WEEK 13: This is Ghana

Hello friends! So I realized thatI haven't said much about what Africa is like so let me give you all a taste of Ghana, the bitter and the sweet. HAHAHA. So let me start from what you will notice right away. The weather. It is hot and very very humid! Like I'm serious. If you are not comfortable with constant back and pit sweat then Ghana is not the place for you! haha. 

After I noticed the temperature I was taken to our 5 start apartment. Every room comes with its own complimentary rat and your favorite assortment of bugs(spiders,cockroaches, little flies, big flies, mosquitoes, maggots, ants, etc..). You wake up every morning to find at least five new mosquito bites every day that itch like crazy, and then when you go to the kitchen you find that cockroaches are kissing the food you forgot to completely cover up the night before.  You have to take a Doxy pill every morning or you WILL get malaria. Power goes out like three times a day at random times but it seems to like to target me when I go to email on Mondays haha. 

With food there are lots of little snacks but there aren't very many options as far as meals go. They have 3 basic choices to choose. These include Banku, Fufu, and Rice. When you eat your food you can't use your left hand, actually just forget you have a left hand altogether cuz if you ever use it they get offended. 

As soon as you walk out the door you will see that there are apostate churches on every corner paired with loud speakers so that they can blast there chants and prayers for all to hear. If that's not enough to give you a headache just walk a little farther and you will find pastors with their own speakers and microphones screaming false doctrine and telling the people to give them money. The 7 -9 hour proselyting days are no small task because the hard walk paired with the sun makes it quite the physical effort. Roads, paths and walkways leading to everyone's houses are not paved or even so you are frequently finding yourself trekking uphill on loose gravel and large rocks. As you are walking along you will see trash everywhere because the people just throw anything on the ground when they are done with it. There are chickens running around everywhere along with goats, cows and dogs. The dogs are not like dogs in the US though, they are usually very timid and won't come near you. 

It's not a rare occurrence to see someone at any given time pull down their pants and do their business for all to see. The other day I even saw a topless older lady just walking around in public as if it were completely normal haha. The BO and hygiene of those here is poor and you might want to breathe out of your mouth if you get to close to someone in a trocho or something. The language barrier can be tough considering we are called to speak English in a place that is primarily Twi. I know this is a common thing with missionaries who are called to another language but at least they have a companion who usually knows the language well so teaching lessons isn't too much of a problem. For us we are called to English and told not to spend our time studying or learning Twi, which makes it very hard when neither companion can communicate with half of Ghanas population. 

Probably the biggest issue I have faced in Ghana though is honesty. For some reason it seems honesty is not important to them at all. However even though there are some bitter parts of Ghana the sweet part is very much present. 

The culture for the most part is very nice, chill and just layed back. The people are usually a highlight due to their friendliness, openness and how welcoming they are. In fact I can't go a day without receiving a friendly smile and a welcome from a stranger. Haha even the kids love us. Everyone seems to like whites however it does get a little annoying to hear "oburoni" (white man)a million time a day, but it's okay.  It's just them saying hello. A really funny part about the people of Ghana is everyone believes very strongly in witches and wizards and any time anything bad happens they blame it on them haha! In fact an investigator was naming all the witches in her compound that she knew lol. The people are actually very funny. I actually think the people are going to be whoI will end up missing most of all. I have already formed a lot of friendships I hope will be life long. 

Everywhere you go you will see someone pounding fufu and they always laugh when I offer to help them. Then when I show that I know how they seem shocked. They love feeding white people their cultural food. It makes their day to see a couple of white boys eating fufu, or banku or something. And fufu is actually pretty good. I tried "fufu" from an African restaurant before I left but it really wasn't real fufu. But authentic fufu is really nice. It's usually the soup that is the problem, but every now and then we get some amazing soup so its awesome! 

Everyone loves Christ and is almost always willing to listen to what we have to share. Most people are afraid of our church at first because they think saint means some kind of witchcraft of magic or something idk. but once we explain it they seem interested to learn. I have had a hard start to baptisms but most people do in their training, but this week I had 1 and I have about 3 more upcoming that are pretty sure. 

This mission is sweet because the baptisms usually come weekly or every other for a lot of missionaries. I have heard of missionaries with 20 plus baptisms throughout their mission. The African kids are very sweet and cute and fun to play with.  If you ask any Ghanaian they will tell you all their people care about is money but so far from what I have seen I don't think that's true. Yes I have gotten ripped off a few times in fact once really recently buuuut a lot of times the people are very generous. I have had many people offer to pay for my food even though they don't have much money themselves. Many times I have gotten in a taxi and the person sitting next to me insists to pay for me. It has even happened a few times that the driver picks us up from a far place and drops us off right at our apartment and says no charge. So yes people from Ghana are very awesome and this mission is very very sweet. 

I'm running out of time so I don't have time to list all the sweet things, but trust me it actually does far out weigh the bitter even though it may not sound like it from this email. I love my mission very much.  Even though things like air conditioning, hot running water and constant  power that is  standard for missions in America don't exist for my mission, I still believe my mission is the best mission in the world!

As far as how my week was, it was great!  We were able to find a few more serious people to teach so my next companion and I will have plenty to teach. We were suppose to have 2 baptisms on Saturday however the member who is the guardian of this boy asked us to wait two more weeks. He is definitely ready to be baptized but the member just wants to take some time to read scriptures with this boy and make sure he understands baptism very well before he makes this sacred covenant.  

So this week we had to settle for 1 baptism. Lol this baptism was stressful! The pump that fills up the baptism font for some reason wasn't working so we had to fill it up manually by usuing buckets, fetching water and then pulling it into the font. An hour and a half before the baptism there still wasn't enough water to perform the ordinance! We were fetching water for 4 hours already! The bad part was the members had to start and prepare and clean the chapel before the service started, the bishop had to go get Peter(who was being baptized) and my companion had to help the ward mission leader with other preparations, so for the last hour and a half I had to do my best to try and fill it up by myself. Keep in mind Peter is probably 300 plus pounds so we needed plenty of water for the baptism to work. So I was running back and forth with buckets trying to fill this dang thing haha. When the service started it still wasnt ready, so for the 30 minutes they where doing prayer and song and getting Peter ready, I had to go in overdrive to fill that thing up. Finally Peter came outside and I was able to get that thing full enough for it to work for him. ughh so stressful. I was sweating a lot lol. buut the baptism was succesful and Peter had a very positive experience. On Sunday he received the Holy Ghost.  It was very special. Soo yeah that was a great end to my week. 

Well I have written enough this week lol! All is well, life is sweet!!

Elder Pace