I have a request from all of you. With Christmas coming, I thought that it might be kind of cool to send Elder Peters 'selfies' for Christmas. Take a photo of yourself doing something cool and send him a low res copy in his email. He LOVES seeing what is happening here...and the Africans love to see anything with snow in it...so if you get the chance between now and Christmas please send your selfies to brandon.peters@myldsmail.net thanks!
From his other letters today we learned that:
His zone has 24 missionaries in it.
He was REALLY excited for Elders Paddon and Perry to be called as trainers and thinks they will be amazing.
To his Mom he wrote:
i got my package this week and that cheese sauce is gonna be super good
I tried to buy kente today, the lady
wanted 400 Ghana cedis. I told her I wouldn't pay more than 60, she said 350,
in the end she wouldn't sell them to me. asked the Ghanaian in our apartment
how much it is he said 50 cedis. so there's obruni price for you.
i have a tailor guy that lives
across the road from my area that is my friend and he says that he knows
a good kente guy, hes the one who will sew my ties. i bet he will be
able to get me a better price. this guy doesn't cheat because he has
developed a relationship with missionaries and knows that they really
don't have much money.
He sent this AMAZING note to Tony:
On friday at 2 in the afternoon we went to go pick up Bonniface from his house to go proselyte with him. He was out playing football so when we got to his house his dad was there washing his clothes (one of the only men i have met here that washes his own clothes btw) so I started talking to him. I asked him about Bonniface. He talked to me about how he is preparing to go on a mission and that he's turning in his papers and waiting for his call. he then went on to tell me how proud he is of his son. i guess he has 2 sons that have served missions and he is SO happy that Bonniface will be going. it was humbling to see this man just beaming with pride because of how incredible his sons were and are, one is now working the in UK and is married and doing everything he can to provide for his wife and child, the other is schooling. it made me think of you, I even checked the time to see what you would be doing at the moment. It also instilled within me a sense of checking myself. Would my father be proud with the way i am serving? how can i make him proud to say:this is my son! he served a mission and i love him so much, a father couldn't be more happy with his son! and i just felt like you know, that you are proud. listening to this father praise his sons let me feel your praise for me and it was incredible. i can say that i felt the spirit, and i felt close to you. and it was the best part of my week
Dear Family and Friends,
This week was super cool. December is going to go really fast because this week we had transfers, the next week we will get subsistence and later in the month we will have a ward Christmas party and a mission Christmas devotional, in which we will get to go to the temple. So I will be staying with Elder Varo for this next transfer, and Elder Friday will receive Elder Brown. All I know about elder brown is that he’s obruni and he is apparently very small. He is also very new, only a transfer old on mission. Thank you for the cheese sauce you sent that one is gonna be awesome! Its gonna go good with plantain chip nachos!
This past week Amatan came. Amatan is the dry season. And it came on Friday morning. On Thursday we had this furious rainstorm that my companion and I decided would be a good time to play rugby in the rain in. that was super fun. Just tossing this rugby ball around in the rain, getting soaked joking around it was fun. It came pretty early in the morning and went for about an hour. Then the weather got super humid. It was so foggy that you couldn't see down the road. Cars turned on their headlights. The fog has stayed but it is no longer humid, its dust. I’m not sure how that works but I will wipe my face on my sweat rag after biking for a little bit and the rag will be brown with dirt because it’s so dusty. I have been soaking my shirts in bleach for several hours today to try to make them as white as I can. Then temperature has also seemed to increase, but now the sun is not as penetrating so I’m not getting sunburned as much as I used to which is nice. It will definitely be a Christmas to remember. You guys got snow well we got dust!
Ok, I forgot to say something about our sink. Our sink had this hole about the size of a marble in the bottom of the faucet near the base. When the pump that pressurizes the water is on, if you aren't careful you'll soak your shirt. It would be a wonderful prank. Because you think the water would come out of the top of the faucet but it comes strait for your belly button. Anyway, this guy came to fix our sink with light off, so the water wasn't running because the pump wasn’t on.
The dude left half way through the job without replacing our sink handle so we had no idea if the water was on or off. We went out proselyting for the day. Then later that night when I opened our compound gate and started to walk toward our door, I noticed a wet trail where water had been. A LOT of water. Hmmm. I went around back and climbed our tower to check how much water was in our tank. It was nearly empty, shoot! Upon examination the hole in our facet seemed to have increased slightly and our whole front passage area was soaked. Luckily our rooms are at higher ground. So almost 3/4ths of our poly tank emptied through a whole the size of a marble into our apartment while we were out proselyting. That was fun. I guess light came on for about 2 hours then went off again. It cleaned elder Fridays door though (it’s right across from the sink) and it’s a good thing he closed it or otherwise his room would be flooded.
We made t-shirts with a missionary jumping and holding a Book of Mormon like the Air Jordan logo and it says “Air Mormon” on the bottom, my design. I can't lie its pretty dope. I will send a picture of us wearing them next week standing by our Christmas tree! Ya I made a Christmas tree out of electrical tape and cut out pictures from our pamphlets and liahonas to make ornaments. It also is pretty cool.
Thank you for sending the advent calendar mom! I set up a rotation so each day it’s someone else’s turn to take the candy and tell everybody else in the apartment how many days are left until Christmas.
Africans love the Muppets Christmas album, I will send videos home because they are too funny to just describe so you'll just have to see it.
As I was teaching the plan of salvation this last week to investigators it finally clicked in my mind why god gave Adam and Eve the commandment not to eat the fruit, even though he knew that they needed to. I had always been confused by this, I remember thinking to myself why would god give a commandment to his children that he knew that they would and needed to break? Couldn’t he just have told them, you guys need to eat this so that you can know what’s right and wrong and be able to bring the rest of my children here to earth ok? But as I thought about it Adam and Eve lived in the garden in the presence of god. In the plan that Jesus Christ made we needed to leave gods presence and live by faith to show that we are willing to keep his commandments even though we aren’t with him. So what is the one thing that can separate us from god? Its sin. God could not just thrust Adam and Eve from his presence, he is a just and merciful god he wouldn't do that. They needed to commit a sin so that they could be separated
from him. So that’s why he made not eating the fruit a commandment. Adam and Eve not only needed to know what was right and wrong, but they needed a chance to prove that they would choose right over wrong.
That’s cool to hear about the Davis girl’s team. Way to go girls! Represent. I'm sorry the boys didn't get to go. Don’t worry guys, just kill it in track! You guys are incredible.
Have a merry Christmas season! Have fun in the snow! It was weird because the guys in my apartment wanted me to tell them about snow cuz they have never seen snow before.
I love you guys a ton! Keep doing cool, fun, spirit building things at home!
Love, Elder Peters
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