Dear Family & Friends,
This week is
transfers and our entire district is staying together. So I will have Elder Ofusu
Hene for at least 1 more transfer, but I think that they will take him away
from me for my last transfer because he has been here for a long time. The only
difference is they split Asamankese Zone and we are now part of Abomosu
Zone.
During this
week we were walking to an investigators house that is located in the far
reaches of Kade, and there's no electricity in this area. As we got there and
discovered that our investigator wasn't home but a nearby farmer called us over
to his house. We followed down this little trail and saw a lot of palm trees
cut over and tipped on their sides with large bottles placed under them in the
ground. A little ways from the fallen trees, there was a little honing with
dozens of oil barrels under it. These guys were brewing palm wine. As we
followed this farmer to his buddies we discovered that not only did these guys
brew large quantities of palm wine, they also drank large quantities of palm
wine. In Gbawe we had a less active/recent convert who sold palm wine to people
and one time, to show me how much alcohol was in it, he poured some on the
ground and lit a match and threw it on the puddle and it burst in flames. So
these guys were SUPER drunk! They only spoke Twi, so I turned to Elder Ofusu Hene
and said, “I’m sorry but you’re on your own for this one.” Drunk people are
hard to understand in English because their language is so slurred, but Twi is
impossible. He worked his way out of it, but I gained a much stronger testimony
of what it means to "pray while your companion is speaking" (that’s
in PMG somewhere...)
This past week we were teaching a man
named Nana Kwame. He called us over to his workplace as we were walking down
the road and was interested in "our church" he said. As we sat down
with him and got to know him better and began to explain our message we found
out that the reason he was interested in the church was because he had a friend
in Kumasi who claimed to have done some sort of Juju ritual to obtain ten
thousand Ghana cedis by reading the Book of Mormon. As we met with him and
brought a member friend along to see him as well we were able to explain the
true purpose of the Book of Mormon and asked him to read and pray about it. On
our third visit with him I asked him if he had read what we had assigned him to
and prayed about it. He shared an experience of praying and getting a feeling
and hearing a voice saying, "What they are telling you is true". Listening to him I wasn't all that impressed.
My experience as a missionary told me that he was telling us a story to make us
feel good; he really had no such experience. I felt this way because of how
many times that has happened on my mission. The week prior we had an
investigator tell us that she had a dream where Joseph Smith was standing on a
coconut tree and threw her a bottle of honey and it tasted sweet and she new
the church was true, then calling her later we could hear her tell her kid on
the phone, "tell them I’m not home..." hundreds of experiences just
like this one on my mission were telling me to doubt what Nana Kwame was
telling me. But then I had a thought, "Are you letting your experience
diminish your faith?"
I am now confident that that was prompting, that I need to be careful that the many experiences I’ve had as a missionary doesn't diminish my faith in the work. I wanted to share that small thought with you.
Kojo is
progressing really well and will be interviewed for baptism this week
hopefully. It’s really hard to find him sometimes because he doesn't have a
phone. Mary has disappeared, I’m not sure she’s coming back to Kade. Daniel is
also doing ok. He didn't come to church for some reason this week, but we will
go and see him tomorrow.
I'm praying
the lord will see fit to bless our area as we have been giving it our all this
past transfer.
I love you
guys! Love, Elder Peters
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