Okay baptism with the crew

I knew a mission would be work but what's this?

This last week definitely had its interesting points. My first District Meeting was certainly exciting. The assistants came as their first trip around all the districts to kind of check up on everybody. It went over okay though. One of them was trained in this ward and the other served in the other ward that meets in the same building so it was cool as we talked about the ward they could relate to the people we have been working with. As most everyone here is converts you have to do a lot of I guess member training for how things are done in the ward. This ward seems to be pretty set though. The bishop is really really good. His brother was living in the mission home too when I first came on my mission. Tuesday was also the first baptismal interview that I did. It is for a man named Joe Appiah, and he is a doctor. He mixes the tribal traditional and modern medicine for bones. He use to do a lot more but now he just works out of his house and does smaller things. Like setting broken arms and the such. He is a way cool guy though. He was referred by the family of an ex-seventy Elder Adjei. It was nice to see the support he received from them.

I was tired of studying one morning so yeah!

Liberty Jail mugshot

This week we started teaching a lady, Sis. Mausi, who just happens to be really really good friends with Elder Frimpong's mother. He is from Kumasi, Cape Coast side, and she recently moved to Accra and well just kind of works out. Always is a good sign when you go for the first appointment and after finishing teaching they won't let you leave because they prepared some food for you. Ooookay . . . and the fact that she came to church on time and with her Book of Mormon was good too. So this week it made me really glad that missionaries aren't suppose to give personal council about things because we were asked about it a lot and thankfully when it got past just little trivial things we could just pass it off and say sorry can't help you out, but you do have a bishop to talk to. One of the members, Bro. Menson, and I got into I guess an argument of some kind this week. We had finished teaching his daughter and it was our last appointment and began to talk about soccer and everything. It came out that Christiano Ronaldo, reigning World's Best Player, got hurt or something. He went off on how some lady had come forward claiming that she had contacted a fetish priest to curse him so that he would get hurt and never be able to play again. Being the typical over superstitious Ghanaian he was totally buying it and we went back and forth about it. It was pretty lighthearted but he told me that I'm too American to understand. Saturday we had a baptism for his daughter though. It went good and kind of normal. The candidate arrived 30mins late, then the bishop 30mins after that so that by the time the baptism should of been over it started. We did have to talk to our ward mission leader and explain that he doesn't hold the keys to preside over a baptism unless the bishop gives him permission.

A couple stories up with the city lights behind me

This is Sabina Menson, probably the most mature out of
anyone in that family. She is way beyond her own years.

Gotta love teaching opportunities. We did get to go to a wedding that night though. A member had gotten it cleared to use the cultural hall for his cousin's wedding or something. Part of the deal was that the missionaries were invited to come and drop as many pamphlets as we wanted and talk to people, and of course they fed us. It was really good. People were giving us really funny looks but eventually we kind of broke the ice and just went table to table sitting down talking about the church handing out pamphlets. Unfortunately most of the people don't' live anywhere near our chapel. I guess planting seeds counts for something at least. Plus they fed us fried rice, jollof rice, omo tuo (rice balls), and then these yam balls that taste just like fried mashed potatoes! Yeah it was pretty fun they even put some in a rubber bag for us to take home with us. Sunday our ward did a Primary program. It is amazing to see the difference in the one here then the one I went to in Ashaiman. Kind of night and day for sure. These kids seemed to know the songs and they actually seemed to enjoy themselves. After church you saw kids having crackers and drinks though so I think they bribed them. Taking a page from the Ghanaian government on getting people to do what you want for sure.

This is Aunty Aggie. This lady sold me basically everything
I ate in Ashaiman. Plus was my "den-mother" I guess. Not
a member and doesn't want to hear about it. Too many
missionaries have tried.

This dog is from Ashaiman. I hate it, it hates me, so we were able to
coexist somewhat peacefully because we didn't want to try each other out.

When the office couple came and inspected our apartment they saw my bike and decided tape and things weren't very safety conscious so they brought me a new one. So now my bike is sitting at a bike shop since the new one they brought me is broken too. All in all it was a pretty good week. Hopefully this week will go forward just as nice. I miss seeing lawns myself. Most people here just have dirt.

love elder gibson