Hey Everyone!
So last week was really nothing new. Went to the post office, prepared for the transfer etc. I was able to give instruction on Tuesday for our district council meeting! For those of you who don't know what district council meeting is. We meet every Tuesday as a district and talk about our areas. We talk about our strengths, weaknesses, and investigators. At the end of everyone's report the district leaders gives instruction, which is basically a lesson for about an hour. The district leader asked me a couple days before if I could give the instructions, so I agreed and taught about how the Holy Ghost makes up for our incompetency in teaching. It was a good discussion and we talked about some really good scriptures about being humble, and turning our weaknesses into strengths. A few of the scriptures were Alma 26:12, Ether 12:27, and John 5:19. They're some great scriptures so all of you should read them! We continued on sharing weaknesses that we all have and made goals to do small things every day to help us with them. During the lesson I had an impression that I should talk about a book that Dad told me about, talking about weaknesses actually being our strengths. It talks about how David had the real advantage over Goliath, and that Dyslexia can actually be an advantage in learning instead of a disadvantage. This topic got us talking a lot about how God doesn't always take away our weaknesses, he only temporarily makes them strengths so that we can still be humble and rely on him. We need to see that our weaknesses are sometimes blessings in our life. If we are humble enough to go to our Heavenly Father asking him to make our weaknesses (individually) strengths then we can become even more perfect through him. My favorite story in the scriptures that relates to this is Enoch. God asks him to do an enormous task and he has fear because of his "slow speach" (Moses 6:31). Enoch recognized his weakness and trusted that God would make the difference and he ended up converting the entire city! It wasn't exactly what I had planned for the instruction, but it far exceed my expectations!
Later on in the week was a lot of preparation for the transfer the next week Also we are responsible for making sure that everyone in the mission gets an hour to spend on the phone with their family. We've been going all over the place to different phone companies seeing which companies are cheapest for different countries to call in. This next week we'll have to go out and buy all the sim cards for the calls which will also be a lot of work. Good thing Elder Morris and I are GENIUS (I know right after talking about humility) and set up a way cool way to calculate costs for each company to each country and which is cheapest to use according to the country the missionary will call to. Working in the office has taught me a lot about learning as you go. We don't do many things with repetition here so we are always learning on the fly. I'm nervous to do the same thing back home because it's really easy to do it here in Ghana because everyone is so helpful and kind.
For investigators the only really serious investigator's name is Sampson. We have taught him a bunch of times and man does he LOVE the church. He's progressing really well and we gave him a date to be baptized on the 13th of December. We would do it a week earlier but it's stake conference so we had to push it back. We had some worries with him at first because he was asking for money, but now he's been only talking about gospel topics and he's even sharing it with all of his friends! He's definitely what you call a golden investigator.
Sunday was Elder Effiong's birthday! He was my first companion out in the field. In case you forgot, It is a tradition here to dunk people with water on their birthday. It's supposed to resemble a "rebirth". So I came up with a master scheme to dunk Elder Effiong with water just like he dunked me back in Klagon. He was in the office doing call in reports to all the zone leaders so I set out 8 buckets of water throughout the mission home compound and called the missionaries close by to come and help. We waited for him to finish and when he came outside of the office I got the hose and started spraying him while 4 other Elders started dunking water on him. It was awesome to get some revenge on him for when he dunked me! I'll make sure to send some pictures. Sis Heid made us some cake afterwards which was really good.
Answering some questions- Things are peaceful here but we have been seeing a lot of military patrols outside recently which is uncommon, but I think that everything is okay. There are a load of muslims in Ghana but the majority are in the north of Ghana. There is one other office couple that is in the office every day, the Crisps. They're from Mesa Arizona. There are a lot of other senior missionaries though. Even today, one of the senior couples daughter in laws is the niece to President Jackson! Small World! I can't remember her first name but the last name was Wade and they live in Sacramento.
FYI: What I've seen is the best way to do the packages is to send multiple small sachets packages, the ones that cost about 26$. Those packages we don't have to pay for and it's always cheaper in the end to just send multiple small packages because you won't have to pay on both ends. I'll send a picture of the package so you know what I'm talking about too. And I'm sending a goofy picture of Elder Morris with a Elder Smith label on his head. We got bored and started playing with the label maker.
Thanks for everything all of you do! Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Love
Elder Smith
So last week was really nothing new. Went to the post office, prepared for the transfer etc. I was able to give instruction on Tuesday for our district council meeting! For those of you who don't know what district council meeting is. We meet every Tuesday as a district and talk about our areas. We talk about our strengths, weaknesses, and investigators. At the end of everyone's report the district leaders gives instruction, which is basically a lesson for about an hour. The district leader asked me a couple days before if I could give the instructions, so I agreed and taught about how the Holy Ghost makes up for our incompetency in teaching. It was a good discussion and we talked about some really good scriptures about being humble, and turning our weaknesses into strengths. A few of the scriptures were Alma 26:12, Ether 12:27, and John 5:19. They're some great scriptures so all of you should read them! We continued on sharing weaknesses that we all have and made goals to do small things every day to help us with them. During the lesson I had an impression that I should talk about a book that Dad told me about, talking about weaknesses actually being our strengths. It talks about how David had the real advantage over Goliath, and that Dyslexia can actually be an advantage in learning instead of a disadvantage. This topic got us talking a lot about how God doesn't always take away our weaknesses, he only temporarily makes them strengths so that we can still be humble and rely on him. We need to see that our weaknesses are sometimes blessings in our life. If we are humble enough to go to our Heavenly Father asking him to make our weaknesses (individually) strengths then we can become even more perfect through him. My favorite story in the scriptures that relates to this is Enoch. God asks him to do an enormous task and he has fear because of his "slow speach" (Moses 6:31). Enoch recognized his weakness and trusted that God would make the difference and he ended up converting the entire city! It wasn't exactly what I had planned for the instruction, but it far exceed my expectations!
Later on in the week was a lot of preparation for the transfer the next week Also we are responsible for making sure that everyone in the mission gets an hour to spend on the phone with their family. We've been going all over the place to different phone companies seeing which companies are cheapest for different countries to call in. This next week we'll have to go out and buy all the sim cards for the calls which will also be a lot of work. Good thing Elder Morris and I are GENIUS (I know right after talking about humility) and set up a way cool way to calculate costs for each company to each country and which is cheapest to use according to the country the missionary will call to. Working in the office has taught me a lot about learning as you go. We don't do many things with repetition here so we are always learning on the fly. I'm nervous to do the same thing back home because it's really easy to do it here in Ghana because everyone is so helpful and kind.
For investigators the only really serious investigator's name is Sampson. We have taught him a bunch of times and man does he LOVE the church. He's progressing really well and we gave him a date to be baptized on the 13th of December. We would do it a week earlier but it's stake conference so we had to push it back. We had some worries with him at first because he was asking for money, but now he's been only talking about gospel topics and he's even sharing it with all of his friends! He's definitely what you call a golden investigator.
Sunday was Elder Effiong's birthday! He was my first companion out in the field. In case you forgot, It is a tradition here to dunk people with water on their birthday. It's supposed to resemble a "rebirth". So I came up with a master scheme to dunk Elder Effiong with water just like he dunked me back in Klagon. He was in the office doing call in reports to all the zone leaders so I set out 8 buckets of water throughout the mission home compound and called the missionaries close by to come and help. We waited for him to finish and when he came outside of the office I got the hose and started spraying him while 4 other Elders started dunking water on him. It was awesome to get some revenge on him for when he dunked me! I'll make sure to send some pictures. Sis Heid made us some cake afterwards which was really good.
Answering some questions- Things are peaceful here but we have been seeing a lot of military patrols outside recently which is uncommon, but I think that everything is okay. There are a load of muslims in Ghana but the majority are in the north of Ghana. There is one other office couple that is in the office every day, the Crisps. They're from Mesa Arizona. There are a lot of other senior missionaries though. Even today, one of the senior couples daughter in laws is the niece to President Jackson! Small World! I can't remember her first name but the last name was Wade and they live in Sacramento.
FYI: What I've seen is the best way to do the packages is to send multiple small sachets packages, the ones that cost about 26$. Those packages we don't have to pay for and it's always cheaper in the end to just send multiple small packages because you won't have to pay on both ends. I'll send a picture of the package so you know what I'm talking about too. And I'm sending a goofy picture of Elder Morris with a Elder Smith label on his head. We got bored and started playing with the label maker.
Thanks for everything all of you do! Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Love
Elder Smith