So we had a really good week. Probably should of guessed that when you first stop proselyting people are cracking Mexican jokes. I just liked the fact that most of the people here are worse off than those in Mexico so yeah it made me chuckle. Totally found the coolest casket. The guy must not of been able to afford a real caddy so he is getting buried in one. This carpentry shop has a specilty in caskets. They had bibles, bananas, screws, cars, just about everything. I want one, though hopefully I don't need to be worry about a coffin too soon.

the caddy casket.

Splits was cool. Abomosu wasn't as cool as I thought. It just sort of looked like every where else kind of. Just a bit smaller. I saw the Abu's house and even slept in the one they let the church use for missionaries but didn't actually meet them. Oh well it was some where new at least.

the bridge was out so you bet we jumped it. Had to get to the other side to teach a lesson.

So this week we tried doing something I have tried in the past. The part in Preach My Gospel where it says go about doing good and then basically massacre contacting everyone that could have possibly seen you doing it. We helped a lady mow her lawn, with a machete of course. I carried some guys five gallon can of petrol up a mountain. Picked up a street hawker's stuff. Just random things. The worst part was all the people we tried contacting into and then setting appointments with failed us. What was cool was the ripple effect. That is something that has been on my mind a lot. Mostly because it seems like a lot of times my companion and I put our efforts into one place like we feel we should and get nothing from it. Than out of no where something opens up or happens that we were completely no expecting. After I somewhat failed service finding it just seemed like people rolled in, literally in a week.

We had one lady who met with missionaries 4 or 5 years ago and got scared off because some story she heard. Her husband is a member in Accra and has worked on her. We literally ran into another lady whose mother is a member who wondered why the missionaries left right when she asked her mother to introduce her to her and her family. Just some things like that, that I feel are a direct result to what we did that seemed unfruitful. Hope you are making some ripples! Another sweet thing from this week was one day we got a member who recently was sort of laid off to go out with us. Walking past some salon he said he wanted to just say hi to his friend who owns it. Ends up sitting and teaching her, thankfully she spoke English. What was sweet was afterward she asked if the way that we sit down and learn is the same way we do at the church. Bottom line she is pretty interested so far so we'll see what happens.

So this week we had plenty of rain and even had to walk in it for a little bit. I enjoyed it at least. Though my feet got really cold. I learned this week there are white snails.

wading through the water

In Ghana they use to be reserved only for queen mothers of the tribes. Also learned from finding that white snail that a member breeds snails. Didn't know people did that. Kind of thought they just went and collected them. We're planning on going to his house this week and seeing just what it involves. We had a baptism this past Saturday. I was the baptist and was a little gullible. There was a big bug in the font an they told me it was poisonous. So yeah I am like give me a broom and stamp it to death. Yeah it wasn't poisonous they were just playing. Oops. The worst part of the baptism is that we included a child of record and then on Sunday at the confirmation I tried to get the father to confirm him. Too bad he wasn't an Elder. The sad part was the other men who were doing it said it so distastefully. Like he had a disease or something. Yeah just kind of bothered me.

Also there are a lot of missionaries getting sent home in my mission. Some of them fornicated and then others are basically considered dead weight because they are that lazy. Plus the two missionaries who are still in prison. The charges look like they will probably be dropped because the "victim" keeps changing her story and things like that. Who knows. I can say at least my companion and I are still doing well! I love you guys and hope you have a great week!

a family and some neighborhood kids. We baptized the lady holding the baby and two of the daughters. I'm wearing my Ghana crown.

This is our investigators child, Benedict. We get along. He hits me and I hit him back. Plus he loves to put on these plastic thingys and then just wave his hands really fast till they fly off.

Love
Elder G

So Happy Independence Day to everyone! Yeah I know it is late but get used to it. :D So probably the biggest news this week for me is that our apartment flooded twice. Yeah we live on the second floor by the way if you hadn't picked that up in some of my earlier emails. There were two really bad storms this past week. Broke some of the windows and rain just poured in so we came home to find standing water all over the place. The only thing that really was damaged was some papers I had in one of my suitcases. Which don't really take water at all which I was surprised to learn withstand water fairly well.

This week I was given a big hug by a drunk guy. He kept telling us he played the drums in our church and that we should go ask our overseer. Yeah it was great. At least his friend was interested in how patient we were so we contacted him. Hopefully will get to see him later this week. Uh yeah Ghana lost. I was sad. I mean after the US went out I was behind them. Plus lets just say they should of won, the most confident, or cocky, player choked. Another thing that really didn't go too well this week was I was really sick. Sis. Smith thought it was food poisioning but I didn't believe her. I just had really bad diarrehea, a headache, and an upset stomach. Thankfully I am all better now! Which is really good because since I am so far away if I hadn't started to feel better I would have been going to Accra so that Sister Smith could watch over me closer.

The missionaries invloved in the rape allegation have had their charges mostly dropped but are still in prison. Hopefully this week they will get out. Tomorrow night I'll be going on a split. Except it will be for like two days because of how far it is. It is in a place called Abomosu. It is pretty much where the church got its start in Ghana. Steven Abu and his wife live there. They are literally in the top 5 of being the first members in Ghana. So I'm excited to go there. So that is about all from here. I love you guys! Have a great one!

p.s. So I just was thinking about how two years ago I had my call and went to Grandma's house to open it and just wanted to thank everyone for making time to be there. Whether physically or through the phone! Love ya!

Hey I hope you had a GGGGGGRRRRRREEEEEAAAATTTTT weekend. I love you guys!

o here the big thing is that the US was beat by Ghana. I'm just tired of everyone trying to slap me on the back or something. Everybody has their story about it. My favorite was the people in the branch we went to yesterday. One of them prayed about how he was thankful for Heavenly Father letting the black stars beat obama's boys. The other guy took about 10 mins of his talk on it. I don't really care. When I see kids ditching school to play soccer in the streets then maybe I'll feel a little twinge of come on guys. Plus the fact since Ghana is the only African country still in EVERYONE is rooting for them. Other then that a fairly good week.

The whole rape story was announced on the radio up here. A lot of members and investigators started calling our phone wondering if it was us since the radio basically just said two missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are in prison with a description of missionaries having white shirts, ties,and black tags. The trip to the temple was good. I was sick so my timing couldn't of have been better since I didn't have to really work too much for two days. We went to the Accra Mall and well coming home will be a culture shock. I think more than even coming here. Everything there just made me feel out of place. Kind of like it just belongs to a different world. By the way the Accra Mall is like a mall back home. Even has a nike store.

At the mission home my tag got broken. I was a little sad. We've had some good times together. A missionary I hadn't seen for a long time gave me a really big hug and well it broke. What was even better was Saturday morning Sis. Smith made us pancakes! Like real from scratch pancakes! She even had strawberry jam and real butter. It was great. Except the whole being sick thing so I didn't feel like eating too much. Dang it! The temple was great. Though I didn't really like how rushed we were. After our interview with Pres. Smith we has about 20 mins to get to the temple and then after getting out of the temple we only had about 10 mins before we left. I like to take a little bit more time and just kind of slow down. It was good as always. Meet some girls from Utah State that had come for something. I wasn't really paying attention.

Sunday something really good happened. A member woman who is pregnant who we are on pretty good terms came up and asked for a blessing. Her husband has gone out with us a little bit but his job had made him to travel. She doesn't speak English too well and didn't tell me at least why she wanted a blessing. Elder Boateng anointed and I sealed. As I started the blessing I was a little lost of words but stuff just kept coming out of my mouth. Whatever that woman heard I know that it gave her some comfort because it didn't come from me. OH and Sunday church attendance was super low because everyone was out partying because Ghana won.


Something I have thought about kind of with examples is that the first impression really does matter. As a missionary especially. If we aren't going to give a good first then all the other times we will have to work to showing that what we are and do is good instead of being able to have the people we are meeting with gain more of a belief in what we teach. . Well I hope you guys are having a great week!
Love Elder Gibson

It is my mission birthday! 19 months have come and gone! Crazy. This one is going to be a little quick. We are having some technical difficulties with the net. First off I want to tell you that two missoinaries in my mission were arrested for a child rape/molestation thing. It happened in an old area of mine and just want you to know it isn't me in case you hear something. So this week pretty normal. Still getting killed by the world cup and people spreading rumors about the church. It is amazing to see that even the short time we have been here the activity of people working against the church has spiked up. It is a little frustrating because I just look that what we do isn't hurting anyone. They just want to cause problems because they don't understand,and most don't want to listen.

We got the conference ensign and yeah I must of had some kind of miracle happen on my mission because I love reading the messages. Couldn't stand them back home. Seriously wish I could have listened to Pres. Monson on Easter Morning. Reading it was great. This week we get to go to the temple! Yeah I'm stoked. The worst part is that it will be a two day extravaganza. Pretty much Friday and Saturday will be wiped as in proselyting time, but I'll get to stay in the mission home Friday night in Accra. Revisiting my first apartment! I want to try and sleep in the same bed. So yeah I think that is about it from me this week. Oh new game I started playing. The pigeons here are pretty tame a little slow. You betcha, punting pigeons! I got one to go higher then my head but I'm sure I can top that. Anyway I love you guys and hope you know that. Good luck with everything you have going on! Love you!

Love Elder Gibson

Well all I have to say is BOOOOOO to the World Cup. Though hey U.S.A. U.S.A. U.S.A. U.S.A.! Yeah so the World Cup is a bummer here. Mostly because all we do is walk around and usually only run into people who either don't speak English or don't like football. If they don't speak English we aren't allowed to teach them. We haven't met anyone that doesn't like Football yet. Besides a Jehovah's Witness who basically looked like she wanted to curse us for bothering her while washing. Sunday was pretty rough with Ghana having a game. Especially since about 2 mins. after Ghana won they told us to go to our apartments. I hope it isn't like that for every game. It'll be a long month if it is. Besides that this week went fairly well.

Guess how many bananas I had in my mouth.

This week we had couple missionaries come and do some abortion interviews for us. They are the Terry's from Las Vegas. Sister Terry gave me a chocolate chip cookie. It was heavenly. One of our investigators dashed us some bananas and avocados. That was awesome, until I realized I had eaten nearly half of them by myself. Saturday our baptism went really good. It was a new experience since it was kind of drizzling rain and the baptismal font is outside. I was glad that I didn't have to get in the water though. A member did the baptisms. Sunday we went to the farthest branch because they had branch conference. They told us it started at 10. We show up maybe 10-15 mins. early and they have been going for nearly a hour. They changed it so that they would be finished in time for the game. I didn't actually go to any of the classes. I was with the clerks teaching them how to use the new computer they got. It was fun mostly because when I'd do simple things, like adding a table in microsoft word, I'd get oooo's and awwww's.

Our baptism on Saturday. There are two different families. The women and the children. Then the man is just an older guy who we are still working on his family.

So about two weeks ago I noticed a lizard had jumped into our garbage can. I didn't really want to try and rumble around in the rubbage for him so I left him. Last night found out we still have our pet lizard. The garbage is high enough that he could get out but just doesn't. I think he likes the free meals he gets from our trash. I am thinking I'm going to name him if he sticks around much along. Well there is my week in a nutshell. Have a great one!


Love Trav

This is the wall of a member's house. To my back is a little ravine that falls pretty much straight down to wear they fetch their water in a little creek pretty much.

Just messing around waiting for our investigator is get to his house. He said 5 mins which turned into 25. I was going to get a coconut but they weren't ready.

This is a mountain in Nkawkaw. There is a waterfall, prayer camp, and a paragliding launch on it. They keep telling us they will invite us over on Monday to go up but yeah nothing.

This is where they paraglide from

Well another week has finished for us. Lots of rain this week. Especially last night. I went to sleep with a window open to get a little breeze so that I wouldn't be too damp in the morning. Then about 1 o'clock last night I woke up to my feet being completely wet. I guess a hurricane sort of storm, that is how it was described this morning on the radio we could hear downstairs, came through. Best part was I think the lightning was literally striking on top of our roof because our entire room was getting bathed in light every time there was a strike. Which would make sense since we are pretty much the tallest building around besides some of the churches and we have a cell tower pretty close too. So in one of the branches we have just basically been thumping our heads against some walls but we kind of decided that we just had to keep working regardless.

This week sort of was a bit of a turn around. We were walking up a street when a guy in a shop called us over. His name is Dickson and he was prepared by missionaries to be baptized but his work made him travel and he missed it and basically the missionaries left and so he quit coming. He was super cool and just sort of needed that little bit of a boost. We'll see how it goes. That same day we went and taught a guy that wanted to know more about the church from his girlfriend who is a member. From him we were able to meet like 3 or 4 of his buddies who all are kind of interesting. It was just cool to see how things sort of blossomed a little bit after just feeling like what we were doing was pointless. Um this week had another investigator come out that he has had suicidal tendencies. Even has tried unsuccessfully twice to end his life. I don't what it is about me but I keep meeting a lot of people who have contemplated or attempted killing themselves. It makes me very thankful nothing in my life has ever made me want to go down that road.

Multi tasking. Driving fufu and having a coordination meeting on the phone. I'm the white one. The dark one is my companion.

Saturday we went to zone conference. On the way there and way back saw a lady, we think she is crazy, completely naked just causing trouble for people driving. Yeah it was interesting. Zone Conference was good. Pres. Smith bore his testimony about the Savior and it was powerful. Way good. Had some fufu that day that even my companion was having a hard time with. Fufu is usually about the consistency of bread dough. This stuff was like dried up playdough. UGH. Yeah plus they gave us some part of the animal that neither of us recognized and tasted pretty rough. We made it through it though. The guy I sat next to at church yesterday was wearing snakeskin pants. I want a pair. Only because they were awesome. No idea where he found that many snakes because I'm sure he did them himself.

Sunday I had a pretty rough day. To start off I had some trouble with a flu junk kind of stuff. Along with that I had to tell a guy who has been coming to church for about 10years he still can't be baptized. He is having a little drinking problem. At least we got invited to watch a part of conference at a member's house. So that was a little bit of a bonus. Other then that everything is pretty normal. Hope you are all having a good week!

Here is a house where a family we are teaching lives. Yeah, she is super nice. Her husband is a farmer. They have it pretty rough.

This is walking down the street to that house.

This is the back view of that same street

Love Elder Gibson

Summer

A Member

Okay so here is the story about the pants. The first pair is really lame. I sat down on a pew in church. Afterward I got up and realized there was a screw that at the very back was sticking up and ripped my pants a pretty distance. It was all good because I was able to just act naturally till after the meeting so I could just change. The other ones are just more due to my own stupidity I guess. For Mom, Dad, Shelly, Austin, and Stacie . . . remember when we went hiking by Payson? Well . . . imagine a repeat but this time I wasn't racing Austin I was racing a stupid dog. Caught my pants on the way down and well those ones are finished. For those of you who weren't there ask them and they'll let you know. So here they don't really have running water. Serious. So we have a big polytank like the one Dad is putting in, except smaller. We ran out of water and then called our friendly fire service guy who comes and fills it. Except his truck was out of water and the bore hole they used was messed up somehow. So ended up not having water for a few days. Eventually when we got the water it is really dirty. We use our filter for everything.

A Large Worm (next to the cell phone for comparison)

I decided riding in cars makes me tired for some reason. I get out and it just feels like I was beat up. Makes for some interesting times when we have to go back and forth. It rained a little bit this week which is a major downer because it definitely slowed our week down. Some of the days just seemed as if they were never going to end. Friday we went out with a member who wants to prepare to go on mission. His name is George and he is a pretty cool guy. Wants to come to America. Told me I should find him a wife in Arizona or preferably Utah. He was a little disappointed when I told him all my sisters were married. That same day we met two white people! It was crazy! A man and a woman who are doctors from Scotland in some clinic around. The lady had some of the prettiest blue eyes. Things you miss. I also had my first confirmed bush meat. Talking straight up wild animals. They called it bush cat. Though they described it as being more like a wild dog. So pondering it over I guess I ate coyote. It was pretty tasty. Might try it when I get home. It was crazy to be able to taste the difference between it being wild though. It was really good though but pretty tough. Luckily for me I got a leg. Had a baptism on Friday. The font is outside in a .courtyard of the church house. From that on Sunday I got to do my first confirmation since coming on my mission.

In Accra the wards have enough elders so they let them get the experience. Here they don't have as many so we were invited. It was a good experience for me. Though I was a little nervous about messing it up. I mean its just salvation right? Something I have noticed being here and kind of hindsight of being back home. People totally look at coming to church, whether ours or another, as socializing prime time. Kind of frustrated me. I wanted to just tell them church isn't a party. That is pretty much the extent of my week. I love you guys hope everything is going fine.