Dirty Font Nov. 27, 2017

Hey! There wasn't tons new that happened this week. It's hard to believe it's almost December and there's no snow on the ground at home. I've been out in the field for 2 months as of yesterday and I can't believe it. It still feels like I just got here. We celebrated Thanksgiving with instant potatoes and meat from the meat stand and there was no football, so not quite the same as at home haha. 

And something I forgot to mention last week, when we started filling up the font, we went to sunday school and when we went to check on it the water was nasty. Turns out that the pump for the well at the chapel broke and it filled with city water but we went through with the baptism anyway. But thanks to the Clemets ( our elderly couple for Axim) it was fixed the nexy day haha. Other than that its been a pretty normal week.

 Dirty Font

Interview with the President this week

 

African Antelope

African Bee

Baptism! Nov. 20, 2017

Well, I finally got my first baptism this week. It was the Elders quorum president's wife and their family is super excited cause now the whole family are members. Her name is Sister Yankey and she was the 2nd person I ever taught and she didn't make it easy but after 8 weeks we finally got it done. It was a little slow when i got here but now if everything goes as planned by the end of December we should have 5 more baptisms. 

I'm loving Ghana but there's a joke that your body doesn't get used to the food, your body just gets used to diarrhea haha. The food here is still super good though. Other than that it's been a pretty normal week, and as always, it's been getting hotter and hotter everyday.

Sister Yankey

   

How many Members can you Cram in a Van! Nov. 13, 2017

This week was pretty exciting. We had our district conference ( a district is a small stake like a branch compared to a ward). We had to travel to Takoradi for it and so the church got 3 15 passenger vans. Well we fit 33 in each van and it was super crammed and way hot and we had to travel 2 hours there and another 2 hours back. It was a super good conference though. It's been getting hotter and hotter then just randomly rain crazy hard for an hour then back to hot and twice as humid cause of the water evaporating, but what I hear this is nothing compared to how hot and humid it'll get in January. We also got 2 new Elders in our apartment straight from the MTC. Both of them are from the DR Congo and speak French but they've gotten pretty good at english. We're finally going to have a baptism this week for a lady named Sister Yankey. Her husband is the Elders Quorum pres. and was one of the original members in Ghana.  The church has only been here for 40 years. So it's super exciting to their family because their whole family will finally be members. 
Because of the dry season there has been a ton of roaches. We usually have 2 in the apartment a day that we kill. They're all around 3 in long and can fly. Elder Hess even had one in his shoe once. We were getting ready to exercise and he was putting on his tennis shoes, and because its so hot we usually don't wear socks when we work out cause we sweat too much if we do, but he put his whole bare foot in and realized there was something in his shoe and  ripped it off and a huge roach fell out haha. We now check all of our shoes before we put them on. Other than that Ghana is still awesome, the mission is still awesome, and I'm still loving it.

 Elder Owens (elder hess' trainer), Elder Hess (my trainer), Elder Brown (elder Owens is training and my mtc buddy) & Me

      

Lots of Travels Nov. 6, 2017

This week has been a pretty busy week. On Monday we traveled 2 hours to Takoradi and spent the night with the Elders there. Then Tuesday we traveled another 2 hours to Cape Coast to do our follow up trainers meeting. We traveled the entire 4 hours back to Axim that night. Then the next day we had to travel back to Takoradi for a Mission tour with Elder Nash of the seventy. The tour was really good and we got to hear 4 hours of talks from Elder Nash. We then spend the night in Takoradi again and we finally made it back Friday Afternoon. It's been super hot though and last night it started raining harder then I've ever seen and a crazy thunderstorm and we had no power from 8:00 at night until today at about 2:00. We got our hair cut today and the barber totally butchered Elder Hess' hair but mine turned out alright haha.  

 (He was telling us more about his week and he must have lost power or wifi (very typical) because we got cut off in the middle!  We'll take whatever we can get and we'll look forward to next Monday! ;)

this is a car we saw ... we laughed at what it said above

When it Rains it Pours...Literally! (...in Blessings too!) Oct. 30, 2017

Well, I've made it halfway through my training. People say the first 6 months of your mission are the slowest and if this is slow then the next 18 months will feel like 2 weeks. I love my mission and I love Ghana. It's been getting hotter and hotter everyday and super humid, but on saturday it rained super hard. It started out really hot in the morning then it just randomly started raining harder than I've ever seen. Within 2 min the streets were full of running water and we got super wet. To get around we were walking through water and trying to get around the really big streams of water but there was just too much. It rained like that for about 2 hours and just stopped and it got hot again. When it's hot after it rains its super humid and we didn't really dry off cause we got super sweaty. Luckily that morning I took all my clothes off the lines and brought them inside, but Elder Hess didn't and his stuff got wet and some fell off the line into the mud. Other than that its been a pretty normal week. We have 8 people with baptismal dates.  I've really started to pick up on the local dialect. And as they say here Ubishiai (until we meet)

the street about 2 minutes into the storm