Garage Cleaning- 8/28/17

Dear America,

The big triumph at the beginning of the week was cleaning out the mission storage garage. Nobody has done that in a long time and it had gotten really disorganized, so we removed everything from inside and cleaned it before putting most of it back. Some of the items we found inside include an aluminum pot lid, six broken water pumps, a copy of the Apocrypha, a water heater, a washer and dryer set, a speaker, area books that we never knew we had, and a broken door. It was great exercise to throw around heavy boxes of books, pamphlets, or water filters all day. It made me miss hard physical labor. Throughout the course of the day, everyone at the mission home noticed what we were doing and we ended up getting lunch from the Cosgraves, birthday cake and ice cream from the Dearings, and 30 cedis for a treat from the Schows (all senior couples here). Sweet.

On Saturday night, the Bantama Stake (which our branch is part of) had a big music festival that all of the branches were invited to attend. We were under the impression that we were practicing to come together and have a sing-along type event. No. This was a competition with score sheets and judges and matching outfits. It reminded me of how I miss real music competitions. When it was all said and done, we got a participation award (!) and a determination to practice diligently for next year. 

At the beginning of your mission, there is a 12-week training course that you go through to help you be an effective missionary. I've started redoing that course recently. It's helping me be better and even see how far I've come. Last week I worked on teaching about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ better. One great opportunity came on Sunday when a member named Ebenezer took us to meet his two cousins that he shares a room with. We taught them a very short and sweet lesson about the restoration. We felt the Spirit and were happy to see our practice coming in very useful.

Pictures:

1361 -- garage mess

1363 -- garage, sans mess

1364 -- garage mess

1369 -- the power of the Book of Mormon

1375 -- throwing water filter boxes into the garage

1380 -- newly organized garage

1382 -- office got me like:

1419 -- taking the Rogers' boys to dinner

1421 -- Elder Motloung is full and tired