Hey everyone!
So this week went pretty good. We have been making it a big focus to see all of our recent converts at least once a week. While we were at Prince's house (one of our recent converts) he was telling us a little about his life before he moved to Ghana and joined the church. He is a Nigerian and just recently moved to Ghana about 3 years ago. He lived a really rough life in Nigeria where him and his brother would get in a lot of very serious fights with people and he was put in many situations when he almost lost his life. One of his jobs was working on a drilling ship. The ship would go and drill for oil out in the ocean and he told us of an experience where while he was working some pirates came trying to take all that the ship had. Just think about the movie Captain Philips because he said they were a lot like that, but since the crew wasn't American no one really cared that much it's just part of the job. He told me that we just did everything that the pirates said, he saw eleven people get shot and killed that day and then one of them hit him in the face with the butt of their gun and knocked him into the ocean. He never went back to work again, and after that day he told himself that God wanted him for a reason on this earth. He was a very devoted roman catholic until he saw a couple of missionaries about a year ago. He was baptized on august 9th and just received his first calling in the ward as seminary teacher. He is an awesome guy and has one of the best conversion stories that I've ever heard. He is one of the people that really helps me throughout my mission because of where he has been and what he has become. I know that the Lord has a plan for all of us and he will make anything he asks us to do possible if we are faithful to him. So anyway that's my spiritual little thought.
This Thursday we had a Zone conference in Tema MTC where there were 4 different zones in our mission. The mission president was there as well as my mission father elder Effiong. I got to see everyone that was in my district in the mtc as well and see how they are doing. Elder Whiting was the one who got really sick and went to the hospital because he ate a Snail at a members house. LOL but anyway it was really nice seeing all of them. The zone conference was nice and we watched a couple of videos about the light of Christ and revelation by Elder Bednar. Also Our Nungua zone leaders both left this week. Elder Chihoski was a missionary in Liberia before ebola and now they sent him back to Liberia so It was just Elder Hatch and then Elder Hatch got transferred that day to go back to one of his old area's for the remainder of this transfer. It's not common for someone to be transferred like this but there were a lot of reasons for it so our zone was out of zone leaders. So President heid decided to combine the Tema zone and the nungua zone to make one mega zone. It's a huge zone and Probably until the end of this next transfer It will stay this way. There are a lot of missionaries leaving this next transfer, about 22 missionaries and then there are even more coming in the same week. I think someone told me there were almost 30 missionaries coming in. My district leader told me that he told my zone leaders that i'll be ready to train when they come in as well so who knows! There are a lot of young missionaries with leadership positions so I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up training. I feel like I kind of am already with my companion now so this might have been a pre-training for training set up by mission president! Anyway that was about it for this week! Also I thought i should mention that when I came out for my mission I weighed 240 lbs and I weighed myself last Tuesday and I was 210 lbs, in just two months!! Wow!
Love Elder Smith
Q&A from Dad:
Tanner:
I heard that I can get a really nice camera for 300 cedis (about 77 dollars) One of the elders in my apartment (Elder Lafo) will buy my camera for 100 cedis since he doesn't have a camera. I can get things really cheap here. I'm planning on buying some shoes at the market and my companion said that he can get them for 50 cedis and they are very nice leather shoes, so I would like to get those as well. The subsistence we get from the mission is 360 cedis for every 4 weeks and its really low especially for white people. We buy everything for a lot more money because at the market they won't lower prices for us even if we know how much they should sell for. So I've been having to use a little bit of the personal money for food.
Dad:
We love pictures so if you can take more pics that would be great. You should have your companion buy all the food if he can get the food cheaper.
Tanner:
He tries but if I'm with him then it doesn't happen. Even today we went on exchange so that the two african missionaries would go to the big market to buy things because if they see us white missionaries they will put the price way way way up.
Dad:
Should we also send our emails by mail, so that you will have time to read them at home at night instead of just quickly at the Internet Cafe?
Tanner:
I would like that! I still have a couple of the letters that I printed off at the MTC and read them often, so yeah you guys should do that.
Tanner:
I'm already excited for the end of my mission so that i can buy a ton of souvenirs because they are way way cheap here even if you're white.
Dad:
I would be excited to come and pick you up when you are finished and haul some of those things back home, but I am a little worried about the food.
Do parents come over and pick up missionaries there?
Tanner:
Hahahahaha Yeah I don't think you would like the food at all but I'd make sure you would just have like rice and stew so it wouldn't be bad. I haven't seen any parents come out to pick up missionaries but I'm sure you could.
Dad:
So are all your baptisms on track for Sept even with Elder Effiong leaving? I think you said that you had 3 or 4 committed to Sept?
Tanner:
Probably only two will happen in September now. Two of them haven't been serious about coming to church but they would be in October, if not this month plus we met like 3 yesterday that want to be baptized, so October will be a really good month.
Dad:
That is really exciting to have so many interested people. In most of the world they only get a few baptisms a year. What a blessing. Do most of them stay active in the church or is the activity rate really low?
Tanner:
We have 17 baptisms in our ward this year and I think 14 are active but two others make it about 2 times a month.
Dad:
Also, how is the language? Can you know understand their English? And are you picking up much of the native language? Does your companion understand any of the native languages?
Are they splitting your ward because it is too big for the building?
Tanner:
I'm picking up some of it but it's alright because I’m doing a lot better with their language and I learned to just not stress out about it, so its all okay.
They are splitting two wards to make 3 and mostly because some people have to travel a long distance to come to our ward but our ward building is also really small.
So this week went pretty good. We have been making it a big focus to see all of our recent converts at least once a week. While we were at Prince's house (one of our recent converts) he was telling us a little about his life before he moved to Ghana and joined the church. He is a Nigerian and just recently moved to Ghana about 3 years ago. He lived a really rough life in Nigeria where him and his brother would get in a lot of very serious fights with people and he was put in many situations when he almost lost his life. One of his jobs was working on a drilling ship. The ship would go and drill for oil out in the ocean and he told us of an experience where while he was working some pirates came trying to take all that the ship had. Just think about the movie Captain Philips because he said they were a lot like that, but since the crew wasn't American no one really cared that much it's just part of the job. He told me that we just did everything that the pirates said, he saw eleven people get shot and killed that day and then one of them hit him in the face with the butt of their gun and knocked him into the ocean. He never went back to work again, and after that day he told himself that God wanted him for a reason on this earth. He was a very devoted roman catholic until he saw a couple of missionaries about a year ago. He was baptized on august 9th and just received his first calling in the ward as seminary teacher. He is an awesome guy and has one of the best conversion stories that I've ever heard. He is one of the people that really helps me throughout my mission because of where he has been and what he has become. I know that the Lord has a plan for all of us and he will make anything he asks us to do possible if we are faithful to him. So anyway that's my spiritual little thought.
This Thursday we had a Zone conference in Tema MTC where there were 4 different zones in our mission. The mission president was there as well as my mission father elder Effiong. I got to see everyone that was in my district in the mtc as well and see how they are doing. Elder Whiting was the one who got really sick and went to the hospital because he ate a Snail at a members house. LOL but anyway it was really nice seeing all of them. The zone conference was nice and we watched a couple of videos about the light of Christ and revelation by Elder Bednar. Also Our Nungua zone leaders both left this week. Elder Chihoski was a missionary in Liberia before ebola and now they sent him back to Liberia so It was just Elder Hatch and then Elder Hatch got transferred that day to go back to one of his old area's for the remainder of this transfer. It's not common for someone to be transferred like this but there were a lot of reasons for it so our zone was out of zone leaders. So President heid decided to combine the Tema zone and the nungua zone to make one mega zone. It's a huge zone and Probably until the end of this next transfer It will stay this way. There are a lot of missionaries leaving this next transfer, about 22 missionaries and then there are even more coming in the same week. I think someone told me there were almost 30 missionaries coming in. My district leader told me that he told my zone leaders that i'll be ready to train when they come in as well so who knows! There are a lot of young missionaries with leadership positions so I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up training. I feel like I kind of am already with my companion now so this might have been a pre-training for training set up by mission president! Anyway that was about it for this week! Also I thought i should mention that when I came out for my mission I weighed 240 lbs and I weighed myself last Tuesday and I was 210 lbs, in just two months!! Wow!
Love Elder Smith
Q&A from Dad:
Tanner:
I heard that I can get a really nice camera for 300 cedis (about 77 dollars) One of the elders in my apartment (Elder Lafo) will buy my camera for 100 cedis since he doesn't have a camera. I can get things really cheap here. I'm planning on buying some shoes at the market and my companion said that he can get them for 50 cedis and they are very nice leather shoes, so I would like to get those as well. The subsistence we get from the mission is 360 cedis for every 4 weeks and its really low especially for white people. We buy everything for a lot more money because at the market they won't lower prices for us even if we know how much they should sell for. So I've been having to use a little bit of the personal money for food.
Dad:
We love pictures so if you can take more pics that would be great. You should have your companion buy all the food if he can get the food cheaper.
Tanner:
He tries but if I'm with him then it doesn't happen. Even today we went on exchange so that the two african missionaries would go to the big market to buy things because if they see us white missionaries they will put the price way way way up.
Dad:
Should we also send our emails by mail, so that you will have time to read them at home at night instead of just quickly at the Internet Cafe?
Tanner:
I would like that! I still have a couple of the letters that I printed off at the MTC and read them often, so yeah you guys should do that.
Tanner:
I'm already excited for the end of my mission so that i can buy a ton of souvenirs because they are way way cheap here even if you're white.
Dad:
I would be excited to come and pick you up when you are finished and haul some of those things back home, but I am a little worried about the food.
Do parents come over and pick up missionaries there?
Tanner:
Hahahahaha Yeah I don't think you would like the food at all but I'd make sure you would just have like rice and stew so it wouldn't be bad. I haven't seen any parents come out to pick up missionaries but I'm sure you could.
Dad:
So are all your baptisms on track for Sept even with Elder Effiong leaving? I think you said that you had 3 or 4 committed to Sept?
Tanner:
Probably only two will happen in September now. Two of them haven't been serious about coming to church but they would be in October, if not this month plus we met like 3 yesterday that want to be baptized, so October will be a really good month.
Dad:
That is really exciting to have so many interested people. In most of the world they only get a few baptisms a year. What a blessing. Do most of them stay active in the church or is the activity rate really low?
Tanner:
We have 17 baptisms in our ward this year and I think 14 are active but two others make it about 2 times a month.
Dad:
Also, how is the language? Can you know understand their English? And are you picking up much of the native language? Does your companion understand any of the native languages?
Are they splitting your ward because it is too big for the building?
Tanner:
I'm picking up some of it but it's alright because I’m doing a lot better with their language and I learned to just not stress out about it, so its all okay.
They are splitting two wards to make 3 and mostly because some people have to travel a long distance to come to our ward but our ward building is also really small.