From October 25, 2010: Proselyting on the Beach

From October 25, 2010: The missionary work is growing fast, though the retention rate isn't that great here.   Because of the poor education, people can have a hard time grasping the doctrine and why things are done in the wards (many of the members attend other wards though there records are in another because of their friends).

I got a letter from a friend from BYU-ID named Davey Runnels who will be serving a mission in Hungary.

The biggest thing that happend last week was Elder Orchard and I went down to the beach.  When I say beach I mean sand piled high with trash and the rivers or open sewers flowing with black water. It was fun though. There were Ghanaians offering to carry us across the river, showing how nice of a people they are. The beach was also full of fishing ships that were carved out of a tree trunk. On the way back we got lost and these boys dragging a dead pig showed us the way.  The next day we went to a different area on the beach only to find where the fishermen live. All of these people were high and looking to rob us of our money. We were lucky to talk them out of anything and give them pamphlets on the church.

I recently have had a few wonderful conversations with boys about if I have any sisters and their ages. It is clear that almost every Ghanaian would do anything to wed a white girl. Saying that, if Grace and her friends aren't having any luck with boys in the states they wouldn't have a problem finding anyone here. Another great thing here is that because everything can be sold on the streets I have been able, with the help of Elder Orchard, to reduce the price of the food we buy. There isn't much to eat here so we bought a jar of Smuckers costing around $12 (converted from their Ghanaian Cedi).

I almost forgot to tell you another story -  we passed a church one night speaking in tounges.  It was a little weird.  I'm glad we are LDS.  You have no idea how lucky we are to be members. Think of it this way, out of everyone that has lived on Earth ever we are one family out of the 15 million members on Earth at the moment and even less of those members are children of record.