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