Fire Festival

Dear America,

The week started off with a bang. Literally several bangs. The Muslim fire festival went from Mondayevening on into Tuesday. We've been hearing a lot of buildup to this one. It was rumored to involve fireworks, guns, black magic (basically Satan worship), fire-walking, beatings, anti-Christian killings, etc. DO NOT WORRY ABOUT ME I WAS PERFECTLY SAFE. So all of the missionaries in Tamale were instructed to stay in our apartments and go into lock down after we finished zone council in the morning. Well it was super super anti-climactic. We heard a few fireworks and gunshots, but as soon as it started to come up to the time of the actual festival, the rain clouds appeared and dumped a nice monsoon on their parade. So the whole event got thrown off for the most part, from what I can tell. The Christians were happy. We've haven't heard too much more about it.

We also went on a double exchange with the zone leaders in our area this week, so we got twice as much work done and that made up for the day that we didn't do anything.

We've been able to teach big boss pastor dad from last week's letter a few more times. There's been a lot of progress. We've moved from mainly teaching his son in front of him and now he's been seriously asking us questions. He's really sensible. He was especially interested when we explained the Book of Mormon to him, and he caught on quickly to what we were saying. We've developed a relaxed amiable friendship with him, which is a far cry from his first few interactions with missionaries. This week we're going to go and lay out the restoration and all about the apostasy and Joseph Smith, but we feel well prepared and we're praying for the best.

Best story of the week involves Elder Austin, an emergency trip to a member's bathroom, a sudden realization, and a handbook that is now two pages shorter than it should be.

Love, Elder Nelson