From March 14, 2011: Monday Elder Jones and I went to another town called Mateheko to visit some other missionaries as well as another area called Odorkor to clean a hospital that had flooding with our zone. For the hospital we cleared some dirt that settled from the water and bucketed water from a basement after we removed the water damaged things. One of the family members who own the hospital, who are also members of the church, gave Elder Jones and I some Peanut M&Ms and Twix. Though they were the fun sized they were delight-some to eat. It was fun to get together as misionaries to help the hospital, but we were all wondering why we were there when they had paid staff, oh well.
Tuesday we were able to visit Tei and Sulo and teach them about eternal marriage and the temple. They are smart guys so it is fun to teach them. We also went to visit Alice Walice's husband Godfred Mensah and her friend Abigail Yenfo. We found out that Abigail has two daughters and a son. We didn't think we were going to be able to baptize Abigail for a long time because she was going to literacy class to learn how to read (one of the baptismal requirements is that the person can read so they can read the scriptures and progress in the gospel). Abigail has been going to the literacy class the church offers on Sundays and because her children can read the scriptures to her she can be baptized sooner.
On Wednesday we had our zone conference so we were able to gather and visit with other missionaries. There has been a civil war in Ivory Coast and because it has heated up the missionaries from that country have been transported to various other African countries including ours. Our zone has two of those missionaries while there have been more that have been brought in to the mission as a whole. Though there are a lot of hostilities around Ghana recently we are not in any threat. I know there was some uprising last presidential elections so we will see what happens with that when elections roll around next year. One of the things talked about during the zone meeting was companionship unity and I can say Elder Jones and I are having a lot of fun working hard and being companions. After the meeting we met with a woman named Alberta who lives in Canada half of the year and in Ghana for the rest. We ended up talking about all the fast food places she misses in Canada and she ended up feeding us as well. We had a lot of fun talking to her about familiar culture.
On Friday we found out that the recent convert Philomena would be going to the temple for the first time. it was surprising to us to hear she was going. We talked to her on Sunday and she told us that she had a great time which is good news. I feel that if we can get the members to the temple they will become much more solid members. Philomena seems clueless sometimes, but it is always great to see when she grasps something in the gospel. We also visited Jonathan Aboagye (18) and he told us that he doesn't want to come to church anymore because his father, Samuel, a recent convert cursed him to suffer the rest of his life because he isn't making some good choices. Jonathan doesn't think a new member of the church should be cursing their sons. We tried to resolve the issue with the son and father, but in the end Jonathan didn't come to church with the rest of the family. We talked to a few members on Sunday and they are planning to visit with the family so hopefully make up where we are lacking. There was a speaker at church who said, that the same mouth can't utter a blessing and a curse. We just hope that this situation will be resolved sooner than later.
Well on Saturday, to sum up the event, Elder Jones and I were meeting a family for the first time. Their son had taken us to them and it was around 6pm. The boy's friends had also followed us to the house because we were playing soccer with them right before and because the parents don't really watch their children here and we are white men, they followed us. In the middle of the lesson one of the children's mother came into the house and started yelling at us for taking her son, along with the other boys, to this house at dusk. She said that even though she likes what we do as missionaries she was upset that (this is the idea she had) we had wanted the children to follow us because there may be other people down the road that say they are missionaries to the children to kidnap them. The woman wouldn't let us explain our selves and the family who owned the house didn't stand up for us either, so that was frustrating as well. She had a point that the kids shouldn't of been with us, but because no one watches them anyway we didn't think the mother would care and didn't think to send the children home who followed us. Oh well.
On Sunday we had eight investigators at church so it was a good Sunday.
No comments:
Post a Comment