to be able to hear from men whom you know to be prophets, seers, and revelators called of God to lead his people. Here in Ghana, when you walk down the street you can her "prophets" and "apostles" and the occasional "Doctor reverend pastor general overseer" all in one preaching to congregations through large speakers. The gist of what they say is just "Jesus! Holy Ghost Fire! Jesus!" Over and over and over again. Never have I felt any spirit come from any of these false prophet or from their churches which have been set up only to get gain. However, Saturday and Sunday I heard men, who really hold the priesthood, who are really called of God, and who receive revelation to guide us, speak with power and authority that can not be found anywhere but in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I know this church is true. I know that Thomas S. Monson is a prophet of God and that the other apostles are as well. I know that if we follow their counsel and listen to their words we will align ourselves with God and our will shall mold to fit his, not the other way around. This I share with you in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. Hope you all have a great week.
Love you

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.