December 1, 2008

The Gospel is true, the work is going forward. The Baptisms continue to grow. We now have four Elders here at Ho. The mission has approx. l20 missionaries here now with 7 more coming in Dec. It is hard to find places for them to live. It is exciting to see the growth. The missionaries are working hard. Out in the hot sun from morning til way after dark. The President says do more, better. We are to teach only those who speak English and live 30 min. walking distance from the chapel. We seriously need a new church building. It is small, but we are told it will split and have two branches in one building before a new one can come. It is interesting to have Sacrament in a small area with benches on three sides and the Presidency sitting, the portable podium and the sacrament table all crammed on the other side. It is like Hale Theater in the round only not tiered but all on a level floor. Class rooms small and a restroom area . A lot of people, who come late or have noisy babies are out on the porch. The people are good and you can't help loving them. For the past four weeks , I have been trying to teach knitting and crocheting to the young women and the sisters. (Those that want to learn can come on Saturday morning or Tuesday night) We have quite a group that are learning and more to go. It is fun. Elder Sidwell is still busy with Branch business. He has conducted sacrament meeting twice this month. The only hang up for him is how to pronounce the people's names right. They just laugh when he says them wrong. It is really summer here, just so hot you can't hardly stand to be out in it. (Ryan, eat your heart out, don't be too jealous of us) You are in a very cold place and so it leads me to the question. Would I rather freeze to death or fry to death? ha ha. There's a happy medium somewhere. Count your blessings. The month of December will be busy and fun for us. This coming week we will take a member to the Temple and then Elder Sidwell and I will spend two days doing our usual business. Shopping for food, eating out with friends, the temple, the mission home, getting money, area office business and other things like that. We will come back on Friday. Saturday morning at 5:30 we will go out with the four elders and do our Christmas Service Project. This is our gift to someone for a Christmas present instead of receiving a gift we will be giving a gift. This is instructions for all the missionaries and couples in the mission. Did you notice the article in the Deseret News about the 114 year old women going to the Ghana Temple. The Meeks from Heber, Utah, that are the mission couple in Nswana here took her to the Temple, she wanted to go one more time before she died. Who knows maybe she'll be here next year and go again. We have many things coming up next week. It is elections here on the 7th. We have instructions to have extra food and water and are to be in a lock down Sunday, Monday and maybe Tuesday. It should be interesting. More on that later. Hope everyone is getting my letters. Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving. We had the six of us, ate our chicken and trimmings dinner and then watched Pursuit of Happiness on the DVD and then the missionaries had to get back to work in the field and Elder Sidwell and I got busy in the kitchen doing dishes.