Brady's Mission to Ghana

Yo my people!

I am now at a cafe that is "correct" and has fast internet. It is still kinda slow but the keyboards are nice which always saves on typing time. It improves my gwam (does the nerd face) (for those non nerdy enough gwam is an acronym for gross words a minute). Anywho a lot has happened this week. I'll break it down into paragraphs.

Thanks for the birthday gift! The package was full of yummy goods. Elder Riding and I are enjoying. I gave out the cupcakes to my other missionary brothas in the apt. The american stuff is soo sweet, I almost can't take it. Like I had a cupcake and was like "holy sugary sweetness" it was kinda like I was punched in the face by a processed sugar boxing glove. The food here is mostly stuff fried in oil. It is just simple ingredients like plantain, yam, bread dough, etc then fry it in oil. The stews here are just like tomatoes, onions, ground nuts, lava hot pepper, knock you back to yesterday spicy ginger, and then a load of oil. Some of the mission the goodies will be well used. Thanks for the cards family, i like your drawings mom. Especially your Goats and snails. I like how you drew one of my ears pointy you little smart alec. We already ate some of the fettuccine sauce and I am snacking on the fruit snacks. Oh I also found some dr. pepper. Our district was being drove (driven?..) by the office managers back to our place when Elder Stout and I spotted a 12 pack of dr pepper being in a store so we yelled "HOLY DR PEPPER!!!" and the office managers were like "holy cow where!!!" then we drove around the roundabout and we jumped out of the car and paid 10$ for a 12 pack. Ah yes. It was a good birthday. Thanks tons everybody. I had fun with the confetti and will enjoy all the goods you left. I like the pics you guys mailed. I show those to my investigators or baptismal candidates.

Our investigator Auntie Maggie made me a big birthday fufu with crab, salmon (no bones in this piece of salmon, it was awesome!!!), talapia, dried fish, and light soup. IT was killer good. She is a nice lady. She is a hardcore Methodist though, soon though that should change. She has a big calling in her church and it is holding her down, someday though she will come. We are preparing her. She is so kind. She is like my ghana mother figure here. She is the big lady with her daughters (which daughters could kick your teeth in, don't mess. Their arms are like killa. They feed us and then they just pick up the whole dining table and put it on their head and refuse your help to open the door or anything). Here is a pic of elder riding after he smashed the crab and it exploded on him haha. You eat the whole crab here. It ain't bad really, it is actually quite good. I like the crab, salmon and goat ribs best; however the goat ribs can't still have the skin on it. The ribs are like pot roast with small ribs on it. My fav thing is the fried plantain!! YES!!!! Our recently baptized Annah Hammond keeps dashing us some, so soon when they ripen, we will enjoy!

Speaking of good muahaha we went to the store and got some nutella equivalent and some aka firework digestive biscuits (because the package looks like a firecracker and some ground nut paste (peanut butter) and dug in! OH how sweet it is. The chocolate here kicks. There are only like 3 ingredients in the chocolate here. Cocoa, milk, sugar. You can tell too. So gewd! It is straight up awesome, no stuff like hypoclorazine no 14pfz magiggy preserves causes kindey stones may cause back pain preservatives. I will have to give you some.

We were able to give an 11 year old girl, Bennedict, a baptismal date. Her mom and sister are going to be baptized on the 5th of December. OH how sweet it will be. We have been visiting them a lot and they are so kind. They made us banku and always give us a place to sit and are very good people (oh yeah we hardly ever teach a lesson inside, mostly just outside in the shade and sometimes people don't have chairs so we sit on our bike frames and teach). The gospel is changing their lives so very much already. The home is a place of peace and the family is growing closer together. Evelynn (the mom) embraced (hugged haha) Bennedict when she accepted to be baptized and they always like us to teach them together. It is sooo good. Filo likes the choir so we are bringing her a hymn book soon. Ah I'm so happy.

Some dudes invited us, as we were riding down the street, upstairs to teach them. We went upstairs and soon found out that we walked into a church (just some room in an appartment thingie) that had a small congregation of about 4 of 5 people and a pastor and a drunk pastors helper. I started with a prayer and they first asked us who Jesus Christ was and I said "the Son of God" and then they went nuts saying that capitalized letters don't mean literal son blah blah blah then we talked about Joseph Smith and stuff and praying to know what is right. He told me that I was taking James 1:5 out of context when I said that "if you want to know which church is true or if Joseph Smith was a prophet or if the Book of Mormon is true, then pray and you will know through the feelings that Holy Ghost will give you." I think he was scared of us so they just started being contentious and saying we need to understand the background of the scriptures before you can use them and you gotta study hebrew and use all versions of the bible to understand and then they kept contradicting themselves. I then felt a very bad spirit there. It was the spirit of contention. They shout when they preach and say very false things, when they prayed to close our discussion they were preaching loudly (almost screeming) and saying "bless these 2 brothers that they will come to know that Jesus and God the Father are 1 and that they will not be burned at the 2nd coming etc." They stir up that contentious Spirit so there is a palpable presence there that people confuse with the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost. There definitely was a spirit there, but it was a bad one. It is caused by being loud and by many people talking at once and when there is no reverence. Kinda like a noisy band room. We kept it clean and some of the congregation wanted some of our Joseph Smith pamphlets. We got their wheels in their head to turn and brought to their attention some questions like "how can I know which church is true?" and "I can tell if a prophet is good or bad by their fruits" etc. Anywho we tried. Elder Riding is very smart in the scriptures and could have finished them, but he kept the Spirit with us and didn't get into a scripture battle but just testified simply and plainly then we left. He is a good missionary.

There was a good talk given by our ward mission leader Bro Adum about music. I wrote down a lot of what he said and am researchig some more. Oh man how these people understand! Finally! I will finish my research and then write it in a fat email soon. It was a great talk. He mentioned D&C 136:28. Yum soo good.

I so want to see a michael Jackson movie. Sounds like it rocked! Start making that list Britt, of cool stuff I need to see. Glad you are all working hard on Britt's play. The students will benefit a lot from all of your hard work. La highem or huuudspa (hocks a loogie).

Elder Riding says I am getting better at listening to people. The trick is to let them have time to figure out the stuff in their mind. A lot of the questions we ask them hit them very deep and they have to process it. I thought that we had stumped them and I don't want them to feel bad so I jump in with where we can find the answer in the scriptures, but we just gotta sit there in palpably awkward silence for a sec and let them figure it out in their own head. They always do and then it works out great. He is a good trainer and so easy to get along with. He works hard and we are both mellow, plus we both like coke :) All the missionaries here down a lot of coke. It is probably the safest thing to drink. The Lord really knows me and sent me here on purpose. The Lords work is fueled by coke haha.

Transfers are cool. I'm staying here in Dansoman at the Mateheko ward for some time so no worries. We think at least until after Christmas. Usually you are in your first area for about 4-6 months. Nice. You just kinda get up and go where they send you.

Yeah my exercise program is get up do pushups (i can do 50 now before crappin' out, then do some more later. it is weird) then do some crunches, then i lay there and look at the ceiling and go "ulgh it is 6:30 in the morning" then do some jumping jacks and some stretching. I lift our bags of rice and stuff and do those tricep pushups using 2 chairs. I then do some leg lifts and then lay in the fetel position and go "ulgh it is so early" then I jump in the cold shower. If I get fat then I might run up and down our lane with some of the other elders but meh ya know.

The work is great. Elder riding is sending me an email I am making him type up. It is a journal entry about his mtc experience and some of his troubles when he first got to the MTC. You will need a diaper when reading it.

I love you family.

Keep on sending stuff and keep up the good work everyone.