Baptism Day for Anna and Kojo.

Yo my family.

We were able to baptize Anna Hammond and Kojo Otu Larty on Saturday. They received the Holy Ghost on Sunday. It was so very sweet! Anna came early and was very happy, Kojo's mother and father came. It was sweet! Kojo is the little boy next to Anna in the attached photo. Anna is the bigger lady in the blue and then in the white. We did the baptism with the Kaneshi ward, they baptized 2 young girls. It was pretty cool. My companion and I were the witnesses to the baptism and another elder from Kaneshi baptized them. It was so nice to see the fruits of our labors. Reminds me of my missionary scripture in the D&C section 33:9-10. We are opening our mouths all the time, everywhere we go and the Lord is blessing us with sheaves upon our backs. It is like a boost to our work.

We got stinkin' tired that week but we are now re energized. We still will visit them often to make sure that they don't fall away and let them know that we care for them as individuals. Annah is so great, she reads faithfully everyday and is very kind. Kojo is funny. He is too skinny so I made it a goal to slip him a peanut butter (ground nut paste) banana sandwich (toasted of course) and was successful haha. I asked him a couple weeks ago if he received an answer after praying to know if the Book of Mormon was true and if what we have been teaching him was true and he said "I felt like I was a child of God." It was great. His prayers are growing and so is his testimony. It is so good. We are now working on his mom and dad. His mommy is the lady in the 2nd row of the white baptismal photo.

There is a lot of hard work that goes into each baptism on part of both the missionary and member. They have to read, study, ask, learn to recognize the Spirit and then act on what they feel. A lot of people feel that the church is true and accept the book of mormon and its' teachings but they do not act on it. There are many many churches here and they meet multiple times each day and a lot of people have mulitple callings in their churches so they feel very needed in their church and are not willing to let the social thing go. We have one sister who knows that it is true but is not willing to act and stop going to her church even though she knows that the church is correct. We will keep working to help her.

Oh funny story with Kojo, I was teaching him the word of wisdom and I told him about the no tea and coffee thing and he told me that he drank tea. I asked him if he was willing to give it up to be baptized and receive the Holy Ghost and open the gate to the heaven etc and he said he was. I later learned that "tea" here referes to things like lipton tea and also milo, a chocolate drink. I felt terrible. I realized I just asked someone to give up hot chocolate and chocolate powder drinks. That is like saying "are you willing to give up chocolate milk and stephens hot cocoa and all that chocolatey goodness? The Lord knows your body very well and doesn't want you to drink that." In other words "no more happiness" haha. We cleared that up very quickly.

We realized that on Sunday that we were working very hard and after Kojo and Anna were baptized that we were focusing on other people and moving forward and were planning in our planner about the upcoming week and takin' care of business. I read a Prez Monson talk from the conference awhile ago called "finding joy in the journey" (does Asian sitting on a rock pose while going "oaaahh" while drawing those Asian letters on that rice paper. How suzuki does that talk title sound?) and it pretty much talked about the Suzuki method and how you need to find joy today because you will have a bunch of empty yesterdays if you don't enjoy the journey (Doing ching doing doing on a japanese instrument). I then told my companion that we have much need to rejoice so I got some cokes and we sat back and celebrated a bit and goofed around and rejoiced because we are doin it! So just a thought, find joy always in what you are doing. Sometimes you just need to celebrate and rejoice and be joyful. Kinda like in 1st Nephi 21:13 "...break forth into singing, O mountains: for they shall be smitten no more..." We have a great need to rejoice. They did it!!! WOHOO! (homer simpson)

So I am starting to enjoy the food here. I can almost finish that gross skin stuff. I had some cow skin the other day, if you wan't to know what it tastes like then go outside and lick a cow and that is the right taste, and I finished it. I had some banku yesterday with some chicken and ground nut soup. It was stinkin good. I really enjoy the banku, it is a fermented corn dough plus casava dough thing. It is great. Fufu is really really filling and starchy... I prefer the banku. They have this other stuff, i forgot what it is called but it means "face the wall" in twi, and it is very good as well. The people here like to feed us and they feed us in like mammoth sized portions. So I didn't spend a lot of money this week so I am going to buy a lot of pineapple and cokes! We are going to celebrate again with our district because we are going to make our goal of 7 baptisms this transfer (6 weeks) and get some fan ice, coke and pineapple. Excellent Smithers! (mr burns.)

I have now advanced to Obroni tutu (white man with black skin) vs. Obroni koko (white man with red skin). I am pretty dark, all my companions that have been here awhile and don't use sunscreen are burnt red. I will always buy sunscreen and solid roll on deodorant no matter how much it costs. Sun burns are no good. The kids here called us Obama the other day... I can't escape him! Oh I can't escape phil collins! AHHHH I am halfway around the world and what do I hear? Phil collins all over the place. There is no escape. Trapped, trapped like rats (can't remember what movie thats from, but it definately is from one. Help me out Brit;) )

Yeah do the spook alley, for the children!!! Sad story, there is no halloween here... or thanksgiving. I guess Christmas is big here though so we will see. Hope my britts costume goes well. All Dave needs to do to be c3po is put on a helmet and paint himself gold haha. "I just don't understand it" (c3po).

Glad all is going well with Grandma's surgery. She is a trooper.

We cleaned the apartment today and bought some tupperware. My comp and I got sick of the cockroaches and so we got some sealed containers and some legit actual rags to dry off our plates so we can store them in the tupperware. This way I know my plate is not an arena for cockroaches to boogie in. We went to this walmart type of place. It was weird, i think it was called metcome. I am excited for my clean clean tupperware. Oh tomorrow I am going to get some "Ayo" for breakfast. THis lady comes buy and sells it. We call her over and help her get the bowl off her head and she pours it into our bowls. It is like corn on the cob mixed with oatmeal. It is really good....if you add oceans of sugar and a banana on it ;)

Thanks for the thought dad. THe work is going good. Glad to see you are all doing well. When you are happy, I am happy.

WHat is this? Dad typing fast? I'll believe it when I see it. I still think he kinda spasms around when he double clicks.

Hey on Sunday we are going to watch 2 hours of conference. Yahoo! Soon we will get the magazine as well. I wanna read it. Oh go check out mosiah 5:2. Talks about after we hear the prophet's voice, we should change they way we live. Not just listen and go "ah that was nice. Hey, beer me" but rather change for the better (ulgh that is a lyric from one of britts plays, "I have been changed for the better" or something sappy like that)

Thanks for studying the scriptures family. Hope you get a runnin' start on your "moseltoff-ing (or however you spell it)" (spits over shoulder)

So I am doing good. I am healthy, eating a vitamin every once in awhile, eating as good as I can, exercising, sleeping in a mosquito net, taking my doxycylcline mosquito pills and sleeping well. I'm doing good. Don't worry. I'm as healthy as... an ox... an American ox, not the sickly ones here haah.

oh 1 last funny. We taught this dude, we probably will baptize him, and he wanted us to teach his bros so he took us over to this place and called over 24 kids and some adults. IT was like an ocean of kids, the family here includes extended family. We then taught them about a prophet and Jesus. It was funny. Some darn cat started eating my shoe during the lesson.

Cool, glad you are all doing well. Gotta run. Sorry I can't respond to everything or all the family but I like to read your stuff, keep on sending it.

I love you all, thanks for your prayers. Keep on going to the temple and doing what is right. Miss you. I'll be home in no time, i need to be here right now though. Talk to you soon.

Elda Bills

    Back row:

    Kojo’s mom.
    Front row:
    Girl getting baptised, Anna Hammond, Kojo Out Larty,
    girl getting baptised, Elder Bills.

    Elder Riding, Anna Hammond, Elder Bills

2 baptisms for this Saturday, haircut, and I fufu'd my fufu.

Hello my hobbit family, plus Gandolf the tall one (who is part of my family as well)

Glad dad is using his power tools and feeling like a man. I feel like a lone white man here, a smelly sweaty white man with sore hands from washing clothes haha. I was offered my first wife this week. Elder Stout, my district leader from Price Utah, has been offered around 750 wives now. I will catch up to him soon;) I had to get my hair cut because it was getting a little shabby so I went to the barber and they don't really use scissors here, just the shavers. So they attempted to do a longer haircut but it was no good so I just got the african cut. My hair is short now, kinda like a butch military "I shoot guns and drink redbull and like to lift weights and drink protein shakes" type of hair cut but a little longer. It ain't bad. Even so I got offered a wife right after I got it cut so no biggie. Our investigators were proud that I am accepting the culture. I also save money on soap here now. I was going to buy shampoo and it is expensive so I just bought some bar soap and use that now, it works out. Oh speaking of showers, the water is "holy cow AH I'M AWAKE" freezing. Keeps the showers short and sweet. We shower in little spurts to conserve water and diminish the shocking stab in the back arm flailing cold screams.

The work is going good. 2 baptisms for this Saturday at 10 AM at the 1st light (referring to the traffic light) Kaneshi chapel. Kojo Larte (14 year old boy) and Annah (50 year old lady). It is gonna be sweet. They are both doing well. Annah read almost the whole Liahona magazine we brought over, the conference additon one, and is becoming a busy bee. She is getting another job now and working hard. It is cool to see how the gospel turns one into a hard worker and even her face is brighter, it is hard to explain.
Also thanks mom for the ox circle thingie. It was great. I dig it. As you explained, the 12 tribe ox make a circle around the baby ox (or the newly baptized or those preparing for baptism). We have seen how Satan is trying hard on these people now that they have accepted to be baptized. We (the house of Israel, having been adopted into the house at baptism) have to really work hard to protect them from the fiery darts of Satan (off topic quote - "in high school they used to call me the dart master, or something close to that anyway..." - guybrush threepwood). We have been visiting them almost every day because we know that Satan is trying hard, but we are trying harder.

The soccer players here are pretty stinkin good. Even so the Ghana team the "black stars" just won the world cup for the players under 20. They beat Brazil. Everyone freaked out. We don't teach much during football games here. It is funny to hear the whole city go "goal!!!!" when we are walking about. That is when we go "oh great, nobody is going to let us in right now. Better go contacting on the street." When we do teach during football games, the lessons are rushed and the people are not focusing. Since the football game was a big, also this week we have seen how alcohol is Satans best friend. One of our members came to us drunk. He is recently baptized and we had to help him. He was a totally different person. He was supposed to go teach with us but he could not even walk, he fell over in his house and I had to catch him. We left him some scriptures to read and left him there because you can't teach a drunk person. We were heartbroken. Hopefully he will change. I was so upset.

On the good side we had 10 new investigators show up to church yesterday. It was crazy. Sacrament attendance was 66 and 10 of them were the new investigators. The Lord blessed us sooo much. I think it was because we were trying our hardest every day and were dirt tired by the end of each day and we are striving to keep all the mission rules. Not to say that people do not have their agency, people can choose to come or not, but I know the Lord had a great hand in them coming. It was sweet! We even got a family to come! I was pumped. This guy always gives us bananas right of the tree for us. He rules. However he did offer us some "palm juice" which comes straight out of the palm tree after you cut it down and drain it. We took some and after 3 sips I was like hmmm something about this tastes a little bit like that non alcoholic beer stuff "malta" they serve us here but with a little something extra, kinda like marinating meat mixed with malta and butt. I soon found out palm juice is also called "palm wine." oooops... We repented. We put it down and said "thank you tons, it is too sweet for us..." Haha.

The trolley eh? IS the food good? Oh dude good food story for ya. I was at a members house, during a split while our investigator was being interviewed by our district leader Elder Stout, and she fed us the biggest fufu ever. It was fu fu with this big ol soup with loads of fish. Elder Botwe (bow tree, from Ghana) he usually stores some polybags on him so we can stow away the food we can't eat so the people don't get offended. You gotta eat it all here. Usually we just sneakily slide it in and shove it in our polybag and then into our backpacks, but no polybag today. Last time we had crab (whole shell and all, the legs were good surprisingly. The skull was pretty okay but I saw him lookin’ at me and I felt sad. They are pretty good whole though, no complaints.) So we were forced to shove all of this fufu and stew and fish down. I shoved most of it down but we could not finish, it was not humanly possible. We have this purewater sachets (sa-shay, sounds french) they give us so we drank one and started to shove some stew and fish in it, however it was leaking so we needed another. I drank down this other sachet but my body said "you idiot, i'm not taking this much food. You have 20 seconds before you puke." So I told my companion I was going to throw up very soon and there is no stopping it. So we ran outside and a little girl told me where to puke and I spewed a load of fufu. haha. I felt bad but the lady just laughed and swept it up, luckily it was on a dirt road so you just mix some dirt with it and clean up is a breeze. She was happy and offered me some banku to replace the fufu I fufu'd. Banku is like fufu but rather than pounded casava and plantain it is fermented corn dough. I had to decline. They are nice around here. I took a picture of us and the family right after (see attached)
(Also here is a pic of me pounding some fufu, this was at the goat skin and kissme snail meal.)

Darn grandma and her breaking bones on trips. She is "the Colonel" though and is tougher than General Patton mixed with Chuck Norris. Glad they are still having fun.

Weirdest cultural thing is that people hiss at you when they want you to come over and talk to them. That or make a kissing sound. It is nothing demeaning or perverted but just a way to call you over because those sounds carry across the top of everything. Also everyone here calls us "obroni" which means white man. I am now getting a hold of some of the language and call them "obebeni" which means "black man" and it is totally appropriate. Sounds racist eh? Well it ain't here. Oh and people keep asking me about Obama and I just say "yeah, he is my president." The people love him over here. They even have a cracker named after him. The Obama Cracker. It is nuts. No worries I am not saying anything political whatsoever. I am staying neutral.

Yeah we live really close to the Dansoman roundabout. It is cool. Next week I'll send a pic of our place to you or something.

We got to go to the temple and it was cool. There are some really good people here. I hope ya'll have a good week and have fun at the Draper temple. Thanks for doing the scripture study. I'm reading up on the great apostasy in Jesus the Christ and am learning a lot. We even are teaching some Jehovah's Witnesses soon. They are actually doing a favor for us in the field. When people find out that we are not Jehovah's Witnesses, they let us come right in and are so very happy haha. They are preparing the investigators for us in a way haha.

You can just send my stuff to the mission home, the office runs the mail every 3 weeks over to us so just send it there. That is the only way to get it to us.

Nice. The church is true. Oh also I need mom and britts bust, waist, shoulder to waist, kaba length (research this for me, I don't have time to figure out what that means), shoulder to hip length, sleeve length, around your arm, across back and slit length... Just wondering, no reason...

Have fun my family!

Elder Bills

Reactivation assignment, teaching Anna and Kojo, & my first ghana dinner (second email from the field)

Hey family. I made a new email because my old one was too slow.

So glad to hear you are all doing the whole "tradition" thing for Britt’s Fiddler on the Roof play (throws up arms in the air). I too am doing the "tradition" thing. The people here are very nice and accept Jesus a lot. They always let you in however, as Brittni said in her email, it is hard to do keep people active. Families here are not just 1 religion. There are multiple religions under 1 roof. Scarcely is a husband and wife in the same church. They have church multiple times a week and all have very active callings in their church. There is a different church every couple of feet here. We are on a reactivation assignment from the stake prez. We located a goldmine on how to find them. We knocked on a door and found this dude who was a pioneer in the church in Ghana, however he is inactive as well. After sharing a message with him, he agreed to take us around to all the inactives in the area. SWEET! So we are using the inactives to find the inactives. Weird I know. It works out in mysterious ways.

In order for people not to fall away, they need fellow-shippers. What better fellow-shippers than a whole family!!! I really want to teach families. It is how the gospel works. I started going on a highlighting crazy fest in the Book of Mormon and highlighted everything in purple that relates on how the gospel blesses the family and stuff. Even in the first couple chapters of 1st Nephi I found a bunch of stuff relating to family. So family, do scripture study everyday from the Book of Mormon. Cool? This way everything will work out better. Deal? Nice. Promise?

Kojo Larte Otu and Anna Hammond both have baptismal dates. YES! We are teaching Kojo's dad and hopefully will baptise him, that way Kojo, his bro and dad will be members and they will not fall. Kojo is 14 and looks like he is 9. All the people here are way older than they look. I made it a goal this week to make kojo a sandwich. He needs some peanut butter. Anna is a sweet lady who reminds me of Grandma Patsy. She is so sweet and loves the gospel.

So we have to wash our clothes in a bucket here and dry them on a string.
Takes forever. BOO! I will learn how to get all the soap out of my clothes soon I hope, they are still stiff sometimes haha. My companion Elder Riding (white dude from Payson) is teaching me. I'll learn. Elder Riding is a sweet dude, he works hard. I love him right now because he made me pancakes while I was washing my clothes. Those acts of tiny service really make a difference. We get home every night and then plan for the next day and then crash the second our heads hit the pillow. We work hard. I figured out how to not get so wasted. The key is to teach more and bike less. Elder Riding likes to do just that, ride around all over. I, having guitar teacher stamina, like to teach more. I will just teach a lesson, sit down enjoy some pure water (sold in a little baggy here, most families give you some) and then I'll go right next door and teach again. Less traveling around and more teaching! It works. I want to focus on building a lot of members in a small area and then branch out, like what Paul did. Teach Jerusalem first, then the Jerusalem area, then branch out. Creates a strong community, rather than just polka dotting the area with members. Dig?

The people here like it when you try to accept their culture and adapt. I am learning words small small (that’s what they say here "small small" meaning little by little or a little bit) like "medasaye" (thank you) etc. I got invited over for my first fufu yesterday. And yes Brit we have to eat the goats... The food is challenging, let me give you an example. The meal started out with me pounding the fufu with this big ol stick thingie, i got blisters on my hand (pictures soon to come, maybe next email), then they cooked up some tiny snails (called "kissme", clever eh?) then we had some fish with the bones and all, and that is all served on top of the fufu with some stew of some sort. Yesterday it was palm nut soup. Also they gave us some satan goat skin... You gotta eat it or it is extremely rude because people don't have much and they are offering you a lot of food, it is a great sacrifice. The snails were fine, kinda like a gummy worm mixed with chicken taste. The fish is great. The fufu blows. Stew is weird. The goat skin is hhhmm very poo. The trick is not to chew anything haha. I kinda puked in my mouth eating the skin, luckily nobody saw except my companion. I almost finished my whole huge bowl. He said I did good, everyone almost pukes he says. I will get used to it.
The freaking fruit here is freaking fantastic! The pineapple is the best thing EVER!!! Also the bananas and the oranges kick! We seem to get a never ending supply of fruit from people we teach. For instance we taught the Roland family a couple days ago and they gave us a whole bag of oranges and then this dude went in the backyard and cut us off a whole branch of bananas still on the tree type of thing. They are good. I am doing okay here.

At the apartment (cockroach infested haha) we make mostly normal food. I located some "ground nut paste" kinda peanut butter thing. It is good but the oil and peanut thing separate so you gotta stir it for a while to have it resemble something kinda like peanut butter, you gotta add sugar though.
It is really thick and oily. Hard to explain. The bread here is like pure sugar, very nummy. We make lots of rice and stuff. We make stew with vegetables and things. My fav thing is to cook oats and add the nummy fruit, add a bum load of sugar, get some sugar bread and put a cooked egg on it and then pour some milk on the oatmeal. oh yeah, milk here does not exist. You gotta buy icky powder and add it to water or get some evaporated milk or something. I just do the powder because it is cheap. I just bought some chocolate powder stuff, so it'll be good. All is well.

My room is pretty cockroach free, they don't bug us. They hang out behind the sink, there is a gap between the wall and stuff. I’m a clean freak i guess so we bought some bleach and are going to clean out the cupboards and make a place to store the dishes, instead of just the drying rack, so the cockroaches won't be hanging around the dishes. This will mean I won't have to keep washing the dishes before, after, during use haha. The apartment is getting nicer. No hot water for showers, it wakes me up really fast.

WE are going to the temple friday, so i will get that name you sent me with done mom. Let grandma pepsi know ;) You can keep sending letters. Email time is limited. I don't have enough time to write everyone so i'll just send one big email out like this every week okay?

Glad dad is having fun with his computer. Hopefully he will rock on the computer when I get back. Glad to see he is saving lives as usual. Keep up the hard work dad. Glad grandpa and grandma carol and having fun on their trips. Glad to see grandpa is still doing stuff like putting spaghetti in the freezer haha. Thanks dad for the info. Keep on helping britt and mom by building all the stuff they need, they are very important. Keep on chugging.
Remember dad to study the book of mormon nightly with mom, don't just listen to the cd but study it with each other and discuss sections. Take a purple pencil and mark all the places you read that have to do with the gospel blessing the family. I feel strongly that I should ask you to do that. Also Brit do the same with Dave, cool?

How is the hobbit door coming?

The homes here are very humble, small, hot, nothing much in them, no cars really for most people. The ward is brand new. They do not have a 2nd counselor or secretary because nobody is qualified to do so. Most people are new. There are a few select people that have all the responsibility.
Stressful. We will help as much as we can. It is cool being a missionary. We have this extra power to help and organize stuff, it is weird to explain.
During church a class was discussing the Book of Mormon and people were stating things that it wasn't necessary to read it and I stood up and declared Joseph Smiths testimony, in the introduction of the Book of Mormon, very boldly and then chastised people a little bit and declared the need to read it and then sat down. I was thinking "what just happened?"
People actually listened and were changed. It is weird what happens. I don't usually do stuff like that.

Well no worries. I am doing well. I am learning the ways and stuff. Keep on rockin family.
You all rock!
Keep sending letters. I don’t have enough time to read everything in detail on email, now that I started this new email though I might have more time, less errors.

Church is true.
Love you all.
Brady or Elder Bills

Out of the MTC and in the field now, in the Mataheko area, teaching a lot of "Happy People" (first email from the field)

Hello my family!!!
I have been out in the field for the past 6 days. They make us use this email because the church ones don't work out here or something...We are in a shadow or something... they explained it but I still don't understand but whatever. So I will be using this email address for my mission.
I am serving out here in the Mataheko mission which covers some areas such as Mataheko, dansoman, kum cha cha, wesley grammer school, asorydownho and a bunch of other places. It is hard to find addresses here because people say 'hey i live by the roundabout' and somehow people know what that means... You usually meet people at a landmark like the roundabout and then they walk you to their house. Then you gotta write it down in your planner so you know how to get there next time. Oh and there always is a next time.

We teach around 7-9 lessons per day and contact 25 people a day discussing the gospel briefly and invite them to church or give them a pamphlet or something like that. Getting inside houses to teach is pretty easy, all you gotta do is mention 'Jesus Christ' and they let you in and give you 'pure water' which is purified water in a little sealed plastic bag you buy from the store. All we usually gotta say is 'hey we are from the Church of Jesus Christ of Lat-' then they say 'Church of Jesus Christ! Come on in.' We are spoiled. The only problem we are facing is that people here accept all religion as true, such as LDS is true, the catholics are true, the crystal fire church is true, the lutherans are true, methodists are true etc etc etc. (There is a lot of etc, there is a different church every block) However since there are so many churches, we can talk about Joseph Smith not knowing about which church was true when there were a lot to choose from. They really relate to that Joseph Smith story.

The people here love the Bible and are... the only way I can describe them is by calling them 'A happy people.'
Nobody has a lot here but they are still happy, kind, care about their neighbors etc. People here have called us 'men of God,' 'Apostles of the Lord,' 'Elders (pronounced eldahs), 'ministers,' 'preacher man' etc. They all respect us. All the little children call us white guys 'obrunies' which means 'white man' or something like that. They all run up to you and want to play, or want you to buy them something haha. There is this rumor that all white people are filthy rich and that the LDS church members are wealthy and they give you nice clothes to wear at church, take you to America or around the world etc.

We have 1 baptismal date set up for our good friend Annah, a local lady who we have taught 4 or 5 lessons to and she totally accepts the gospel. We almost died from exhaustion trying to get her to church because she has a foot problem, which is healing thank goodness, and had to schedule some church members to give her a ride. Long story short, there were people who were going to get her but couldn't then could then couldn't but finally we got her there and she said 'your meetings are okay with me' and we went back over to her place right after church. We then answered her questions about why we use water instead of bread, that marriage is part of Gods plan. She has accepted everything. The word of wisdom and gayness is not a big problem out here, probably because those things are to expesive and nobody is gay out here. The problem is there are a lot of polygamists and adultry. Her husband has a girlfriend and we asked her if her husband was married to her as well as the girlfriend. She said no. THank goodness. We can't baptize polygamists, church rule.

AAAHH! THe computer freaked out and I lost this huge good detailed email. I will briefly summarize.

We are teaching this boy Kojo Larte who is 14, who looks like he is 9. He accepted to be baptized. We taught him 4 days out of the 6 so far. We taught him how to pray and he is doing well. He prayed to know if the book of mormon and church was true and he said that the holy ghost told him that ' he was a child of God.' I kinda cried. Actually I cry everday here with something like that. Darn these people and their humbleness. Kojo has a bro who he lives with who is a member. Kojo went to church and got sick and asked me to give him a priesthood blessing. I gave one to him, cried the whole time. Then a new convert who rocks, peter, took him home. Kojo was doing great and we met his dad and his dad said it was okay for him to be baptized. We taught his dad as well and he will continue to meet with the missionaries. The Lord sets up all the work for us. I am making kojo a peanut butter sandwhich this week.

The work is very easy, just talk to everyone and obey the rules and listen to the Spirit. However the culture is new and difficult at times. The food is new but they have coke! i'll be okay. The roads are hard to bike on, they are just dirt and we have to avoid chickens, goats etc. I am doing great though.

Glad you are all doing well, thanks mom for your smart alec comments. Thanks dad for your words and keep going to the temple with mom. Brit, eat sunchips for me and watch the office. Dave, pinch brits arm flab for me.
Grandma, thanks for the poem, you are a smarty like mom.

The church is true. gotta go. time is up.
Long email next time.
Love how all your letters mentioned hobbit doors and salsa.
Brady Bills

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Just a note from family: Brady has never been a fan of goats. There was this goat at a farm that tried to ram the fence whenever it saw Brady. Every year we would walk past the goats and they would make noise when they saw him and try to ram the fence with their horns. Brady would either take off running or avoid the goat area completely. Looks like he will see lots of goats in Ghana.