Teach Repentence

Dear America,

In response to your questions: Ask and ye shall receive, I guess. I'm a zone leader. That was the emergency transfer. So if you notice that my emails drop drastically in length, it's because I have to submit a lot of information to the mission during my emailing time. Sorry about that. 

This week has been smooth. Things really clicked in our companionship this week. Not that they didn't before, but now I feel like we're working exceptionally well together. On Wednesday we attended a worldwide missionary broadcast (I expect you'll hear about this from all the other missionaries out there, too), where the satellite receiver wasn't working so I got to spend an hour trying to fix that. The entire Ghana Kumasi Mission was having problems. But it ended up working, and we were in time to hear some pretty big changes in missionary work. It's exciting because the missionary department is simplifying a lot right now and giving us more ability to focus our efforts on what's important. 

The anthem of missionary work is currently "Teach Repentance and Baptize Converts". I found an applicable scripture while perusing in D&C 6:9, which says to "Say nothing but repentance unto this generation; keep my commandments, and assist to bring forth my work, according to my commandments, and you shall be blessed." I love being a missionary at this time, and one of the reasons is our focus on repentance. Repentance is such an essential part of the gospel--whether you are preparing for baptism, preparing for the temple, preparing for the celestial kingdom, preparing for the second coming, whatever. If everyone was good at repenting, the world would be an entirely different place. 

Sorry for the short email this week...... but at least now you know the reason why.

Mountains

Dear America,

Well from what I can tell, Tamale is doing fine without me. One of the investigators that we were really working with just before I left got baptized this Saturday. That was great to hear about. Elder Maddox was left in a threesome with the other missionaries in the apartment, but the real transfers happened this week and that all got sorted out. I haven't seen any lions, but I have seen a rhinoceros beetle. He was fat and built like a tank. My companion is Elder Nuamah, a Ghanaian who comes from Takoradi. Where Elder Neville used to be. Sorry I haven't taken any pictures of the new apartment yet. I'll try to remember this week. Right now I'm practicing how to be a good learner. Elder Nuamah is the first companion that I've had in a while who feels like a senior companion to me. I'm learning a lot from him. The food down here is much cheaper, especially fruits and vegetables, because things grow here. Nkawkaw is fairly populated, but the city isn't as nice as Tamale. The people in the north are more sensible, so their cities are slightly closer to developed. But here you still have a strong influence from the Ashanti tribe, so everything is pretty meh when it comes to community improvement. Haha if you want me to write in an African accent then I can try. But I'll have to spend some time thinking about how to do it first. It's actually weird because I'm having an increasingly difficult time distinguishing accents and skin colors. 

One thing that I love about Nkawkaw is the mountains. Before I left for Nashville, Dad told me that I would miss the mountains. He's right. The first day I came, I just kept looking at the mountains and smiling as we were proselyting. It's great. I didn't know if there were any actual mountains in Ghana before I came here--I suspected that they were just hills. But I'm happy to report that they are real mountains. Extremely small ones, granted, but they still fall under the definition of mountains.

I'm back in the land of Twi. When I bore my testimony in Sacrament meeting for the first time here, I told them that the little Twi I had before had fallen out of my pocket and gotten lost in Tamale. They all laughed because it's true. Almost nobody uses Twi in Tamale, so I got used to speaking English and my Twi dwindled. But now that I'm back, I'm kicking things into gear and learning Twi with vigor. When I arrived in Ghana, it was a little bit overwhelming and then I moved to Techiman and Tamale where people don't use it as much. But now I think the conditions are right for me to learn more quickly.

I didn't even remember that you had videos of my memory lapse. Haha makes sense.

Have a cool week!

Love, Elder Nelson

Emergency Transfer

Dear America,

I was supposed to email this from Tamale, but some interesting developments have occurred this week. President Cosgrave came to do interviews on Wednesday night. That was convenient because I was planning on going on an exchange with another companionship that night so we could meet up for the interviews and exchange companions. Unfortunately, President told me to cancel the exchange because I would be packing that night to leave with him to the Konongo zone the next morning. So I did and now I'm here in Nkawkaw 2.1. Some rearrangements needed to be made in the mission and I'm the hole-plugger, as Dad likes to call it. Nkawkaw (pronounced in-cocoa) is all the way down past Kumasi in the Eastern Region of Ghana. So literally on the exact opposite end of the mission than Tamale. I've left the scorching, arid flatlands of the north for the misty, jungle-carpeted mountains of the east. Talk about climate change.

Everything about the transition has gone exceptionally smoothly but I regret that I had no chance to say goodbye to my friends in Tamale. That's going to be rough for them. The branch here in Nkawkaw is much bigger and stronger. Lots of people were at chapel cleaning on Saturday and church on Sunday was well organized. It's a lot different than my last two areas. Techiman and Tamale are struggling to keep branches alive, but here the church has old, solid members. I guess I'll have to adapt to a different style of missionary work.

One thing that has returned is crappy internet cafes. Yay. It took forever just for the page to load. I forgot how much a slow connection can suck the time that I would otherwise be typing. Other than unnecessary stress from bad computers, life is going pretty great for me. Enjoy the week!

Love, Elder Nelson

Stella

Dear America,

This week was a 'Stella' week. It was long. It was weird at times. But it was Stella. I say this based on an extremely frustrating woman that we met while we were out knocking on gates. She was obviously a pastoress married to a pastor teaching her children to be pastors. Which I have no problem with. I like teaching educated people. She was just so. prideful. After initially telling us that she was too busy to even talk, she spent half an hour trying to argue and insisting that she wanted to be taught. She spent a long time telling us to stop worshiping the devil and accept Jesus and stop deceiving people. We were able to slip in a few words and asked her just to pray and ask God about it. She refused to ask, saying that she didn't "want to waste His time asking stupid questions." At one point in the lesson we pulled out a copy of the Book of Mormon and she told us to leave. I'm pretty sure I heard the words, "A Bible! A Bible! We have a Bible!" Some people are really deceived by Satan. I'm sure she thinks the same thing about us. She told us so. That was Stella.

We had the opportunity to finally sit down with a man and his wife that we've been waiting to teach. We weren't sure where to start with them, but as we started teaching about the Plan of Salvation he got a deep look on his face and asked us about Adam and Eve. He said that the story never really made sense to him and he wanted to know why God would let things work out that way. There seem to be some major contradictions. It was really neat because he has been wondering deeply about it for so long and the answer is within his grasp (now that he has the Book of Mormon). I gave him an assignment to read 2 Nephi 2 and find his answer. He said he has a lot of deep questions like that and I'm excited for the restored gospel to start answering them.

I had a personal triumph this week. One family got offended a few weeks ago at church. They stopped coming and said they would never attend Vitin Branch again. We've been meeting them and trying to smooth things over. They finally came back to church on Sunday, which was a big deal for us. It was great to see some fruits of our labor.

Love,

Elder Nelson

2017

Dear America,

I'm glad my talk went successfully last week. (The bishop had the parents of missionaries in our ward give a 5 min. report on their son or daughter) Thanks for doing that for me. I can't say I'm grateful for Porter's relative failure, but at least I can still show my face (and my scores) in public (Porter scored even with Isaac on the ACT). No, I did not get the letter from the Gundersons. 

My companion wasn't feeling too great for the first part of this week. It wasn't malaria (we went and got it tested) but it took him down for a little while anyways. 

This week was full of interested people asking us if they could come to church. It was pretty cool, except for the fact that all of them live across the road in the other elders' area. So we just hand them over to Elder Anai and Elder Mbithi. On Sundayalone we found four new investigators that all live in their area and are very interested in learning more. We got to help roll out bread dough with some random people along the roadside. That was fun and they really enjoyed teaching two silaminga (white men in Dagbani) how to make the bread just right.

Our friend the pastor from a while back has started reading from the Book of Mormon with us. That's a drastic change from when he refused to even take a copy of the Book of Mormon. So we're counting it as progress. We also taught a great lesson about the Book of Mormon to some intoxicated Nigerians at a New Year's drinking party. The best part of the lesson was when they all exclaimed in unison, "Where is your church?". I think I might go back and replay that one after I die and I have the scrapbook of my life. Classic.

The branch pulled together a last-minute activity on Friday. It turned out to be one of the best activities I've ever attended in Ghana. The food was done on time, there was dancing and games, almost all of the members came, and quite a few investigators felt welcome enough to show up. And today we were invited to a special dinner with the acting president of the Rotary Club in Tamale because of the service we collaborated on a while back. We had already had dinner with the branch president and his family, so we were stuffed before we even arrived. It was painful.

It's hard to imagine that 2017 is already here, but there's no going back. Make the time count and have a great season. Enjoy winter for me.

Love, Elder Nelson

Christmas #2

Dear America,

I hope your Christmas was outstanding. I enjoyed this season far more than I ever have before, probably because I didn't once hear about Santa or Frosty or Rudolph. Everything was about Jesus Christ. That's part of the magic of Tamale. Either you're Christian or you're Islamic. Either you celebrate Christmas because of Christ or you don't celebrate it at all.

On Monday this week we traveled to Techiman for zone conference on Tuesday. It was great to see some old places and some familiar faces. I thought that it would be stress-releasing to relive some good times by being there, but all I realized was that we missionaries really don't do much. We come, we teach, we go. Whatever. It's up to the people to make their own choices and reap the blessings. Our missionary work is very temporary if they don't have a deep conversion to the gospel for themselves. It's depressing to think that everything you're doing is basically worthless, but it's not really like that. God does his own work, we just have the opportunity to be instruments in his hands.

On Christmas Eve, we prepared a Christmas caroling program and set up in front of Melcom (the closest thing to Wal-mart here). We sang Christmas carols and watched the short bible videos about the birth of Jesus Christ right in the middle of town. After we finished singing, we did some serious contacting in and around the store. Everyone within eyeshot had a pamphlet or two or five. It was sweet. After the caroling we went to a big district activity with all of the branches in Tamale. The food was well prepared, but the rest of the program was kind of thrown together. Ah, Ghana. The problem is that the party finished super duper late in the night and all of the members were pooped out and didn't come to church the next morning. So that sucked. But church was only an hour so it wasn't too stressful.

On Christmas day we made tin foil dinners with some supplies that we bought the day before. We had real Irish potatoes (that's what they're called here), carrots, bell peppers, onions, and meat. And real off-brand tin foil. It was nice. I was also happy to talk to all of my family. The voices that sounded the most different were 1) Tad, 2) Davis, and 3) Sadie. I can't wait until I come home and don't recognize you people. I am noticing that I'm getting better at slipping in and out of an American accent. When I'm talking to whites I get more western, and when I talk with Africans my English instantly changes. Except apparently I can't avoid talking to little children in my Ghanaian accent, which is why you heard it with Drew. I just don't meet any white children here. At all. So maybe by the time I come back you won't even notice that I have any accent.

Well thanks for your support! Have a happy New Year! Time's a-runnin'.

Love, Elder Nelson