Good
morning dearest friends and family!
This
has been a great week. We have been very busy! We had 3 exchanges this week and
have 3 upcoming exchanges this coming week. This transfer was adjusted and is
only 4 weeks long, thus causing our schedule to be pretty packed in order for
us to get all of our training done. No problem. Its fun! Exchanges are always
full of learning and gaining new perspectives and friendships. I’ve really
enjoyed getting to know Elder Moyer, Elder Hoskins and Elder Davuke better.
Some
highlights of the week include, first and foremost, traveling to the village I
once mentioned named Anum Apapam. We had 6 upcoming candidates for baptism that
needed to be interviewed. The work in that small branch is growing very
rapidly. I was opportune to worship with that small branch on Sunday and see
the amazing growth that is happening. We had to get up early to catch a tro
tro at 6:00 Am in order to make it to the village on time to set up the chapel.
The branch president for this particularly newly formed branch actually lives
here, in Asamankese, so we traveled with him and then got to set up the chairs,
bring out the pulpit, keyboard sacrament table, speakers, hymnbooks ect… the
church has built a very nice open-pavilion style chapel for us to worship in. I
loved being opportune to come and help and worship with these pioneers! I could
just imagine what this place will someday look like in a few years! They called
a Young Men’s President, a Primary President, and even a branch Mission Leader
yesterday! They are doing so well. The 1st and 2nd
counselors in the branch presidency have been church members for quite some
time and are so thrilled and committed to building the church in their
village.
Lest
I forget to mention once again how wonderful the candidates are that I had the pleasure to meet. They have left behind their old lives and have fully
embraced this new culture and lifestyle. I have observed that most of them
experienced their major “change of heart” months or even years ago, and it
seems that the Lord has just been waiting to lead them and bless them with His
full and restored gospel. Its only a matter of finding them!
I
also enjoyed my exchange with Elder Moyer. He has been in his area for nearly 7
½ months now and needed some help finding. He has felt frustrated at times
because he has been seeing the same houses and contacting the same people for
such a long time, so I tried my very best to take the lead that afternoon as we
went through his area to contact. I must admit, it was one very adventurous
experience! Long story short, we ended up in the middle of a forest trying to
follow a pathway which we were told led to a local neighborhood, and then we
followed an even more dense pathway trying to take the shortest road OUT of the
dark and dangerous forest. Elder Moyer he expressed his fear of snakes and spiders and
dangerous animals. haha He took our adventure as a fun experience, but he was quite
concerned I must say. At one point a TON of locusts started screaming and that
WAS pretty freaky because of how incredibly loud they were compared to the
complete silence we were enjoying seconds before. I’ll admit, I was a bit worried
we maybe had wandered into some witch doctor// ju ju man’s shrine or something…
haha but all was well.
After
passing through that scary part of the forest, we came to a beautiful stretch
full of Butterflies! And as soon as we saw those butterflies, we knew we were
in the right place. “Follow the butterflies!” we both thought. (that’s a Ron
Weasley quote btw). We actually did find some splendid people throughout that
experience. We met a part member family whose mother/ grandmother is a member.
She was so happy and welcoming to us even though she spoke nearly zero English.
She was cradling her infant daughter of 3 months old and her 5 and 8 year old
children couldn’t get enough of white man jokes and white man trying to speak
twi. I can’t wait to see how she progresses as soon as they are able to bring a
member to visit her! And in case you are still wondering whether our adventure
was led by the spirit or by my curiosity, we met 2 former investigators who are
very eager for us to come back, one eager potential investigator and one less
active woman who came to church on Sunday because of our visit. I hope Im not
just making excuses or justifying my yearnings to go on fun forest adventures,
this was real missionary work! (and no African story is complete without seeing
some anciently old grandmother whose clothes usually do not cover her top
section…gotta love it!)
My
companion passed his one year mark this weekend. We tried to celebrate by going
to a “restaurant” Saturday evening at 8:00. It was actually a gas station that
sold fried rice and was apparently out of rice and didn’t tell us but rather
made us wait an entire hour while they cooked it and we were forced to wait. It
tasted fine which was nice! We had to try and plan outside in the dark while we
waited so at least it wasn’t a complete waste of time…
Sunday
was my companion’s birthday. His mother sent some party-packed packages
including streamers, birthday banners, balloons, pin the tail on the donkey, a
piñata, party favors and much much more! My companion and I even made some
sweet carmeled (sugar coated) popcorn, elder moyer made a cake and we had a lot
of fun coming up with games to play that evening. It was a real missionary
party equipped with Mo-Tab and scripture study! Haha
Today
we are ALSO celebrating the death (meaning hes reached the end of his mission service) of Elder Davuke as this is his last P-day as
a missionary. As an islander, we decided we needed to celebrate by having a pig
roast! So this afternoon we are going out to the branch president’s farm and
going to try and butcher and roast a pig! Shoot! We have been looking forward
to this for a while now and are pretty excited :)
Yes,
yes, we have been having a lot of fun, but don’t worry we are still doing
missionary work :) The work in our area has been normal this week. We are
trying very hard to become better at opening our mouths. That is the first step
in finding more people to teach, and believe it or not, that’s our biggest
struggle here. We usually have a few people to teach most days, but the other 9
hours of the day are quite unsure for us. Don’t worry though, we will find them
:)
I
was blown away by some insights I recently had while studying The Pearl of
Great Price. I am so grateful to have living prophets and the blessing it is to
have so much more revealed scripture to study. We are so blessed as Latter Day
Saints!
till next week!
Love,
Elder Fairwell
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