In the Office

Dear America,

Apparently not everyone knows what office elders do, so let me clarify: the mission president assigns two assistants, who usually solve 90% of missionary problems and run the mission when the president is worrying about other things. In many missions, this is all. But the Ghana Kumasi Mission is extraordinary. It's bigger than Idaho or Utah and has tens of millions of people and a lot of work to do. So the mission president has divided the load between one companionship of assistants and one companionship of office elders. The assistants take care of most of the "spiritual" matters like instructing and training missionaries and directing the mission; the office elders take care of more "temporal" things like supplies for the mission, phones, incoming and outgoing missionaries, and RUNNING EVERYONE ELSE'S ERRANDS. Seriously. 50% of what we do are just the things that no one else at the mission home has time for. So it's a lot of driving and coordinating with the assistants. Our apartment is just us and the assistants and it's so chill. We work hard and we sleep hard. If we ever get time to play then we play hard, too. All in all, I haven't gone to sleep before 10:30 one night this week.

This week has been busy. On Monday I came to Kumasi alone (!) but it wasn't too bad because the office elders met me on the side of the road and picked me up after an uncomfortable wait. We drove some missionaries around that night and got to the apartment late. On Tuesday morning we drove homebound missionaries to the airport and took care of all of their flight stuff. Then we prepared hard for the transfer and got to proselyte for a whole hour (pathetic) in between errands. On Tuesday for dinner we ate pizza in celebration of July 4th, although none of us actually realized that it was July 4th. We enjoy relative luxury because we have cars so we can go places and do things if we have time. 

On Wednesday--transfer day--I drove. A lot. Like I said, office elders do errands. And when someone needs to go somewhere, we are the preferred method of transport. We got everything done in record time. Success! Since then we have been able to spend more time in our area seeing members and investigators and meeting new people. It's great. It feels weird to proselyte with a car, but also pretty awesome.

Driving is not nearly as terrifying as I thought it would be. As long as you pretend like you're in a video game, it's normal. Elder Lindley (in the apartment) explained to me that there are four rules on Ghana roads: 1) don't kill anyone 2) don't stop at stop signs 3) don't use your blinkers correctly and 4) if you ever see a speed limit sign, don't slow down because people will get angry. Don't worry, I don't always follow all four of those rules. You just have to drive really defensively. Everyone makes up for someone else's mistakes here. It's so cool. If you do something dumb, the other drivers will compensate for your stupidity. If they do something dumb, you do the same.

These are pictures from last week that I couldn't send. My camera is coughing out its last breath right now. I haven't been able to take a picture on it for weeks so I'm having other missionaries take pictures for me. You can pray and fast for my camera or else the number of pictures is about to go down really quickly.

Have a splendid week!

Elder Nelson