Welcome February!

Whoop
Dear people of the world,

It HAS been another week indeed and what a glorious one at that. Some things to complain about and highlight from this week:

We had a health class/ clinic this week in which we invited the Canadian Missionary Doctor for the Africa West area to come and put on a small training/ tutorial to help people learn better health practices regarding local diseases ect. it involved mostly common diseases such as Diabetes and how to deal with it, High Blood Pressure, healthy diets and exercise, ebola prevention, malaria treatment, and some other things which i cant remember off the top of my head... I enjoyed helping with the screening wich included weighing and measuring people to calculate their bmi. africans arent shy about their weight or bodies at all! I just got the biggest kick out of people as i told them their weight. it would go something along the lines of "well, you are 5' 4" and 210 lbs..." to which they would reply "so, what does it mean?" hah that put us in a bit of an awkward situation...
"well, it means youre overweight and recognized as obese." their blank expression was priceless btw...
"so what should i do?" "You need to start jogging and exercising, eat more vegetables and fruits, and eat less fufu & Banku"

on the other hand, we also had so many pathetically slim people who also ask the same questions to which most missionaries replied, "you can enjoy all the fufu and banku you want!" ohhhh it was joyous. I hope the list of people and their phone numbers may prove helpful this week as we follow up to see who could be interested in now learning the gospel!

btw, this keyboard has key labels in the wrong spots/ keys in the wrong spot so sometimes i just cant figure out how to enter a character! sorry!

A complaint- for some reason Ghana has been turning the power off a lot. recently, most places are on a 24hr off/ 12 hr on cycle. its brutal in the nights for those apartments that cant get a good breeze. Thankfully, our apartment has nice ventilation so we still sleep without fans. Although when i go on exchanges to other apartments it sure makes for a  brutal night. I sometimes wonder how we did it in Liberia without fans at night during the dry season... oh yeah, we didnt sleep then either! haha so this comment is also an expression of gratitude for being in Ghana. I LOVE FANS!

Blessing- Elder Bowering and I (my buddy from Liberia) went on our first exchange together this week. MAN! it was such a blast. we worked Libeian style, taught 12 lessons and even worked in there lunch with some fufu! too easy! He also introduces me to his lower body workout that morning which FINISHED me. i cant remember the last time i did any real major lower body exercise beyond occasional lunges and squats. MAN, i tell you, my butt and hamstrings were so sore on saturday that i felt pain just to sit down on our small wooden stools in lessons. it was some wonderful pain! haha anyways, i love elder bowering and the chance we had to get together and remember some great times in LIB.

I also experimented and created some wickedly nice caramel popcorn this week to celebrate 3 elders birthdays in my apartment. I used sugar and water to create a caramel- use what you have! too easy!it was impressive. kudos to me.

I also got a bit of food poisoning, dont worry, i got it out of me within a few painful hours of bowel movements. nbd. Oh, and on a separate occasion, monday i found a 1 inch NAIL in my food a member gave us (she sells food and gave us a free take away sample). uhhh... wut... just... uhh... no.. uh.. stop.... no..  thats it for eating out!!!

welp, thats all i got for this week. Dont worry, we have some wonderful experiences coming up for next week. Come on, Im serving in the greatest part of missionary work in the world, of course good things are going to come this week! Whoop!

Love, Elder Fairwell