Christmas in Ghana

"Ye who do God's work receive God's pay"

Dear America,

It's getting close to Christmas. We've gotten free meals several times this week, including the ward party on Friday and two (huge) meals on Sunday evening. This week's fun foods include goat intestine at the bishop's house. It's good meat, with a nice flavor. I enjoyed it. But it looks like and has the surface texture of a towel. In fact, the Fante call it "towel". It's all bumpy like that. I also got to have part of a goat heart at the ward party, which wasn't too bad. I'm getting used to eating anything without question. Probably the hardest one this week was the fish head that was looking back at me while I ate it. And it was big. And it was good, if not creepy. I can honestly say that it tasted better than the rest of the fish. There are less little bones to chew.

Starting on that great note, I'm enjoying myself. Being a missionary isn't easy, but it is divine. I've really seen the Lord helping us this week. It reminds me that "Ye who do God's work receive God's pay". I've been using strength all week that is not my own. It's fun to work hard, even though the blessings I've been seeing aren't really direct results of my work. I try really hard to do my best, and something amazing happens that I have no responsibility for. So it makes my work feel useless but my faith all the more important.

Investigators here suck at progressing. The ones that are moving towards baptism come to us already prepared. Let me tell you a little about Kwasi, a man that we met with just this morning. He had avoided and avoided the missionaries while he lived in Accra. All of his family is SDA (I strongly strongly dislike this church). He kind of became less active SDA when he moved to Kumasi and his wife let the missionaries into the house. He came home to them teaching her. He was interested, and became a powerful investigator. He's smart and asks very good questions. Like questions that a long-time church member still wonders about. This morning, we explained about the Abrahamic covenant, patriarchal blessings, and that LDS doesn't stand for the Church of America. Which is something that is hard, because it pretty much is. Haha I'm joking. But he wants to learn everything about the church that he can before he joins because when his family finds out, they're going to attack him for it. And he wants to be able to defend himself and teach them. They already want their oldest son to serve a mission. He is about 16 years old.

A lot of investigators showed up at the ward party (where I ate the goat heart). Everyone loves a good party at the end of the year here, even though a lot of people don't actually celebrate Christmas (refer to where I said I dislike the SDA church). So we were able to get the ball of member friendshipping rolling. Happy day. I really enjoy working with young men, because I feel like I understand them a little better.

Thanks to everyone for their emails! You're all doing great, including Pace for giving the talk on Sunday.

Best Christmas wishes,

Elder Nelson

Read. Your. Scriptures. Every. Day.

I'm going to apologize right from the beginning because I won't be able to write a lot this week. I've spent a lot of my time sending Christmas letters home. So be looking for that in a couple of weeks.

What can I write about really quickly? I had the opportunity to give a talk on Sunday. They assigned us to speak on Christmas in relation to missionary week, so Elder Antwi talked about John the Baptist as a missionary and I talked about the wise men and how we can help others come unto Christ. It went decently. It's interesting to go to church because not everyone here is as sound in the gospel as I have been raised. There are some doctrinal misunderstandings that would never happen in the US. If anything, it's just helped me have a more solid testimony of basic doctrines.

Read. Your. Scriptures. Every. Day. Book of Mormon, specifically. It's painfully easy to tell who does and who doesn't. If you do, you're a solid, humble person who is not easily swayed by every wind of doctrine. If you don't, you often don't even know when you're a really stupid, arrogant fool. So do it. Start it when you're a teenager. I want personal letters from every member of my family telling me that they've had personal scripture study every day this week.

So that's all I can write for now, but thanks for the letters. This week has been great for me. Elder Antwi made me the temporary senior companion this week. So that was interesting. And we didn't get a lot done because we had a lot of meetings in Bantama and Offinso. But he's really preparing me for life beyond training. I'm really grateful for him.

Love,

Elder Nelson

P.S. One of the pictures is of the sketchiest bridges I've ever walked across. Ever.

Hammer Time

Dear America,

They call it "hammer time" here in Ghana. The (relatively) cold, (relatively) dry season. For me that pretty much means that it's slightly less hot and wet. A great dusty haze has come across the valley. Elder Antwi refers to it as African snow. The weather will be this way for three months.

(From Wikipedia The Harmattan is a cold-dry^[1] and dusty trade wind, blowing over the West African subcontinent. This northeasterly wind blows from the Sahara Desert into the Gulf of Guinea between the end of November and the middle of March (winter).^[2] The name comes from or is related to an Akan cognate.^[3]

The Harmattan blows during the dry season, which occurs during the lowest-sun months, when the subtropical ridge of high pressure stays over the central Sahara Desert and when the low-pressure Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) stays over the Gulf of Guinea. On its passage over the Sahara, it picks up fine dust and sand particles (between 0.5 and 10 microns).)

This transfer, Elder Antwi and I will take charge of the entire Kronum area because we simply do not have enough missionaries to keep two sets here. So we'll have plenty of work to do. This week I've really made a special effort in discerning the needs of our investigators/ ward members. The Holy Ghost is a special resource available to missionaries to discern others' thoughts when needed, like Ammon did. I saw it really guide us this week. The sword of the spirit is on of the most useful tools any of us has.

I finally found baking powder here, so I made cobbler. It was pineapple banana cobbler because that is what we had. The pineapple made it super sweet. Baking powder is hard to come by, so I bought a big tin to use for my whole mission. I don't know how much I'll actually use it, but I didn't want to have to search for it again.

There's always music on the streets here. I think it's pretty neat. And you can almost always see a child dancing to the music. They love to show off their skills. You'll find big groups of them dancing on the street. But it's really funny how they don't care and they just want to show the whole world.

Missionary work here is a lot different than it is in the States. Sometimes I just watch "The District" (missionary training videos) and laugh and laugh because it's so inaccurate. As I think about it, though, missionary work represents in a lot of ways our mortal life here. Alma 34:32 and D&C 4:2 are directly related. With regards to the rest of our life, missionary service is very short. It is the time given to us to prepare ourselves and to perform our labors. Jeffery R. Holland said that there is not one aspect of his life that has not been affected by his service as a full-time missionary. Just like mortality, it is a time of great testing and great reward. Our dedication on a mission cannot be replaced later in life without tremendous effort.

This week I learned not to take doxy on fast Sunday. Seriously. The only thing worse than the malaria medication is malaria.

Sorry my emails haven't been super super super long. I'm using all the time I can. I'm glad to hear about each member of the family every once in a while. Your letters have been great.

Love,

Elder Nelson

Caution on Mailing Packages

Dear Parents of Missionaries;

Sending boxes or envelopes (other than the one included in this email) results in Customs charges that are prohibitively expensive. Your missionary may not be able to afford the customs fees, which can range as high as two weeks of a missionaries subsistence.

Many times these packages sit for weeks while the missionary saves up a few extra Cedi’s to pay for them. In addition customs opens every single package that they quarantine, and any wrapped packages inside as well.

The preferred packages are flat rate padded white USPS plastic padded envelopes that you can stuff as full as you can for a flat rate and the bonus…. they are not stopped and opened in customs and charged horrendous fees, (and your missionary gets ALL the goodies immediately).

Click on the following link, or copy this link to your browser address bar and you will see exactly how to get these envelopes. Please click on the attached picture as well.

https://store.usps.com/store/browse/uspsProductDetailMultiSkuDropDown.jsp?productId=P_EP14PE&categoryId=mailing-envelopes

Thank you for sending us your Missionaries!

Elder Halladay

Financial Secretary

Ghana Kumasi Mission

1802429-FIN@ldschurch.org

michael@mhalladay.com

0243-500-262