"Happy New Year"-- 1/4/2011

I hope that you all had a great new years eve. I sure had a lot of
fun. On Friday evening the senior couple the Bennett's had us over for
a party. An hour before that Elder Mapanje and myself had a failed
appointment and decided to go and check out a new part of our area. It
turned out that we could see a few houses up on a hill and we tried to
get to them and did a little bit of jungle mountain biking in the
middle of nowhere instead. It was really fun and beautiful, but not
very productive. When we finally got to the houses we found that they
were not completed and that there was no one living there anyways. We
then went to the Bennett's and they bought us this really good rice
and stew and we got to watch On the Lords Errand, which is the
biography about Pres. Monson. It was really cool and about 3/4 of the
way through it we had a member family that just moved from Accra to
our area that we had never met come and introduce themselves to us.
Then the Bennett's gave us all brownies and ice cream (they were the
second of the mission for me, and they tasted glorious). We came home,
and were going to play games until midnight, but while the others
started to get the games set up I fell asleep and it turned out that
the others just stayed up talking. The next morning we had a party
where we played one of the most intense football games of my life. It
worked out that we tied ,which was perfect because the people that
came were very competitive and if one had lost there could have been
problems. After which one of my recent converts provided food for
everyone. She told me that usually for her old church it was not
uncommon for her to put in a lot of money for the collection bowl for
Christmas, and because she is now a member she is saving a lot of
money and she wanted to give it back to God so she just made a lot of
food for the party. She used to own a restaurant, and so it tasted
really good and everyone was satisfied. It turned out to just be a
really good day. The next day was Sunday and we had the lowest numbers
since Ive been in Sunyani. We had ten people including ourselves and
the only other unit that had lower was the one that just opened and
they had zero. It was a hard week for numbers, I guess just because of
the new years. We contacted the rest of the day and had a lot of
fun.Yesterday we went to Kumasi for p-day and played football.It was
fun also, but we didn't get back until late because of the traffic. We
had to wait in line for an hour and a half until we were able to get
transport back. It was a lot of fun though and I really enjoyed it. I
guess that it sounds like I'm just playing all of the time over here,
but that's not all of the way true. We work a lot, but its not very
much fun to talk about knocking on doors, so I never really talk about
it. One story is that we were teaching an old investigator and he had
a friend with him. Our investigator asked us if Jesus Christ was a
drunkard because in the bible there is a verse where the pharasies say
that he is(Matt. 11). We told him no and then he asked about our views
on drinking and so we taught him about the word of wisdom. He told us
that he had no problems with any of it, but that his wife and children
drank tea and he didn't understand why it was bad, so we went over it
really heavy and talked about some of the things inside of tea and
what it can do to the body and how we can become addicted to it and
everything and asked if he had any questions. He told us that he
understood and then asked how he could explain it to his wife. We told
him to explain it just the way that we had explained it and he was OK
with that answer. We started to move on to a new topic when the other
man that was there just blew up at us. He told us that we had not
answered the question and that we needed to give proof of why it was
bad so that the man could tell his wife those things. He went on for
about ten minutes yelling/ talking really loudly at us and saying that
he didn't drink it personally, but we needed to give proof that it was
bad. We tried to go over everything that we new and gave facts,
examples, personal experiences of how it was bad, but he kept on
yelling at us. Finally he stood up and said something like, "I guess
this is evidence that Joe Smith is a false prophet, I'm leaving to go
and listen to pastor Mensa(some local fake pastor Ive never heard of)
on the radio". He then stormed off and left us with the investigator.
He apologized for his friend and we bore our testimony to him and I
think that it ended up OK. The whole time that the man was yelling at
us I was thinking of the scripture where Christ says "A wicked and
perverse generation seeketh after a sing." It was kinda funny. I used
to get really into what I called "giving to people", but now I just
feel sad when things like that happen. I stand up for what is true,
but I am tired of ignorance and hatred. I just wish that people would
think before they formed ideas about others and their beliefs. I
really am enjoying my time here. I love the people and the area and
wish that I could be here forever. I just wish that you guys and the
food back at home could be here also. There is nothing like a mission
to make you both dread and dream of going home. :-) I love you all a
lot and hope that all is well.
Love Ty