This past week we had our zone conference. That is always pretty good. This time it was focusing on going to where the investigators are. Not being senseless robots who go lesson 1 2 3 . . . etc. Also they instructed us a about the importance of the Book of Mormon. Especially President Smith. He stressed how much we should be reading, studying, and teaching from it. He has challenged us to take a softcover version, the ones we hand out, and mark it with four colors. Red for anytime they say Jesus Christ, one of his names, or a pronoun meaning him. Orange is for anything that Christ says directly or through the prophets e.g. Thus saith the Lord;. Green is for the Christlike Attributes from Preach My Gospel. Faith, Charity, Obedience and the rest. Then blue is the color for any doctrine or principle of the gospel. He challenged us to complete it by Dec 16th, our Mission Christmas Conference but I am going to try and have it done before my year mark comes up so that I can go back through and re-read what I marked. Something really funny that happened that day was a lady yelled at kids begging us for money. She was in a multi-story apartment and just yelled, "what kind of life is that? It was great to look at the faces of the kids as it dawned on them what she was saying. We had a member, Frank Agyepong (baptized him like 2 months ago) invite us over for lunch this week. That has been a rareity since Elder White doesn't eat much Ghanaian cusine because it constipates him way bad. We explained that he had a little issue so instead of some fufu, banku, or even rice they gave us a sandwich. A bread and butter sandwich. Probably one of the hardest things I've had to choke down in front of someone acting grateful. It seemed like it was over an inch thick. At least they tried to give us some hot chocolate to go with it. It was really watered down and WAY too hot. I ended up having to down Elder White's because he wouldn't drink it when Frank left the room. At least he was willing to work out and we ate. Friday we got stuck in an investigator's, Sarah Adamu, house because the rain. She lives in a little wooden shed with a tin roof. We first thought little kids were throwing rocks on the roof because it was hitting so hard. Since about mid week it seems as if a lot of people loved to ask me questions about "my people".Guess I'm king of the whites now. Pesants. It was so aggrevating. Definitely is a struggle when we have people wasting our time because they just want to talk to the white guy. It might sound bad but it seems lately that the spiritual atmosphere at our baptisms has been brought down by the members. A lot of them just don't understand the word reverence or how to control their children. It went alright though and everyone ended up getting wet. Saturday also saw us getting a sweet referral. A member who owns kind of an office supply thing here. He prints, copies, etc. Had a Book of Mormon at his shop and a younger guy came in asking about it. He'd heard of it and wanted to buy one. We called him and arranged to meet him. The lesson went a long great with Levi and of course ended with us giving him a copy but what makes it stand out was his closing prayer. We like to have those being taught give the closing prayer to help them know how and be used to praying verbally. He was a little hesitant but even there he asked God to show him the truth in the book and the missionaries words. Just the way he said it you could feel his desire and knew he felt like he was talking to someone besides just us. It was just sweet. This week is transfers and Saturday I was called to leave Ashaiman and go to a place called Kaneshie to be a District Leader. Kaneshie is right by the area that I served before, Lartebiokorshie. That made Sunday a pretty busy day with everyone wanting to say their goodbyes and everything. The best thing was having a man named Wisdom Attivro, baptized sept 12th, and have him tell us that he was so glad we met when we did. Who he worked for had gotten some kind of building contract and he was basically now so busy he would have never had time or even the patience to try everything out. It was sweet to hear that we had hit his window of time perfectly. It has been fun here but I'm excited to get to leave and see new faces and places for sure.

Well another pretty chill week here in Ghana has gone by. It seemed like we spent a lot of time walking back and forth this week. One day it was because kept having pretty much everything we had planned to do fail and so we were left to grasping around trying to get a footing and the other day because we were just so busy with everything. It was sweet to notice the difference between the two days. I am so thankful for when all the kind of time and effort we put into our planning was worthwhile. Something else that was special about this week is we had one of our recent contacts, Celestina Gavie, invite her family to listen to the gospel. It is so much sweeter because Celestina is the lady who doesn't understand probably 45% of everything said at church but she wanted to be baptized because she could work on the language but hadn't ever felt like she did when she is at the church. It is nice to see that not only we as missionaries like to share but so do people in our ward, though it isn't the majority. There is a part of my area that is somehow more remote and definitely rural then the rest called Jericho. We decided to go up there since Elder White hasn't ever been. We don't spend a lot of time there since it is more elderly people with limited English and it is a farther distance from the chapel. The time we spent up there didn't really give us any results but it was nice to kind of get away from the clustered dirt and grime of the rest of my area. Guess it probably just kind of is more similar to being at home. Friday we received an interesting call. From the group of missionaries at the MTC one decided he wanted to run away. Since we are within a hour of walking distance of the MTC they called us. We didn't get many details besides that he didn't take his things and is Nigerian. It blew me away that someone would just run away. I mean it isn't like someone is going to force you to stay. You literally can ask to be sent home. There hasn't been any word about him, at least that has been passed onto the missionaries. Hopefully he'll be alright though. Saturday we had a baptism that was very frustrating. First off people we had checked with for helping us didn't show up. Then the member of the bishopric didn't show up either. After blowing up some people's phones we were able to arrange everything and hold the baptism. Later that day the Elder's quorum held a ghanaian cookout I guess. They had huge things of lyte soup(spicy runny tomato soup) and way too much fufu for anyone's good. They called it berimankwa which kind of translates to men in the kitchen. It was in preparation for the holy day today, sellah. It was a fun party. We had been asked to come and help them prepare in the early afternoon. It was funny since I was white a lot of them didn't trust me to pound fufu but had no problem with elder white doing it. It is made better by the fact elder white doesn't know how to pound it because he doesn't eat it. I got the job of helping prepare the soup. They had a big pot with two skinned and gutted goats in it and they couldn't figure out how to lift it using the typical Ghanaian methods and so I just stepped in and picked it up and carried it with my arms. It was all good until I set it down and as I squated my favorite pair of pants ripped HUGE. Guess I should take it easy on the rice and fufu or something. It was cool to see our ward actually interacting with each other though. Sunday was a busy day at church trying to get people to their classes and have everything work out. We had a man whose wife is Korean come with their two sons who look very Korean. It was sad to see how people in church would stare, point, and basically gossip about them. Made me really sad mostly because I get that everyday but for the two boys they believe they are Ghanaians since that is where they were born and have lived their entire lives. Everyone faces challenges though and each and everyone's are different. I did learn on Sunday that people here call smiling laughing. I had shown them a photocopy of my passport I keep for identification reasons and everyone commented that if it had been taken in Ghana I wouldn't of been allowed to laugh so much. That is pretty much everything that went down this week. Hope everyone else is doing wonderful!

Holy Ramadan! The Muslims are celebrating that right now and it makes our area pretty nuts at certain times of the day. I am getting really frustrated when we will be teaching a lesson and this giant loud speaker starts broadcasting their prayers and everything. Oh well I guess you have to work with you are given for sure. I can't believe that September is practically half way done, definitely don't know where it has gone. We met a really cool guy this week. His name is Gabriel. When I first met him I thought he was probably 20-22 but ends up he is 27 and is raising 3 kids. He is a foster parent to three boys ages 11-17. He was super chill. Plus it is always great when during the middle of your lesson he tells you that he feels some feeling he doesn't really recognize. Hopefully our explanation was good enough to help him understand what it was. I can't remember if we mentioned the Korean lady that we found and have been teaching. Anyway her name is Jennifer and her husband ends up use to be a pastor of some sorts. It was awkward when we went to teach him and he started busting out this memorized scripture sermons. Luckily we stood our ground and he ran out of breath and gave us a chance to plug in the restoration. Another cool thing about Felicia is since she is going to school she basically translated the pamphlets completely into braille. It is really too bad that she will be leaving and that where she is going to school doesn't have church presence. All in time. The guy that came from the United Kingdom is basically on a mission to get his friends into the church before he leaves. He ends up having a kid in his ward back in Wales who is from Arizona. He went to Sunrise Mountain and wrestled. I kind of know him because he and someone else almost got in a fistfight at the Moon Valley Tournament. We had a really tense moment this week. My companion's knee or leg started to hurt so he got a stick and used it as a walking stick. All of that was fine and dandy until some drunk guy decided he wanted the stick . . . and that he was a kung fu master. As we were walking along he comes out of no where and goes into a stance pretty much copied from any of the old school movies. We kind of laughed it off until he monkey fisted my companion and yeah. Thankfully it didn't elevate too much past that and we calmed him down and got him walking his own way again. Saturday we held a baptism. This week it went just fine. Even the girl from the previous week was baptized and no problems this time. It is a lot better when things go smoothly for sure. It was nice to have everything just wind down this week. Yesterday was a pretty lame day though. I just didn't feel good at all and felt all tired and worn out. Glad it was just in passing though. I hope that everything is going good for everyone back home.

Everything has been going pretty great for us this week. We had Zone Interviews on Tuesday which kind of always throws a little randomness into life. Makes you feel like you are playing catch up sometimes. I don't know if I have mentioned her but we are teaching this girl named Felicia who is blind. More or less we look at it as planting a good seed since she is 1. blind 2. and going to school outside of our mission in about 3 weeks. It is really cool to teach her, I've noticed how much we actually use sight in our lessons. It is a lot more then I would have ever thought. She has a braille frame that she can listen and take notes with. Since we don't have any braille literature we are hoping to leave her with small things using that. It is sweet to watch her basically punch it out and write certain things out. Another one of our investigators Kojo read something about the Articles of Faith somewhere and was really curious about it. Luckily Elder White had one of the pass along style cards with them on it from home. He told us that he has been praying and really wants to get baptized. Beautiful music to any missionaries ears. This week I went on splits with our new district leader Elder Osondu from Nigeria. It was a pretty routine day but go figure. He is a pretty cool guy. He actually asked me about going to ASU. He doesn't want to school in Nigeria and is I guess branching out. Though he said most likely he will stay somewhere in Africa. We are finishing preparing a girl named Lois Okorno, the 9 year daugther of a member, to be baptized. Friday we couldn't have a serious discussion regardless how hard we tried. We went in the morning and none of us could stop laughing. Then we said we would just have to come back and still she couldn't stop. It was all good though. Her father said he would talk to her and that is basically all we need since she is 9 and has already been going through primary. Another invesigator Gladys Wiafe, whose husband is a member, told us that she likes the church but doesn't feel comfortable since she doesn't have friends and her English is very very limited. I don't really know why or how I'm going to do it but I asked her if she would mind us trying and help her learn English. Hopefully we can make it work, I am thinking of using a member's help who is really into educating Ghana. You could say it is somehow his personal mission or something. So of course Saturday was my birthday, awesome, especially since it started out with a baptism. The guy who was suppose to baptize them didn't show up so I got to do it. It went along pretty fine till the last one a little girl. She is from the other missionaries and definitely wasn't ready. She was almost in tears as she got into the water. The witnesses and I calmed her down a little bit and thought everything was okay, boy were we wrong. After saying the prayer I brought her hand up to her nose and she plugged it but she let go as she was going into the water and had a big freak out. She reached up and grabbed my shoulder and flaied around a little bit. I almost thought of just submerging myself to get her all the way under but better judgement prevailed. As we came up she was just in tears and yeah bad situation. She went and met her mom, the missionaries, and me coming in the rear in the hallway. We couldn't calm her down and so she'll have to wait to be baptized. Anyway it was a pretty good baptism save for that little bump. The rest of the day was pretty normal, though it was unexpectionally hot. Must mean Christmas is getting closer since that is the hottest time of the year. I did find a sweet birthday surprse for myself. Walking down a street I spied what looked like a box of chewy granola bars. They weren't quite that amazing, instead they were some kind of French knock off. I will say it probably wouldn't compare to a real one but dang chocolate covered chocolate chip still tastes good, at least to my current expectations of taste. Something pretty creepy I learned on Saturday was exactly how Ghanaians believe in witches. I knew that hey were very superstious but it became so much clearer as we went to have a lesson with a recent convert and ended up watching a bit of a documentary about witches in Ghana. They basically think that if anything goes wrong or bad in life it is a witch that cursed you or blah blah blah. If you are accused of being a witch and aren't beaten to death they have literal witch communities that your relatives can take you to and drop you off. It is a lot more predominat in the North but it is still crazy to think about how it is very deeply rooted in their society. Though no big surprise, even in the church we have to deal a lot of stuff with them basically reverting back to the traditions of their fathers but guess there is a little bit of that everywhere in the world. On Sunday a man came from the United Kingdom of one of my recent converts in Ashaiman. It was sweet to talk to him and meet the man who basically did our missionary work for us. He was the one who introduced his family to the church and through phone calls, emails, etc. worked on his Dad accepting missionaries and being baptized. Plus he brought one of his sons, Clinton, from Britain and wants him baptized in Ghana. It will be sweet because I think as of now he is the only one of the family that is above 8 that isn't baptized. That is pretty much the excitement for the week here. Love you guys!

Whoa! Getting old, my last week as being a teenager! Last Tuesday it rained cats and dogs. It got to the point that we just stopped walking around getting disappointed and visited a member. He talked about his time in Italy it was sweet. On Wednesday President Cardon, Area President, and his wife did a mission tour. He came and talked about how small the earth and we are in respect to the rest of the universe. It was cool but I didn't really feel like I learned anything. At the beginning he shakes your hand and asks where you are from. So I said Taylor, Arizona, hometown proud, which he knows. I guess his family has some ranch outside of Airpine. It was as good meeting. My favorite part was when Pres. Cardon had President and Sister Smith bear their testimonies. It was really touching to hear them talk about their believes and they both related to how much they love us. Later as we were out working a little girl got a shock seeing me and could just stand and stare and say a white man in ghana. Yep. Thursday we contacted a house but everyone there only spoke twi but as we were leaving a boy came out and asked if he could talk to us for a few minutes. He is 15 and a Jehovah's Witness. He asked about if we could see God and about giving blood. It was amazing to see how much into the bible he was. Especially when I compare to how much time I was spending memorizing scriptures. This kid definitely has put in a lot of time. We went back and his parents said he is too young to talk to us but they said they'd think about it if he wants to. We'll see. The very next day we ended up being in the same compound house as Jehovah's Witnesses missionaries and this kid's dad was one. The people we were teaching wanted a "joint discussion" so we said cool. We talked about Joseph Smith and his vision and unsettled the J.W. They wanted to just bible bash with us and we basically put our foot down and wouldn't. Afterward the Dad said not to come back. Guess you win some and lose some. We prepared a few baptismal records this week and it is still surprising how parents don't even know the full name and birth date of their children. Even when their kids are there they themselves don't remember. Guess it is just a difference in our cultures. Saturday we were called to come and help with a baptism since their wasn't enough priesthood holders for witnesses etc. I was asked to give a talk about Baptism and the Holy Ghost. I realized that I wasn't prepared at all when the candidates came in. Two were under 10 and the other 11. Had to do some quick thinking to make it more relavant for them. With the Primary Anniversary there was a program. It was really funny because as the kids would sing they gave one girl a microphone and it kid of drowned out everyone else. They did good though. We are teaching an ex-muslism now christian lady named Sarah. This was her first Sunday of coming to church and even though it was late enough to miss sacrament meeting it was a blessing. She had been having some marital difficulites with her husband and it had delayed her. We had combined Relief Society and Priesthood and it was all about living happy righteously and providently with your spouse. I think, it was kind of in Twi. Either way she said it really helped her out. Definitely can tell the church is true when it has something for everyone. My email is a lot later this week since we went to Tema and played games at the MTC. They have 60 something kids there and when they all are outside it almost makes their yard feel too cramped. It was good though. The missionaries in the MTC loved when we were playing soccer that I would call for the ball and everything in Twi. Too bad I don't know more of it. Hope everyone has a great week.

This whole past week has felt like limbo land. Going through transfers is usually like that when their are changes though. Plus we spent a lot of time early on in the week visiting recent converts so Elder Riding could say goodbye. It was pretty fun. Though it meant going through plenty of Ghanaian cuisine. Now being the only white in our apartment I definitely notice a difference since it is the first time. When we are out walking around I kind of forget that I actually stand out so much. Crazy seeing how little kids and even adults are usually yelling obruni at us, but at the apartment it is very strange to think that I'm the only white person for miles and miles. We are teaching a lady from Seoul Korea who is kind of stranded here but she missed an appointment last week and then didn't come to church so we went and visited her and found out she had a baby. I was kind of shocked, she didn't look pregnant at all. It was really cool though when she handed me to her and before I could object turned around to get something from inside. Holding a five day old baby with Hailee coming so recent was awesome. I haven't held her but it was sweet to hold this kid and see how beautiful she was. It was nice. I am getting tired of people being ruled by politics here. It is ridiculous. They love bringing up in our lessons. To be honest I haven't quite figured out a way to use their view of it incorporated in our lessons but I'm thinking. On Thursday we hit our seven day(and counting) mark of not having running water but luckily it rained. I was tired of using a bucket or a pure water sachet, plastic bag filled with water, to shower so I went outside. Quite possibly one of the nicest showers I have had since leaving home. The water was almost kind of warmish. Kind of. There was an all african service project this last saturday. I didn't go. We already had appointment scheduled and I didn't really want to just bail on them. They cleaned the road up and painted some white lines warning people walking on the sidewalk they are getting close to the gutter. We had a pretty tense Sunday meeting. We needed two of the people we baptized to get confirmed but only one of them showed up. A high councilor came and talked. I didn't really understand his talk since it was in broken twi-english. One part that I do was that he talked about my companion, who had stood up and been introduced. He mentioned about how the american elders are usually white, pointing at me, like him. He then went on to say in twienglish that he was so happy to see an american missionary who looked like all of them. Kind of funny since I was the only white person there out of the 160ish in the ward. Elder White and I laughed at it even though no one else really found the humor in it. Elder White is from North Carolina. He is a pretty funny kid. His dream is to become an actor, which from the sounds of things he was well on his way before he came on his mission. His grandma was the first person in his family to join the church and still most of his family aren't members. He has been out about 6 months and was in the office as a supply elder before coming to Ashaiman. That is kind of the excitement from here for the week.

I think about how saying the right things seems so easy but then doing it is so much harder. Sometimes I think Satan puts that thought into our head and also that we say something but don't take into consideration all of the little things that will come along with it. I love you guys!
love elder gibson

Well what a week. Monday we went and ate a pig and went to the MTC. It was weird talking to some of the missionaries there. I'm glad to say that when I met missionaries while I was there I didn't ask as silly of questions as they did. It was funny though. A lot of the days this week seemed to passed by really really slow but all of a sudden they were over. Kind of like magic. This week we did have zone conference which always throws everything out of whack though. We ran into an old contact, Sarah, that hadn't really shown too much action so we stopped after two meetings and she told us she had read everything and wanted us to come back. Definitely is someone looking for something specific, our first meeting she went straight to baptism. I guess we'll wait and see how that progresses but pretty encouraging especially since she invited her husband and small daughter to join us. Another sweet person from the week is named Vincent. He is late 20's early 30's who owns a gamestation (room full of play stations, x box, etc.) and lives with his mother. He is really interested in the gospel. He has been bouncing from church to church. We stopped by yesterday and gave him a Book of Mormon and then today we passed by and he has read the entire introduction and all the tesitmonies. Really good signs, I hope that they can turn into something. We had a really funny but somewhat strange experience. As we were doing some contacting a man accepted a pamphlet and gave us a time to come and then as we left started following us asking for money for transport to another city. We explained we don't give money and he then said okay and started to follow us around as we continued to contact. He'd show people around who we were talking to the pamphlet and say this church is inviting you. Luckily we were able to lose him in a housing complex that is like a maze. About 30-40mins later he found us as he came out of a house and follows us AGAIN! Ugh it was so annoying and he just kept asking for money here and there. Finally we lost him by ducking into a entryway and then staying away from that area for the rest of the day. Transfer calls happened this week. I am the only one in our apartment who is staying. I'll be the senior companion to a black American elder named white. He has been out about 6 months and is pretty funny. We'll see how it goes. The other two elders are coming in fresh and I think both of them are Nigerian. On Wednesday we'll find out. Good luck to everyone!

I love having the temple so close. We get to go quarterly so it is nice. Though it is disheartening because a lot of members who are worthy don't take advantage of it. It is something that we stress really heavy when we teach the after baptism lessons so that they can have a good foundation to grow on. Hope you have a great week!
love elder gibson