Wednesday, July 15, 2015



Hello Family and Friends!

How are you all doing? :) Okay so first things first Twi word of the week (I just thought I should start that) is Badsi. It means Thank you. I really like that one and I use it a lot here in Ghana. So this week has been a pretty good week, and things are going great here in Swedru. Okay so intresting fact about Ghana is that sometimes power will just randomly go off here in Ghan, becauuse they can't power all of the electricty here in Ghana so sometimes they will just cut the power off. (Even if you paid your bill). And there is no back up generator so you just have to wait until it comes back on. So the whole city is without power until they decide to turn in back on. Sometimes it's off for 10 to 30 minutes but sometimes it can last up to hours. It's not too bad, but it's just kind of werid when suddenly the lights go off in the apartment for no reason. Yesterday they turned of the electrity 3 times haha. It usually is only once a day or so but sometimes it goes off more than once. When the power goes off in the afternoon it is pretty brutal becasue the fans won't work and the rooms get really hot, but we make it work. :) Yesterday the power went off in the afternoon right when we were in the apratment and we used our pamplets to cool us off as fans haha! Luckly (The power going out) hasn't happen during our email time, but if it does we will either try to write later or come on Tuesday to write our letters. So last week after Elder Day and I emailed we went to this superstore here in Swedru and it was really intresting to look at all the stuff and what they had. It's like a walmart but with two floors and it was pretty intresting to look at all of the stuff!
On Tuesday, we had a Zone Meeting. So our zone is called the Winneba Zone. Our Zone leaders talked about the Head of The House hold for baptism and who we should write down for specific cases. Also they talked about how to use the pamphlets (The Restoration, The Plan of Salvation, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, The Word of Wisdom, and Chastity) in our teaching and why they are important. It was really great and we carry them all the time and hand the pamphlets out to those we meet and use them in our lessons with the investigators, especially because they have really good pictures that can help our investigators understand. Te Sister Zone leaders talked about the Holy Ghost and what we needed to do to have the companionship of the holy ghost in our lives. It was a really good meeting. So Wednesday Elder Day and I followed up with a woman named Teresa. We gave Teresa a Restoration pamphlet when she stopped us and said she wanted to hear our message, so we wrote our information down and got some information on where she stayed and when we could come by and visit. So Wednesday we meet Teresa and she is a nice lady. She has a strong Christian faith and goes to some church and we just discussed some small things about the gospel and asked if we could come back and she said yes, so we are going to go over the restoration with her next time so I'm pretty excited for her. That night Elder Day and I went to the Acquah Family. They are really sweet and have kind of been in active but lately they have been doing better. (We actually have a FHE with them tonight so that's really exciting.) We were able to talk to the children and we talked to sister Acauah. And she wanted to come with us to help translate some time, and that was a really cool experience, to see how invested she is in missionary work.

Thursday was kind of slow day due to our weekly planning, but we did get to meet brother Paa Joe and discuss with him on Tithing and Fasting and we followed up with our commitment to him to not work on Sunday and that the lord would provide for him. He is doing SO well. He has come to church for a little while now and is doing so well, the only thing that is keeping him back is his marriage. Okay so a little explanation on marriage in Ghana. First they do what is called the Knocking. So that is where the families discuss the marriage and agree for them to get married and are okay with everything. Then the second step is the Bride Price. This is where it gets tricky. The Bride's family has to decide some amount of money that the groom has to pay, and it can be very expensive. However for baptism the church has said that the groom has to only put a down payment for the bride price and then they are married in the church's eyes until they can finish the rest of the bride price and traditional marriage. Then the third step is too have the traditional wedding and then they can get sealed in the temple a week following their marriage (Due to Ghana not recognizing temple marriages.) So that is the step they need in order to get baptized is just do the knocking and pay a little bit of the bride price and that's what we are working with for Brother Paa Joe is the knocking and the bride price.

Sister Vida and her husband Theolopus have the same issue with just the bride price so we have been working on that with her as well. (We didn't get to see her this week due to her moving out for a bit due to worrying about the flood but she should be coming back soon with Theolopus. But they are doing well and they both have been coming to church this past weeks so that is really great. Friday was really great because we went out to Happy Home (A little part of our area) and we saw Sister Gabriela and it was really great to see them. Also we talked with Brother Frank (Our Ward Mission Leader, he is a really cool guy in a wheelchair) about mutual and we are starting that up this week so that is really great. We are also really working on getting a ward activity going so that is really cool and I think that will really help the ward. Saturday was really slow and a lot of our appointments fell through so as for Sunday it was really great and church was really good and we had a ward council right after church and we discussed how we can help the ward and it was great. That's about it for the week. :) We are hoping this next to really see some people who have been gone this week but I think it will be a good week.

Bonku


 I'm doing pretty good and Elder Day is a really great guy. I'm learning a lot and I even started to hand wash my clothes because my trainer has a washer but I was thinking I wont't be able to use that all the time or with my next companion so I stated to hand wash. It's hard but well worth it, and I like it. Cleaning is also really relaxing for some reason and I like to clean our apartment because it is bad sometimes. So for food we have Pancakes or I have cereal. Or I scramble some eggs and have some bread. Or we do an egg on toast type of thing except the eggs can't be runny at all just as a precaution. We have vegetable stew with rice and I have had Bonku, Fufu and Jolof, some of the Ghanaian's local favorites.  I want to make french Toast this next week so we shall see how that goes. Sometimes I just have some cereal, although power milk isn't always too nice but I put some sugar in it and it's pretty good. :) My Trainer is making sure that I survive and that's good because cooking is one of my weakest areas. The people are SO amazing. They have such strong testimonies and it's really great to hear them sing because it doesn't matter if your on pitch just if you have passion. I like that. I am trying to stay optimistic and it gets hard sometimes but I just take it one day at a time.

Jollof Rice


Anyways I love you all and I just wanted to leave you all with this last thought that we as missionary's have been striving to focus on and President Stevenson talked about this with us and that is to strive for all people to got to the temple. That as missionaries, is something we are really working on is not just baptisms but really for people to endure to the end and I think that is so cool. I hope we can all go to the temple and make those sacred covenants wit the lord; I love you all. Have a good rest of the week!. Until next week stay awesome. :)

Love,

Elder Harward






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