Dear Family,
I hope that you are not expecting an email this week full of exciting
stories and adventures. Regretfully I have none this week. We
travelled somewhere every day this week aside from Saturday and
Sunday. Needless to say our sacrament attendance really suffered. I
feel like I spent at least half of my time this week in a stupid tro
tro and not too much exciting happens on a tro tro. So this week I
thought I might entertain everyone with some short experiences or
things that explain what a mission is like especially here in Ghana.
1. Sister Dalton loves to bake. It is difficult to get good
ingredients here in Ghana but she does a wonderful job with what she
can get. She makes some really good banana-plantain-chocolate
bread and she bakes them in these small little canned ham tins. (In
Ghana you use what you get and you don’t complain.) Well Sister Dalton
also really loves us Zone Leaders so every once in a while she will
give one to me and one to my companion. Well on Tuesday we put them
both in the fridge and travelled to Accra. When we finally arrived in
our apartment on Friday evening I decided that I would eat a very
small amount of mine and save the rest for another day. I probably
took about 1/8th of the cake and put the rest back in the fridge. The
next morning I woke up and looked in the fridge to see the remaining
7/8ths was gone. I asked my companion if he ate it and he said yes. I
was a bit annoyed for fear that he would eat the rest but I didn’t
have a problem with it I was just a bit confused why he didn’t eat his
instead. Well later that day I discovered the reason why. As we were
walking he says, “Companion I think we should give the other cake to
Rose Boateng.” I really wanted to explain how I didn’t feel that was
fair but I just let it go. On Sunday we delivered it to her and I
missed out on my share of the cake. I hope that Rose enjoyed it. It
didn’t bother me to be generous but it annoyed me that he suggested
that WE give MY cake away.
2. This next story I’ve heard is quite common but I hadn’t really seen
it before. I always knew that if the people who are assigned to talk
don’t show up usually the missionaries are the first ones to be picked
on. I thought most missionaries get to talk in church very often.
Throughout my mission though, I had never been asked to talk in church
before. Here my companion has talked before but I hadn’t. Well I get
to church this Sunday and meet the Branch President in his office. He
then “reminds” us that we are talking to today. I give him a confused
look because I had no idea. Then he turns to my companion and asks if
he forgot to tell me. He said, “Oops, I guess I forgot. It’s okay he
is prepared.” This was 5 minutes before church is supposed to begin.
He also asked if I could bless the Sacrament so I lost even more of
the crucial time that I would need to prepare. Surprisingly though, I
think my talk turned out really good. I talked for about 15 minutes
that I prepared in 5. I thank the Spirit for the words that it gave
me.
3. This is not really a story but something you would probably only
see happen in Ghana. Well when the mission gets new apartments they
really want to keep them in good shape. They know that missionaries
will never go buy cleaning supplies. We have a hard time just going out
to buy soap to wash ourselves or our clothes let alone, the sink,
toilet, and windows. Well since this apartment was new they furnished
us with some of those needed cleaners to hopefully motivate us to use
them. Well the good news is we do use them just not the way they
probably should be. One day I was planning on doing the dishes and asked
my companion if he had some extra soap I could use and he said no we
don’t have any and that he just uses the window cleaner. I’m sure
that’s not exactly healthy but I’ve found it does work quite well in
making the glasses sparkly clean! I make sure to rinse them very very
well.
4. This is also another funny characteristic of my companion. He has a
speaker and an iPod and he has to listen to music every night, all
night long. This normally wouldn’t bother me but for some strange
reason he will not shuffle the songs or repeat all, he will only
repeat one song. So we listen to the same song for 8 hours straight
every night. Often times it is the same song 2 or 3 nights in a row.
Needless to say after one night I begin to really hate the song.
I tell you all of these things not to complain about my circumstances
or complain about my companion. I really do love my companion he is a
great guy and we really do get along very well. I just thought that
maybe some of you would enjoy learning a bit more about what it is
like being on a mission in Ghana. Even though some things kind of suck
you really learn to take humor from such events and circumstances. I
really do love it here. More than most of you can probably understand.
I really love being a missionary. Well I love you all and miss you all so very much! I hope that you all have a wonderful week and I can’t wait to hear from you soon.
Love,
Elder Smith
I hope that you are not expecting an email this week full of exciting
stories and adventures. Regretfully I have none this week. We
travelled somewhere every day this week aside from Saturday and
Sunday. Needless to say our sacrament attendance really suffered. I
feel like I spent at least half of my time this week in a stupid tro
tro and not too much exciting happens on a tro tro. So this week I
thought I might entertain everyone with some short experiences or
things that explain what a mission is like especially here in Ghana.
1. Sister Dalton loves to bake. It is difficult to get good
ingredients here in Ghana but she does a wonderful job with what she
can get. She makes some really good banana-plantain-chocolate
bread and she bakes them in these small little canned ham tins. (In
Ghana you use what you get and you don’t complain.) Well Sister Dalton
also really loves us Zone Leaders so every once in a while she will
give one to me and one to my companion. Well on Tuesday we put them
both in the fridge and travelled to Accra. When we finally arrived in
our apartment on Friday evening I decided that I would eat a very
small amount of mine and save the rest for another day. I probably
took about 1/8th of the cake and put the rest back in the fridge. The
next morning I woke up and looked in the fridge to see the remaining
7/8ths was gone. I asked my companion if he ate it and he said yes. I
was a bit annoyed for fear that he would eat the rest but I didn’t
have a problem with it I was just a bit confused why he didn’t eat his
instead. Well later that day I discovered the reason why. As we were
walking he says, “Companion I think we should give the other cake to
Rose Boateng.” I really wanted to explain how I didn’t feel that was
fair but I just let it go. On Sunday we delivered it to her and I
missed out on my share of the cake. I hope that Rose enjoyed it. It
didn’t bother me to be generous but it annoyed me that he suggested
that WE give MY cake away.
2. This next story I’ve heard is quite common but I hadn’t really seen
it before. I always knew that if the people who are assigned to talk
don’t show up usually the missionaries are the first ones to be picked
on. I thought most missionaries get to talk in church very often.
Throughout my mission though, I had never been asked to talk in church
before. Here my companion has talked before but I hadn’t. Well I get
to church this Sunday and meet the Branch President in his office. He
then “reminds” us that we are talking to today. I give him a confused
look because I had no idea. Then he turns to my companion and asks if
he forgot to tell me. He said, “Oops, I guess I forgot. It’s okay he
is prepared.” This was 5 minutes before church is supposed to begin.
He also asked if I could bless the Sacrament so I lost even more of
the crucial time that I would need to prepare. Surprisingly though, I
think my talk turned out really good. I talked for about 15 minutes
that I prepared in 5. I thank the Spirit for the words that it gave
me.
3. This is not really a story but something you would probably only
see happen in Ghana. Well when the mission gets new apartments they
really want to keep them in good shape. They know that missionaries
will never go buy cleaning supplies. We have a hard time just going out
to buy soap to wash ourselves or our clothes let alone, the sink,
toilet, and windows. Well since this apartment was new they furnished
us with some of those needed cleaners to hopefully motivate us to use
them. Well the good news is we do use them just not the way they
probably should be. One day I was planning on doing the dishes and asked
my companion if he had some extra soap I could use and he said no we
don’t have any and that he just uses the window cleaner. I’m sure
that’s not exactly healthy but I’ve found it does work quite well in
making the glasses sparkly clean! I make sure to rinse them very very
well.
4. This is also another funny characteristic of my companion. He has a
speaker and an iPod and he has to listen to music every night, all
night long. This normally wouldn’t bother me but for some strange
reason he will not shuffle the songs or repeat all, he will only
repeat one song. So we listen to the same song for 8 hours straight
every night. Often times it is the same song 2 or 3 nights in a row.
Needless to say after one night I begin to really hate the song.
I tell you all of these things not to complain about my circumstances
or complain about my companion. I really do love my companion he is a
great guy and we really do get along very well. I just thought that
maybe some of you would enjoy learning a bit more about what it is
like being on a mission in Ghana. Even though some things kind of suck
you really learn to take humor from such events and circumstances. I
really do love it here. More than most of you can probably understand.
I really love being a missionary. Well I love you all and miss you all so very much! I hope that you all have a wonderful week and I can’t wait to hear from you soon.
Love,
Elder Smith
No comments:
Post a Comment