Man, I uploaded my photos to this picasa thing and it is the greatest thing ever. Thing thing thing thing thing. Sorry for the vagueness. The term "this thing" is quite useful. For example if I ask someone here "please could you hand me the can opener?" there will be confusion; therefore we ask "can you hand me the thing?" and they give you the exact whatever you are asking for.
Thanks for the cool pictures.
I laughed so hard when I saw this picture
of Britt in her in school teacher polo that they all wear. Man she looks comfortable and freaking happy. She will be a great teacher.
Anywho, this week started off with the power going off. Living upstairs, it is really poopy when the power is off because the water flows really slow from the tap. Showering, washing, flushing all becomes a big long process. Luckily we filled up 2 big ol' garbage cans (new and clean) full of water to have just in case ;) However we used all of the water and then were forced to use the slow flowing tap. ULGH no patience. Eventually the water turned completely off in the whole area so the insanely slow drizzle of our tap stopped. No more drizzle. So luckily we have a big polytank outside full water, nice and stagnant but still wet and waterlike. So usually we get the water out by disconnecting the pvc pipe from our pump, HOWEVER this was not possible. I'm coming, long story. When our landlord/next door neighbors house lit on fire, also during a time when the area had no flowing water, they dismantled our polytank thingie and started using water from the polytank to put out the fire. The fire was put out, sweet! Then they later connected the polytank back to the pump leading to our house so our water would work again. HOWEVER they decided to use glue instead of screwing the pipe back to the pump. So now our spigot thingie magigger is now glued to our pump... So we can't get water from the pump UNLESS the power is on, which it wasn't, or we could climb on top and collect it by hand.
So I took down some of our clothes line and tied it to our biggest cooking pot. I used 2 strings so I could lower it down and then pour the water by myself (because my companion said he wasn't going to help because he didn't want to take a shower out of a bucket again, he would just wait until the power was back on sometime). So I used kinda like a pulley system without pulleys. I only spilled about 25% of the water haha. Finally my companion decided to help me pour the water and helped take up a couple buckets because he decided he now wanted to take a shower...now that most of the work was done...
Here are the pictures. I'm even wearing the cool shirt you made me! Post a picture of those on the blog so everyone can see how awesome you are and how sweet those are. Grandma Patsy would laugh.
Funny you mentioned the litttle red hen story in your last email, Elder Collings mentioned the same thing. Anywho life is great and right after my companion showered out of our bucket water, the power came back on and I got to enjoy nice flowing shower out of the showerhead. I never thought I would be so grateful for a freaking cold shower haha. It reminds me of a scripture, ya know the one that goes like "you are saved by grace AFTER ALL THAT YOU CAN DO." So we worked and tried everything we could to get our water and then we were blessed by having a normal shower, those of us who actually were "Doers.". The church is true.
Well anywho we went to the beach again and I interviewed a brother of a recent convert Redeemer. We had never met the kid before but Redeemer said he had gone to the church about 20 times. He was 10 years old. So I got there and he couldn't speak enough English. Drats. His mom and dad are not around and they all stay with the grandma who is ancient and doesn't speak English. We still could have done it but his family doesn't have enough money to make the $1.20 tro-tro ride to the church every week unless Redeemer is there and Redeemer is going back to boarding school. All the members in that community are going back to school at some college or something and can't look over his Spiritual growth so we are going to wait. Bummer. It is okay though. His time will come soon :)
Well my backpack finally gave out, died, is pushing up the daisy's, it is a late bag, the bag is no more, it is an EX-bag! So we went around and haggled to get a new one and I bought a big one from Disneyworld for 7 cedis. It has 2 mega big pockets and 2 smaller ones with a key chain holder clip on the inside of one of the pockets so I can hold my keys in a safe place. Excellent! You would approve.
I don't know how I feel about this next story. We were out contacting and I heard a Michael Buble song. I had mixed feelings. I got kinda really happy because he had that Sinatra 'I'm a scoundrel baby' type of voice going on, but also I kinda felt like I wanted to hit him. I did enjoy the real horns and real instruments I heard on the cd. Real is always nice. I do like Michael Buble, I would buy his cd's, but just not publicly or I would go to the register where there was a girl working rather than a guy. Or if there were only men working at the tellers I'd even it out with a Megadeth album or Brad Paisley album, something, or something that says "MAN" or "UNDERCOOKED MEAT STEAK!" Anywho, I heard some Michael Buble and it was nice.
Well the mission ran out of the Book of Mormon. The new office elders forgot to order some, WHOOPSIES! Our mission president got kinda mad at them. He told them, as a CEO of a buncha companies would, "We are in the Book of Mormon business, we can't ever be out of the Book of Mormon!" Looks like the distribution center made the same mistake as they were also out. It is a famine of Book of Mormons here in Ghana right now so say some prayers that we get some soon. I gave out the new clean copy I bought for my own personal study and my triple combination I bought for study.
My companion got tired this week and I found myself carrying mine and his bike up the hill. It reminded me of Grandpa Dad's boyscout leader stories when he found himself carrying like 3 packs and 1 kid up the mountain to the camp ground haha. Ah man. I keep working him. I have learned something that I will make sure my kid does so he does not end up being a namby pambie.
1. Play a sport of his choice (preferably not soccer, but if it is soccer he will not pout and fake an injury) and no football (I have seen too many of dad's football players destroy themselves at such a small age, no football. Flag football is okay )
A lot of nambie pambieness in this world would be eliminated if people played sports. Sports are a great teacher for life.
2. Learn a musical instrument (no icky reeds allowed, also trombone is out haha )
Gotta learn how to patiently do something that is freaking hard and then feel the success of making something beautiful or cool after all your struggles.
WE BAPTIZED DANIEL!!! It was freaking cool. His mom and sister came and it was just awesome. Daniel is one of the sweetest investigators ever because he faithfully read every place that we left him! He knows more than most people because he reads, he even read the conference ensign talks that I left him. Sweetness. The bishop asked me to confirm him and in the blessing it stated that he would be a light and a shining example that his family would always look towards for strength and that his family would notice our Heavenly Fathers love for us by watching Daniels example. Also that he would serve a full time mission. It was sweet.
Baptisms here are always hmm (said in Brooklyn accent) Wanna gimme an ulcer! We combined with the Odorkor ward and they scheduled it for 8 am (pukes! to early! haha just kidding it was okay) but we got there at 7:30 and there was nobody there with the key to the church and it wasn't open! Well finally around 8:15 somebody opened the church but there was no presiding bishopric members. Our candidates showed up around 8:20 and then the presiding members showed up around 8:45 and we started at 9... I included a picture that Elder Collings candidly took of how I feel just before every baptism. Notice how I'm clutching my head and my companion is lackadaisically pounding away on the piano haha.
Anywho there was a good result at the end.
Daniel is in the middle wearing the blue and white jersey.
Umm here is a story about oral tradition and how it twists things. There is a junction next to Shoprite, our only source of banana bread and mt. dew, that everyone called SCC junction. The other day Elder Zadi called it SDC junction and I was confused. He said that someone he knew said it was SDC rather than SCC. Well then everyone was saying different things and I had to get to the bottom of it so when we went to their area for interviews I noticed the signboard that said SPC, it stands for Secure Protection Council or something like that and their building is nearby; however if you call it SPC everyone will look at you like YOU are the freak and get confused.
Elder Collings is completely used to this as he is from Texas and the directions there are totally suck. He said that to get to his friends house you had to 'Take the junction at the dead racoon' as there used to be a dead raccoon that someone ran over and it laid there in the road for ages. THEN finally someone cleaned up the raccoon but the stain of the racoon's outline remained and thus became, "take the junction where the dead raccoon used to be, you'll see the stain." Ah I love the Utah grid system. Good ol' Brigham Young.
Well anywho we had 5 people come to church this week. This is odd because I didn't feel like we worked too hard. We had a buncha leadership training and stuff this week and interviews to do etc, so we weren't in the area much but still we had 5 come. This confuses me. Oh well. There should be some cool stuff coming soon!
Here is a cool road sign that makes us laugh all the time. We pluralize (is that a word?) everything here. Food stuff, becomes food stuffs so naturally road work becomes road works. It changes the whole meaning haha.
Well mom I'm glad you are busy and doing all those wicked awesome quilts. You are a good person. Man I feel really bad for Coach Cardoso. He is a great man and he reminds me of a skinny brazilian version of dad. I can't believe he lost his wife. Luckily we know that everything will be okay one day and that they will meet again. He is a member right? Man I'm glad we have the knowledge of the temple. The church is true. Keep helping coach Cardoso out.
Keep on watching your documentaries mom, thanks for the update on the Steinway piano maker freaks. I actually found it really interesting. Well anywho I gotta run. Keep putting the stuff I need to watch in the Brady pile.
Love you all. I'll talk to you next week.
Oh before we go, I love Elder Collings. We were brainstorming on how to have the ward help out with missionary work and he had the idea to make a ward directory with addresses and phone numbers, like they do at home. That way we could call people and have them help with the work etc and the ward leaders could call people etc. So we asked the bishop to see if he approved and boy did he ever. Elder Collings is using his google computer geek skills to make a sharable document through our google accounts. Live long and prosper! Ah I love geeks. Well more news about that later. Gotta go!
Love you all! Head bonks all around.
Love you Dad.
Love you mom.
Love ya britt butt!
