Feb. 28, 2011

This week has been a really good one. I know that I say that every
week, but this week seems to be better than usual. First thing to
write about is that due to the unrest in Ivory Coast they are moving
some of the missionaries from that mission into ours and sending 2
more of the missionaries in our mission up to Sunyani, making 12
missionaries in our district. I think that that makes us the biggest
district in the mission right now. There have been a lot of problems
here in Africa. I dont know if you have heard of the problems in Egypt
and in Libya and Ivory Coast, but there have been quite a few
revolutions, and most of Africa seems to be at war right now. With all
of the conflict, we still dont have to worry about any of that because
if the people of Ghana were to ever fight I think that their weapons
would chicken/goat poop and trash, and that their soldiers would be
little children. Those seem to be the only things that they have in
abundance up here. The conflict that they would be fighting over would
probably be something like which football team is the best. Anyways,
we get more missionaries which is really cool and a big blessing to
helping Sunyani to grow. There have been a few cool things that have
happened since I last wrote that I can talk about. The first one is
about a girl named Sherry. If you remember about the last woman that
we baptized named Sister Agartha I told you about how we contacted her
by knocking on the biggest gate that we could find and that a girl
came out and we asked to meet with her family and she told us to go
away and all of that jazz. Anyways, the girl that first opened the
gate was Sherry. We actually kinda forgot about her after the first
time that we went there to teach them, because Sis Agartha and her
sister Mary were really interested and Sherry is really into her
church. Well, we went to teach Sis Agartha about the temple this last
week and as we were getting ready to go Sherry asked us that if she
was going to join our church if she would have to be baptized again.
We told her yes, which seemed to surprise her, and we told her that we
would come back the next time to teach her why. We came back in a few
days and they were all waiting for us so that we could answer her
question. Well, we taught her for about fifteen minutes about the
priesthood and baptism and all of that stuff and when we were done we
asked if there were any questions. Sis Agartha and Mary jumped in and
started to teach her in Twi about the same thing before she could even
open her mouth. They spoke so fast that I was not able to understand,
but when they were done Sherry looked at us and said "Ok, Ill be
baptized". We were not expecting that because we had just asked if
there were any questions, and it was really funny the way that she
said it, like we had been trying to convince her for hours or
something, which in all reality Sis Agartha and Sis Mary might have
been doing. Before we could say anything, Sis Mary (who by the way is
not even baptized herself) jumped in and started to explain that
before we could baptize her we had to go through the lessons and that
she had to pray and go to church and get an answer form God that this
is the true church and everything. It was really kinda cute to see
these women get so excited in the missionary work, especially since
one of them is not even a member and the other is the newest convert
in out unit. We have been back to teach Sherry and every time that we
go Sis Agartha and Mary are there and bear powerful testimony that
these things are true and this last Sunday they brought her to church.
Its really exciting and makes me really happy. The next story is about
a few different people. We started to teach a man named Steven, who
has come to church twice and seems really excited about it. He gave us
a call this last week and told us that he needed to talk to us. He
told us that the man that he rents his room from is not happy that we
have been coming to teach him and that we need to teach him at a
different place so that we dont cause problems. That was no problem,
because he stays close to Bro Owusu who is the man that I told you
about from Germany who we are going to baptize again in a few weeks,
so we will teach him there. Well, yesterday we were going to go and
teach Chris who is the 13 year old grandson of Bro Owusu who will
hopefully be baptized with his grandfather. We got there early because
one of our appointment failed and he told us that he was busy and that
he needed us to come at the actual time that we told him. As we were
going, my companion jokingly told me to ask Chris if he had any
referrals for us. It was a joke, because not only is Chis just a kid,
and the people he would refer to us would be kids also, but because he
is not even a member. Anyways, I did ask him, and it just happened
that a man was walking by and Chris intorduced us to him. His name is
Isaac, and we went to his house right then and taught him a powerful
lesson about baptism and everything. At the end he still seemed a
little uneasy about something, and we asked him what it was and he
told us that he had heard that we worshipped idols. we told him that
that was not true, but he still seemed uneasy. We somehow found out
that Steven, the man who I talked of at first is his good friend and
that he knew that he had been coming to church with us. We were able
to tell him to go to his friend and aask if he had seen us doing any
of that stuff. That was able to get rid of all of his concerns and
everything is ok now. Im out of time and Ill finish this next
week.love you all Ty