September 4, 2017
I have to say that this week, I’m feeling “supa” fine! And I’m sending lots of photos. They are plenty! Or as they say in Twi, mo do wo so!
Report
I spent a lot of time reading my emails because plenty people emailed me this week. I also emailed my Mission President plenty as well. Maybe I can copy and paste some of it to give you an idea of how things are going:
“This past week went by very fast. I was so focused on doing the work and on my investigators that it just flew. It seriously flew by. I can’t believe that it’s Monday again and that we’ll be having our training meeting this coming Wednesday. We are keeping extremely busy, but with the help of the Lord, we’re managing to work everything out. Miraculously, we’re able to do finding on top of everything else we do.
We watched a Preach My Gospel video about finding and talking with everyone. Guess what? We’re doing it! We know that we can’t talk to absolutely everyone, but we are keeping our hearts open to the Spirit to recognize them as we go. We are getting more referrals from members, the investigators that we are finding are serious, the less actives who are returning are having a bit of troubles, but their excuses seem legitimate with sickness here and an accident there. We will follow up to make sure their needs are met and they can come back, but to add on top of that, more are still returning.
Honestly, I am so happy that I feel like if my due date wasn’t coming up soon, I could endlessly continue like this. I would even be very happy to have this two-man apartment and the whole area to ourselves for the rest of my mission. We get along great, we laugh and sing together, he takes my teaching, we work out together every morning, and we work hard. I absolutely love the people and the people seem to love me too. It feels like everything is just working out. The only thing that is slower than I would like is the progress of a few people, but we are getting so many people it’s just incredible.”
I’m So Happy
Father, I am absolutely LOVING this work. I won’t extend my mission, but I feel like it wouldn’t even be hard to do so. The reason why I don’t want to extend my mission is because my current release date just feels right. I’ve considered extending for a couple months, but November 8th seems like my day.
I took mom’s advice about teaching the families. So now we’ve hooked that up and it’s gonna happen, I can just feel it from their excitement. Seriously, the security guard investigator, we thought that he couldn’t be baptized because of his working on Sundays, but we talked to President and he said that if the investigator comes 2 weeks out of the month, he can be baptized. When we told the man, he was nearly jumping for joy. He gave us some sugar cane and said that we should visit him very soon. The next time we visited him we extended the baptismal dates and he was so happy that his family also accepted it.
This & That
Working Hard to the End: We had 48.5 proselyting hours this past week. We are still just killing it. I will continue to work to my very end!
Making a Broom: So recently I learned how to make a local broom. You take palm fronds, strip them and put them together. You must wait for the sticks to get dry, wrap the head end with a cloth/rag and then you’ve got a broom. You have to bend over to use it, kind of like you see how people in China plant rice crops. Kind of a weird example, but I think you get the picture. It’s hard on the back, but man they are good with it. Here are some photos of when we were serving a woman to help her with her broom making. Through her, we found her niece who even came to church yesterday and seems like she will progress fast!
I’ve Got a Mortar: This is my mortar! We couldn’t find a pestle yet but this bad boy is coming home with me! My camera battery stopped working though so my pictures will probably slow down after this, otherwise I would have about 20 pictures of them working on the mortar. We had to go to a town about 10-15 minutes away that is somewhat like Seniagya. AKA Village. The wood is hard so they said it will last a long time. I have yet to get a pestle, but when I do, I will get it down to size so that I can drive and pound fufu myself. Isn’t this exciting?! I’m excited! 😀 As soon as I figure out what is wrong with my camera battery, I will go back to the village and take those pictures. That sight was gold.
I wanted to tell you so many adventures, but I have to go. All in all, I’m doing well. There are so many miracles happening that if I were to list every one I would be here until tomorrow. Just know that we are finding the people who are truly prepared for this gospel and I know that baptisms are going to flow like a waterfall these next two months.
Much love,
-Elder Gilbert
Just Gilbert 