Life Is Good!

Dear Family and Friends, 

Wow, what a wonderful week of fantastic experiences. This coming week will also be very exciting! We have a zone conference tomorrow morning in Accra so this afternoon we will squeeze into a “tro tro” (the name for old vans/ small busses) and travel into town. Its about a 2 or 3 hour drive. The roads are so terrible and destroyed that it takes about 3 times the time it should. At least all the bumps and potholes allow for us to loosen out our bodies and turn into jelly fish from all the shaking! Cant complain. At least we’re not walking :) Thursday my companion and I are planning a contacting activity where the 8 of us in our district will make some type of choir and sing/ contact people In one of our areas. Should be interesting! And Sunday, Elder Legg and I will be attempting to sing a special musical number in sacrament meeting… who knows what else will happen! :) 

I went on an exchange with Elder Chatterley this week, wow! It was such a rewarding experience! Elder Chatterley is truly a gentle hearted man with a lot of love packed into that big frame of his. He is my zone leader. He and I were opportune to visit the nearby village which they proselyte in, Anum Apapam. It is a village that has recently been blessed with the formation of a new branch just last month. I cannot begin to describe what a treat it is for those missionaries who proselyte there! As we walked through the town, people were smiling and greeting us from afar, everyone was so genuine and kind to us. I felt so welcomed and  the missionary work is just booming in that village. In fact, because we loose proselyting time traveling there, in order to teach all the people interested, we tell everyone interested to come to US and we make a stakeout at the chapel. We teach each investigator as they come, or all of them at once depending on their schedules. On Friday we ended up visiting a few individuals and then taught a lesson at 4:00 with 7 investigators present. Cool? I think yes!? And so many of them are actually progressing and coming to church! It is a very small branch, but nearly 10-15 investigators come each week. Our only trouble is communicating with them as most only speak twi, but with the help of some amazing new converts to translate, we get our message across.

There were two people I was there to interview for baptism. One was a very intelligent and educated young man, probably about 18 years old i think. I have not met with someone so receptive and able to absorb so much doctrine in a while! Getting to know him was a real treat. He was baptized by his friend who was baptized and ordained to the Priesthood only last week. Can you imagine how sweet it is for me to witness these brothers bringing each other into the church and literally BUILD the foundation of zion there in that small village? It was so sweet!

Getting to visit with the other candidate was probably one of the highlights of my mission. He is a middle aged man, single, and who has a past of drinking and all types of worldly entertainment. He knew the gospel and missionary teachings so well and only began studying with the missionaries a month ago, I was shocked at his level of knowledge! I will forever remember him expressing to me his testimony and his experience with the Spirit prompting him to turn his life around. It was one of those moments where I said to myself, "this is why Im on a mission". I literally saw a light beaming from his eyes at the close of our meeting. I know that maybe it was just the reflection of the lights above us, but I felt and saw at that moment what the "Light of Christ" truly means. I felt the Lords words run through me that every honest seeker of truth will be led to the true gospel of Jesus Christ by that Light. I know that there are more people out there who are searching, i just need to keep my eyes out for them! 

We also have a young boy who is probably my favorite investigator of all time (not really, I don’t have favorites, but he is simply awesome!). He is 13 yrs old, the cousin to a member and has been coming to church for about 5 weeks now. We finally recognized him as an investigator and began teaching him, he is preparing to be baptized on the 27^th of this month. What has inspired me the most is that this young boy has such a burning desire to know more and be more like Christ. He decided to follow his cousin to church by himself, he walks about a mile to the chapel on Sundays for meetings and also during the midweek branch activity which we hold on Wednesday, and he also came by himself this past Saturday to help clean the chapel and to witness a baptism. He wears his only pair of jeans and button shirt on Sunday which he has obviously spent a lot of time washing to be as clean as possible. He is not quite fluent in English, but he listens so keenly and intently whenever we teach him. He tries to repeat what we teach him to the translator before the translator is able to interpret for him, it is so cool! I feel so privileged to be this young boys role model as he obviously looks up to us missionaries. I remember when I was his age and saw the missionaries as such Christ like figures, time really does fly!  

This boy has also led us to teaching his Aunt, whom he lives with, who is also desirous to join the church but has been intimidated by the English we speak. Her son (a member) translates for us as we teach her. This too is such a sweet experience for me. The son is literally teaching the gospel to his own mother and taking her by the hand almost literally, and leading her to the strait and narrow path.  We missionaries just show up and help the son teach. We talk, he interprets, and we sit back and marvel at the opportunity we have to witness the conversion of this family.  

The week has had some sweet experiences to die for, but the majority of the time we spend striving to find those the Lord has prepared for us. I find myself missing my experience in Liberia where it seems like we spent all of our time teaching. The extra few hours in the evening that we proselyte here minus the larger teaching pool we had in Liberia leads to us spending a lot more time finding and less time teaching as I was so accustomed to. I believe that the church has simply been here in Asamankese for a while and that is why it is not booming as fast. Anum Apapam is booming faster than any place I have ever seen, thus I don’t believe Ghana is much different that Liberia other than the fact that the church has been a bit more established here. I love referring to the temple that is in Accra which most people seem to know of or have heard of. I cant wait to also see those recent converts go to the temple to perform baptisms here, as in Liberia they weren’t chance to travel all the way to Ghana to do that. Having a temple literally brings in so many blessings to this country!  

We have had our fair share of run in’s with drunkards this week. I particularly enjoy seeing the locals chase off people who begin to beg us relentlessly for money and such. Whenever a drunkard persist to hold onto us or refuse to let us leave, a nearby older woman will come and, if necessary, beat him off of us. I’ve only seen that once. Its like a mother coming to chase the cat out of the kitchen or something. Haha Usually a few stern words in twi with a threatening look from the old woman is enough to cause the beggar to leave us alone. I get a good laugh out of it :) 

I had an epiphany this week! If I had to label the most annoying thing about being in west Africa, it is probably being the only white person in town. Everywhere I go, I get stares, I get more expensive prices for everything, and most annoyingly, children and people everywhere chant “Obronie Obronie Obronie” which translates to “white man, white man, white man!”. Thank you, yes, I am white thanks for reminiding me, I almost forgot. Oh, yes, I heard you the first time, hello to you too! Oh, you’re still chanting? Sheesh! I find it most annoying when it comes from adults. Do you not have anything else more intelligent to say rather than calling me white man all day long? Anyways, this is probably one of the biggest things that gets me grumpy throughout the day. But this week, as I was yet again repenting from always complaining about it, I realized that maybe this is the Lord’s way of announcing our presence as missionaries everywhere we go! The fathers and mothers of those children no doubt hear the chants of their children and are alerted that we are coming through. How brilliant is that?! Literally, EVERYWHERE we go, people within earshot will be alerted that missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ are coming through, anyone interested? We’re here to teach anyone with even the slightest bit of desire to learn more about us! So now, rather than becoming annoyed, I get to think of these children helping the work of salvation. After all, they are little children alive in Christ, they’re more perfect than me!

Well, it sure is a blessing to be a missionary at this special time. I love being out here! I would like to wish my mom a happy early birthday! I love you all, miss you and cant wait to get back to work! After all, this is the greatest and most rewarding work on earth!

 

Till next week, Love, 

Elder Fairwell