More Sobolo!

Dear America,

The quick email this week was neat. I liked the talk from Elder Holland. My main snack this week was sobolo, the drink that I've written about before. One of the members makes really nice sobolo, so I paid them to make a bunch of it for me. It is so nice. I just sit in my chair in the kitchen at night and sip from my cup of high-grade sobolo and feel sophisticated. Or when I'm taking care of finances at my desk and I drink like two liters of it. Beautiful. The snacks last week were exactly what they look like.... small fried fish. And yes, I bought more and made a small stew that lasted me the entire week. It was good.

We had zone conference this week where we were able to watch the worldwide missionary broadcast all the way through because we didn't the first time. It was a good experience. It also made the conference last forever and a half.

There have been several times this week when investigators sucked at keeping their commitments and made life hard for us, but when you look at it from the point of view of God, we all suck at keeping our commitments. One day in particular, I was feeling pretty grumpy but I'm a servant of the Lord and servants of the Lord can't afford to be grumpy. So I said a prayer that I would feel happier. It worked. My mood immediately started to lighten and the next lesson we went into was the best one of the whole week. The man (a former investigator) was really interested about the Holy Ghost. We taught him pure, basic doctrine about the third member of the Godhead and felt the Spirit bear witness to everything we said. It touched him so deeply to finally learn about what the Holy Ghost feels like and what His role is. And then I had the opportunity to teach and testify about the Gift of the Holy Ghost. It's such a blessing to have peace, joy, and guidance from our Heavenly Father constantly throughout our lives. The man's interest in being baptized and receiving this gift was suddenly renewed. We left the lesson smiling. Later in the day, he called us to ask where to find some of the scripture references we used, so I suspect that his interest was genuine.

Another instance was at the end of a long, hard day when we stopped by a stubborn Roman Catholic family that we've met (and argued with) before. We spent a while chatting with them. Pretty soon the subject came to the Law of Chastity and we were informally teaching them about the dangers of pornography. They were as stubborn and contentious as ever, but at the end of everything one of them told me quietly that she had been considering pornography use but after what we had taught, she decided against it. It made me really happy. Even if they never get baptized, I've at least helped somebody's marriage not to fall apart.

Have a great week!

Elder Nelson

I finished the Book of Mormon!

Dear America,

This week went by fast. We were busy in our area most of the time. We taught a lot of good lessons and worked hard, so I was pretty bummed when none of our investigators kept their commitment to come to church. Flaky flaky flaky. But after church on Sunday, one of the members told us about his friend and invited us to come meet him later in the day. His friend turns out to be the MCE for this area, which means that he is the official representative of the President of Ghana here. So all of the government agencies in Nkawkaw and the surrounding villages answer directly to him. Needless to say, he's a busy guy. But he's also been investigating the Church since 1994 and he says that he and his family will be baptized. I gave him my copy of the Book of Mormon Stories because he wants something for his children to read so they can grow up under the influence of the gospel. So I felt like that was a tender mercy from the Lord to show me that my work wasn't worthless to him.

I finished reading the Book of Mormon for the first time on my mission this week. It was so great. At the beginning of my mission, I started to breeze through it like I have done repeatedly in the past. But I stopped and began reading very slowly and carefully to try and milk out as much information as I could. I really enjoyed it this time and I feel like I learned a lot. I should have.... it took me more than a year. Now I'm trying to read through with a specific focus on only one basic doctrine and find as much as I can on that doctrine. It's something that Elder Bednar inspired me to do when he came to the mission. So I guess I'm trying a bunch of different techniques to read through the Book of Mormon and eventually I'll find the one that works best for me.

I don't know if I have any sketchy stories that I'm suddenly going to disclose when I get home... I don't censor my emails very much, so just prepare yourselves so you aren't disappointed. Honestly, I don't even remember the code. But I'll let you know if I send anything confidential.

The pictures are us playing snakes and ladders at a member's house while we wait for the sisters to show up, us eating after they finally do, the food that I've been snacking on all week, and an awesome shirt that an investigator was wearing.

Love, Elder Nelson

P.S. Mom, you can send your response handwritten. That way I'm not limited to reading it on Monday.

Air Conditioning

Dear America,

Good job on focusing on the prophetic priorities. In 3 Nephi 18, Christ teaches the Nephites about the sacrament and then tells them that if they continually participate in this ordinance, they are built upon the rock. Out of everything in the scriptures that makes you a wise man built on the rock, it's the sacrament. And again in Ezekiel 20:18-20, God basically tells us to stop following the foolish traditions of our fathers and start following gospel traditions, first and foremost of which is the Sabbath day. I thought it was cool that it's His number one tradition for us to follow.

The email was obviously from Elder Duaryenneh. I'll be able to use Facebook to talk with them after mission. I still haven't gotten the conference SD. I've given up on that. Thanks for sending the questions. I was wondering what I would write about this week.

Tell us more about your new companion. My companion is Elder Nuamah, a native Ghanaian. He isn't a Fante, but he is from Takoradi. He likes cooking and we never eat food that we didn't make. We work hard together and talk to A LOT of people. He isn't afraid to walk up to anyone on the street and start talking about their salvation. He likes to play the guitar and was in a band prior to his mission. He makes Jack-Johnson-esque songs. He's a good teacher and definitely pulls his own weight.

Who are you teaching? We teach a lot of people, but one of the characteristics of this part of the mission is that people are willing to listen, but not act on what they're taught. So we go through a lot of uncommitted investigators. One neat guy we're teaching is a pastor, but he's the most humble pastor I've met so far. He was so excited to learn about the Book of Mormon and start reading it. He can't read English, so I gave him my personal Twi copy. He said that if he finds out where the priesthood is, he will drop everything and follow the path that God wants him to. 

What is primary like in your branch? I actually haven't visited the primary in our branch yet...I've mostly been working with the youth class and the Sunday School. The primary is the only class downstairs, so they're really isolated and it seems a lot more controlled than any branch I've ever been in on my mission.

What hymns do you sing the most? Probably 194 There is a Green Hill Far Away and 193 I Stand All Amazed because most members don't know how to sing a lot of sacrament hymns. Those are the most widely known ones. 

Do you see any white people, apart from the missionaries? In Tamale I saw an unusually high amount of white people, but they don't really come here at all. I've seen one Chinese since I came down, but apart from that, no. If you're in the cities that have small airports, chances of seeing a white person go up dramatically. Like Kumasi or Tamale.

What is the predominant religion in your area? "One-man" churches. Basically "I need money, so I think I'll start a church!" and then people follow them and go and clap and dance and pay collection and call it church. There are a good amount of Presbyterians here as well. And an occasional JW.

Do you have any problems sleeping on your mission? No. The only thing that sucks is if the power goes out and your fan stops. Then you have to face the mosquitoes and the heat. It will wake you up in the middle of the night just because it's so hot. Lately I feel like pretty pathetic because I'm getting used to turning the air conditioning on for a little while before I sleep (we have air conditioning in our room). It makes it so easy to go to sleep if the room is cold. I'm really going to suffer when I go back to Kumasi.

Love, Elder Nelson

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