June 19, 2017
Study Time
Right now, I’m pouring my heart and soul into my Book of Mormon reading. I’m doing something that Elder Bednar challenged us as missionaries to do. That is to take a fresh copy of the Book of Mormon and highlight everything we see about the atonement; when finished we write a one-page summary of what we learned and label it “Atonement One.” Then do the same thing again and label it “Atonement Two,” and so on and so forth. He said if we really want to learn a gospel principle, go through this process five times. Elder Bednar himself has a large section on his bookshelf dedicated to copies of the Book of Mormon that he has gone through. Someday, I hope to have that as well. I just finished Alma last night and I was once again thrilled by Captain Moroni’s stratagem against the Lamanites and the Stripling Warrior’s faith and courage. I like how new things are just popping out that I can apply to myself. I love, love, love the scriptures.
I’m also still loving the bush and the release from leadership has been good. I find I have more time for personal study and being able to worry more about investigators and members in the area is nice. I get to bed on time every night and don’t have to wake up as early. But I do sometimes because my companion still likes to jog to the gym, exercise there, and jog back in the mornings. I like it because I also get to workout every morning! Oh, it’s really the little things that make the biggest difference, I think. Yeah, Effiduase is great!
The Heat is a Constant
Effiduase is more humid more consistently than my other areas, but whether it’s dry or it’s humid, it’s pretty much all the same to me. Growing up in Iowa, everything is sticky during the summer time, so I can handle the heat really well. I think I take the heat and the sun even better than my companion, who is a native Ghanaian. Ghana is just flipping hot all the time. It also rains a ton right now. June/July is rainy season and the rain is coming down! Everyday is a toss up on whether it will rain or not. It’s kind of fun actually, but at the same time it’s not fun.
Water and Rain and Electricity
We got our water back up and running finally, but then just as that happened we had a fault with our electricity, so now we’re in a worse boat because we lost both water and electricity. The water pump won’t run without electricity. We should have that fixed no later than tomorrow.
The Church is Growing
Effiduase is also about to get more interesting with a new group of members that we just found out about. They are about 6 miles away (but by Ghanaian standards that’s pretty far). They’re headed by an endowed Melchezidek priesthood holder and he’s doing great. They’re about 20-30 in total.
This and That
More about my Companion: My Companion is from Accra, Ghana, Elder Naawu. He’s cool. Kinda big n’ tall, about 6’1” or 6’2”, I think. We get along great and it’s just the two of us in the apartment.
Membership in Effiduase: I found out the exact numbers of our membership in the branch. We have 89 members on record and a sacrament attendance of about 30 and most are children + 4 missionaries. We have a senior couple in our branch who are just awesome.
Update on the Church in Wa: I forgot to mention that I was actually wrong when I said there was no branch in Wa. It was just organized as a branch a couple of weeks ago and we will probably send missionaries there in 8 weeks time.
Take care until next week,
Elder Gilbert
P.S. to Mom: Love you with all my heart, Mom. I may be your Sunshine, but you are constantly filling up my fuel to keep my fire burning. Thank you for that and for being the best Mom ever. Really, I was thinking about this one too and I can’t think of a woman more remarkable than you.
Just Gilbert 