It's a Boy!

Dear America,

I have a son. His name is Elder Duaryenneh and he's from Monrovia, Liberia. He's awesome. I've enjoyed being with him so much already. As soon as I walked into the mission home and sat down to wait for President Cosgrave to announce the companionships, I thought, "I would like to train that one." As President read his name and began to announce who his companion would be, I found myself already moving because I knew that it would be me. It was sweet.

Elder Duaryenneh was at the conference when Elder Bednar came to re-open Liberia. His branch there has over 750 members in it. They literally have to hold two sacrament meetings for the same branch. The church is exploding so quickly there. He was the branch mission leader before he came, so he has a lot of experience working with missionaries. He's been a member for one year, four months, and eleven days. He's really powerful, a hard worker, and he came into the mission field pre-trained. His family consists of staunch members of differing churches, and they strongly opposed his coming on his mission. His father was a polygamist before he died. A lot of the tribalists practice polygamy. He worked hard to get money to support himself on his mission. He's doctrinally sound. All that's left for me to help with is the finer technicalities of missionary work. I've been pushing him hard the last few days. He's responding wonderfully. We're good friends -- it's strange how the gospel can move you across oceans and continents in order to meet a friend from Liberia or even from Utah.

Elder Duaryenneh is a nurse. He's taken my blood pressure and re-taught me how to take his. It's been a while since anat and phys:P

On a different topic, we've been meeting with a man named Prince Dankwah for a while now -- he was just baptized and confirmed last week. One interesting circumstance has to do with Prince's father. He goes to farm every day, but 'coincedentally' on the days we come will find himself at home. Every day -- apart from the days we come -- he is able to go. But his motorcycle will break or it will rain in the morning or he will have something that he needs to stay for. I don't know if he's noticed it yet, but I definitely have. We've taken it to be divine intervention and we've started to teach him. He used to be a teacher, so he speaks really good English. The first time we were able to teach him, he got a phone call halfway through "The Gospel Blesses Families" informing him that his brother had died in a car accident. What the hey. That was Elder Duaryenneh's second lesson ever. Needless to say, we weren't able to finish the lesson. We've been checking up on them and introducing the Plan of Salvation little by little, but I still don't know what will come of all this. We'll see.

That's my week. Have a great week there at home. The fruit that you see in the pictures is what Elder Duaryenneh calls sasa. It's amazing. It's like having a fruit cocktail. The more you eat it, the more you like it. Which kind of makes me concerned.

Elder Nelson

Father's Day

I've been doing a pretty crappy job of saying happy birthday or recognizing holidays, so you'll have to apologize to everyone for me. I really do remember........just not on Monday while I'm emailing. Sorry. But have a great day. And week. And year. All of the fathers that I've had have been amazing. And I didn't realize how good they were until after I left them. You're a really solid person. When you're not around I say that you're the smartest person I've ever met. And Elder Antwi, my father on mission, also has a good head on his shoulders. All of my fathers are just self-aware in general. And now I'm going to have a son on my mission and be a father too. I'm glad that I'm so much like you are. There are worse options.

Haha love
Elder Nelson

Sister Wood

Hi Karie

I found out about a month ago it was his birthday and I did tell him I would bake a cake to celebrate. He is one of my favourite missionaries .  We discovered it also was the birthday of Sister Nyembe on the same day, and another girl from their branch.  So we are having a combined celebration.  

I have  arrange with Elder Khumalo  to have the celebration in the morning for breakfast so we don't break your family tradition and hopefully he will get a surprise. 

Last week we did inspections of all the apartments in the Techiman, and Sunyani districts. We were incredibly surprise to find the Dwumoh apartment, where Elder Nelson is, was the cleanest by far of the seven apartments.  I did bake a banana cake for them as a prize.

We are loving  our mission.  The people of Ghana are mostly very friendly, devout  and humble.  We both wanted to try and help others, and to serve hands on where we could.  That has certainly been the case for my husband.  We  also go out to teaching appointments with the the young missionaries and we have loved those experiences.  I am teaching two temple preparation classes and also will start helping people with family history. In August a literacy program is being instigated and I am to part of that. 

Ghana is truly a third world.  We have been to China and traveled some distance there, also through Thailand and those places never prepared us for what is here. I I was shocked to see the squalor, poverty, filth, pollution of garbage everywhere, and the extremely hard lives of many people.  I forgot to add the heat and the hideous red dust that coats everything and is everywhere!  We am adjusting to it all. 

I hope you are enjoying being the Primary President. I have been twice in that calling.  Children are the most rewarding to teach.

God bless you and Brother Nelson for raising such an amazing son. He is so very lovely and respectful to the saints here and they love him as we do.   I wish you could see him playing the organ and singing on Sunday's as he plays. He is a delight. He comes every week to our temple prep class and has been blessed with the gift to explain things at the level of the hearer.  He has an amazing spirit and wears the mantle of a missionary one hundred percent. 

Arohanui  

Sister Wood

Birthday #1

Dear America,

It was a sweet week for me. My birthday was on Wednesday. I wasn't expecting too much to happen, but as soon as I got up and stepped out of my room I had several large buckets of water poured on top of me by the other missionaries in the apartment. At 9:00, all of the other missionaries in the zone came over to the Dwumoh chapel for a surprise birthday party. I had water dumped on me again, then we all had cake for breakfast. Sister Wood (the senior couple) made the cake and apparently found out that it's a tradition in my family to eat it for breakfast. A lot of people had birthdays on the same day -- one sister missionary, two members from Dwumoh, and me. There were also two girls with birthdays on Saturday that joined us for the celebration.

In the evening, we picked up the entire Tamale zone at the tro station and made sure that they all got to the apartments that they were supposed to be in. They were staying the night in preparation for the zone conference the next day. It was fun to have them over.

Well, transfer news has arrived. Elder Khumalo is leaving to Kumasi. I'll be staying in Dwumoh and training a new missionary. Dwumoh is a good place. I'm glad that I'll be staying here a while longer. President Cosgrave told me that there are two requirements to be a trainer: exact obedience and unconditional love for the elder I train.

Prince Dankwah was baptized on Saturday. He and his friend have both decided to join the church recently. He was confirmed on Elder Khumalo's last Sunday here. Also, on Sunday Ofosu Gyarko played the keyboard for the first time in Sacrament meeting. I've been teaching him for about eight weeks on and off now. He played "Come, Ye Children of the Lord" from the simplified hymnbook as the opening hymn while I conducted the music. He did a really good job. Then he led the music while I played for the rest of the meeting.

We had two FMs in a row on Sunday, which is the first time that's happened to either of us in Techiman. People know that Elder Khumalo likes food, and they're doing their best to wish him goodbye. He calls himself "Khumalo baku p3", which is pretty much saying "the one and only Khumalo". It's caught on and now everyone calls him that. The branch is going to miss him. He was a large contributor to its development. It'll be hard to replace him.

Love,

Elder Nelson

Apartment Inspections

Dear America,

Well I'll just start right from the beginning of the week. On Monday we had a lot of activities. We went in the morning to play football on a dirt pitch in Krobo. All of the elders in the zone were there and the branches were invited as well, but only a few people showed up so it ended up being mostly missionaries. Later in the afternoon we had a district activity of making and eating fufu with groundnut soup. It turned into a zone activity because everyone was already there anyways. The food was amazing. It was the best cassava/yam fufu that I've ever eaten. And the groundnut soup was perfect. Elder Lesh and I got assigned to gather the hardware to prepare the food. We also gave the lesson for the zone FHE that happened in the evening.

Last week my dad encouraged me to write down some of the things that I'll 'never forget' because I'll probably forget them. So I've started trying to write down some basic things that seem insignificant or that I wouldn't usually think to write. Today I'll tell you about the roadside shops. First of all, there are a ton of them. They're all in metal box containers that are about fifteen feet by fifteen feet. Some of the bigger shops have two boxes put together. But if you want to start a business in Ghana, it's an unwritten rule that you have to choose in between hairdressing, being a seamstress, selling cheap rice, or selling small household goods. That's it. There are no other areas of enrepreneurship. About 85% of all shops here do one of those things. In their small metal box.

The senior couple came to do apartment inspections this week. They were super impressed by how clean our apartment was and said that it was the best apartment in all of Sunyani and Techiman by a long ways. They were blown away by how "immaculate" (to quote their frequent use of the word) it was. Which is amazing because they're kind of neat freaks. A lot. So thanks to Elder Prior for being a cleaning machine. I've never been praised for cleanliness, so it was kind of disconcerting for me.

I heard a songbird for the first time this week. I had never realized what I was missing. I thought that the chirp and chatter of the others was a song. But now I know.

Sisters don't get to wear pants here. Too dangerous and nobody will take them seriously.

Elder Nelson

Branch Council

Dear America,

Sorry for the short letters the past few weeks. That means that nothing went terribly wrong that I had to write home about.

On Saturday we had the first branch council of the year. It was powerful. Everyone came in full force. We established some important things like presidency meetings, home and visiting teaching, member-missionary work, and effective teaching. I was really pleased. They planned a branch temple trip and I guess the spirit of temple work was there because I got really excited while they talked about it. They'll stay in Accra at the temple for five consecutive nights while they attend the temple in the day. I miss temple trips! I was jealous. While we were at the council, our branch president told his own story to emphasize on member missionary work. He said that the first time he met the missionaries he invited them in and started to chat with them. He told them what he knew about religion and listened to their message. As the taught, he got angry with what they were saying. He told them to get out of his house. A little while later, one of his friends started to talk about religion with him. He was interested and one day his friend brought the missionaries over to meet with the two of them. They were the very same missionaries. When Tony saw them, he was shocked. But this time he listened a little more. He ended up taking the discussions and being baptized and now he's the branch president. The second counselor gave a contrasting story. When he first saw the missionaries, he was Catholic. He stopped them and asked them what they were doing. He said, "I want to come to your church!" He did. He took the discussions and got baptized. Both of them are so different but they're both really dedicated to the church. Also on Saturday we helped Elder Wood fix up a trycicle for a disabled man.

Every Sunday after church, Hannah Osei--who recently got baptized and called as the second counselor in the Relief Society--stays behind to help us make some stew or something for lunch and eats with us before she goes home. It's one of my favorite parts of Sunday.

Elder Nelson