Dear Family
& Friends,
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| Elder Peters and Elder Herrod goofing around with the kids at an elementary school. |
This week
was super cool. It started off with a conference held by the Church for all the
missionaries in the whole world. I learned some good things from it and it
helped me gain some insights on how I can better work with ward members. After
bishop gets done calling the rest of our ward counsel (our ward was split so
half of them are now in another ward) we will start to organize having ward
counsel meeting with them. The title of the conference was "Preach Repentance,
Baptize Converts", and when I first heard that I thought, "Well no duh,
what do you think I do all day?" but as I thought about it and listened to
the conference I realize that a lot of missionaries end up "Preaching that
the bible has verses that back up church doctrine, and Baptizing
Less-Actives" I have found myself doing this even, and it is something I
need to change. Elder Bednar gave a cool instruction on the role of the Holy
Ghost in conversion and after elder Herrod and I returned to our area and were
headed out to our first appointment we had a cool experience with this.
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| Panorama shot of some typical scenery in their area. |
We were
expressing different ideas about what Elder Bednar meant when he said ,
"often we think that we have to recognize that it is revelation before we
can act, this is not true" then he also went on to talk about not
"relying on your own efforts" and recognizing the difference between
when its of God or our own idea, and if our own idea is actually of God, it was
interesting do discuss as we walked through a maze of compounds with walls on
either side of us. It was late in the afternoon now and kids were coming home
from school. As we were walking and talking about this a bunch of kids started
to run past us, screaming, back toward where we had previously traveled. It
instantly became very obvious why as we looked ahead and saw three massive
bulls charging down the alleyway with the rest of the herd following behind. We
spun around and took of running with the rest of the kids. I muttered,
"Don't let Frank catch ya!" to elder Herrod. We rounded a corner and
one kid turffed it on a fallen palm tree branch so we stopped to help him. The
cows ran past us, now that we were out of the way around a corner. we helped
the kid onto his feet and started to wipe off some of the dirt when this guy
came out of his compound and said, "hey, I want you guys to bring me a Book
of Mormon!" we said ok, we will stop by sometime and explain it and help
him understand and bring him one. (side note - I know that in other missions
people contact with the Book of Mormon. here we are kinda careful with who we
give Book of Mormons too for two reasons 1. We have a limited supply of them
and we never know when we will get new ones. 2. Preachers like to teach from
them and if you don't take the time to explain that the book is scripture and
that if you believe its true it means you have to act on it by being baptized
in the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints, people will just think its
a nice book about Jesus that they can preach from. The pop-culture here is Christianity.
At home people put snowboarding stickers on their cars, here people put Jesus
stickers. At home people listen to basketball games on the radio, here they
listen to preachers. you have to carefully explain just how important and
special the Book of Mormon is otherwise its significance is often not realized)
Back to the story: So this guys name was Emmanuel and we took his contact and
later in the week we sat down and taught him. On our second visit with him I brought
him a Book of Mormon and he was SO HAPPY he said he had met with missionaries
before but they went to Asamankase before they could give him a Book of Mormon
and he has been waiting for more than a year. "Petas, we are no longer
friends, we are family!" he exclaimed as his large arm gave me the best
bear hug it could as we sat on a concrete wall outside his home where we taught
him. He is older and is a strong Presbyterian but he is a really cool guy. We
will teach him later tonight again. Cool how God works, if those bulls had
never ran us off of our intended course, we probably never would have found
Emmanuel.
This past
week we have continued to work a lot with Simon Notey. He came to church
yesterday, but that wasn't the coolest think that we did with him this week.
Earlier in the week we asked him if we could help him with anything. He has
talked with us before about the school he works at but it came to his mind that
maybe we could do some kind of work there. So we decided that we would give it
a shot. One day in the middle of the day after a failed appointment we were
walking past the school and we heard Simon call us from inside. We went over to
say hi to him and he showed us inside. It was after school hours but there were
still a lot of kids around. That’s when he explained to me that this is also
and orphanage. so we took a bunch of pictures with them and showed them on our
cameras, that is something that they love because the only time they see
themselves is in the mirror, just like we enjoy having family pictures and fun
pictures of memories, they love to see themselves on a camera. So we took a
bunch of pictures with them so they could see themselves on playback. We also
had a pick up soccer game with a lot of them. It was super fun. After a while
we talked with the headmaster there at the school and he invited us to come on Tuesday
morning to help build chairs and paint part of the school. As missionaries we
are supposed to limit our interactions with children for government reasons
(though I seriously doubt any legal complexities would occur in Ghana, must be
obedient to the white handbook though!) so we will go there every Tuesday
morning to do some sort of a service project that involves building or painting
or maintenance of the facility. We won’t get to do a lot with the kids because
of mission rules, but we will still get to see them every now and again. It
still will be a super cool experience. One day I plan to come back to the
Savior Foundation School (the name of the orphanage as well) not as a
missionary, maybe with you guys someday. More pictures and experiences to
come...
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| Elder Peters and the school kids in their uniforms. |
One thing that has struck me
lately is that blessings are based upon the obedience to the laws they are
based on. Being obedient is super important, as I have strived to be more
obedient, I have qualified for direction by the spirit, and other people's
lives are blessed because of it. Our ward is beginning to trust the
missionaries more, obedience is vital to missionary work.
We had
Benedicta, Abell, Simon Notey, and Dorkus, and Benedict come to church and we
will continue to teach them and help them come unto Christ throughout this
week. They are all doing super well, thank you all for fasting for me! Your
prayers are heard and God blesses me and the good people of Ghana because of
them! Keep em coming;)
One funny
thing about training is that all of the sudden, Ghana is the place that you are
familiar with. Home is a foreign concept. You have to help someone learn how to
adapt to life here; basically you have to welcome them to what has become your
home. When you are away from home for a long enough time, it begins to
seem less and less familiar. As Ghana becomes less and less foreign. When I see
other white people, I am shocked at their whiteness and now I totally understand
the urge to say, "ehh OBRUNI!" no way a white person? That’s strange.
The norm is all the sudden, not the norm.
I love you all!
Love Elder Peters
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| Elder Herrod (a.k.a. the Human Ladder) helping a boy get something out of a tree. |
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| The kids love to get their pictures taken. |
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