"Happy Thanksgiving" -- 11/22

Happy thanksgiving to everyone back at home, I hope that all is going
well and that you all have a good one. Once again this year I find
myself trying to explain to my companion about what this holiday is
all about and how big it is back at home. Thankfully there are 2 other
missionaries from U.S. here that also want to celebrate, and the other
missionaries are happy for an excuse to party so it sounds like we're
going to be making some fufu this Thurs. Im really jealous about all
of you guys with your snow and cold weather. Sunyani is the farthest
north that our mission is right now, and its kinda a bummer that Im
here for this time of year. We are just starting the dry season, and
this is the time when it gets really hot. Unfortunately for me the
farther north that you go in Ghana, the hotter it is at this time of
year, because it is closer to the Sahara desert. This last week has
been one of the hottest weeks that Ive ever experienced in my life and
it sounds like its only going to get worse. I guess that I just need
to drink more water and suck it up though. Pres. Sabey called today
and told us that Pres. Dixon and another general authority are coming
up this weekend to check on Sunyani and to see how everything is
going. Pres. Dixon is from Arlington and is related to the Dixon's
that are in our stake (or at least used to be in our stake). Ive
gotten to talk to him once before and it was cool, because we were
able to talk about the same people back at home. That is the only time
that I have been able to do that on my mission. This last week has
been really good. Its also been really long. One of our recent
converts got in an argument with her daughter, who happens to be one
of our investigators that we are planning to baptize in two weeks, and
she ran away from home. The good news is that her testimony was strong
enough that she still came to church and institute and were were able
to sit down with her and with her mother and help them talk it out so
that she is now living back at home and everything seems to be better.
The bad news is that we spent almost six hours on wed trying to do
that. Usually we would just give the situation over to the branch
pres. and have him deal with it, but in this case we have no branch
pres., because there is no branch, so it all fell onto me and Elder
Ayim. There have been a few different situations so far that I really
wish we had a branch pres to take care of them. We have finally gotten
permission to have Elder Bennett, one of the senior missionaries to
start giving callings to people and this week we have been trying to
get that going. We don't want this to go bad, so we are trying to do
like a trial calling. We have asked one of our members and also one of
our investigators that is going to be baptized in two weeks to start
teaching the youth and children the primary songs and the stories
behind them for thirty minutes after church. They have both accepted
and they will start next Sunday. Also this Sunday we were able to
watch general conference. It was really great for some of us, but for
a lot of the members and investigators they were not able to
understand, because of the accents of the people speaking. Hopefully
they were able to get at least something out of it though.We have also
spent some time this week trying to learn/ teach our recent converts
how to do family history work  and helping them to prepare to go to
the temple. Its a big deal to go to the temple from Sunyani, because
its so far away. They would have to pay about 100 cedes to travel and
it would take at least three days of travel. They all seem to be
excited and have started to prepare to go despite the trials keeping
them. Its also made me excited to do family history work when I get
home too. Everything else seems to be going well here and Im grateful
to be in Ghana. Can't wait to talk to all of you guys soon.
Love Ty