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
