1-10-11

How are you?
Well here we go I will go ahead and just give you the low down on the whole week and fill you in. So mostly we prepared the entire week for Sunday and just tried to do all of the little things so that it would be a successful first Sunday, one that would make all of the members here want to come back the following week. The plan from the start was that we would only have a 2 hour church service because the first week we didn't want to do too much and make it a disaster. But…. we changed that. We decided that we had met with enough members in the area that had promised to come to church and we were sure that more of them would come that we hadn't ever met. We fasted and we decided that would be the best thing to do. So from there we met with some of the members that we knew were solid and trustworthy, and we began giving assignments on Tuesday for Primary, Sunday School, Relief Society, Priesthood, and all that stuff. One woman in the group named Sis Dina is amazing. She is one of those people that you can call on at anytime for anything and she will do it better than you expected. She rocks. We had her teach Primary. A man who lives across the street named Bro. Yeboah is also a strong member who was baptized about 3 years ago. He is the one with the Mercedes that drives us around sometimes. He taught Priesthood. Then there is a return missionary who just came home about 6 months ago and he is just a stud so we had him teach Sunday School. His name is Bro. Fred. Then there is a woman named Sis Anab. At first we thought that she didn't like us that much for some reason, but we asked her to teach Relief Society and she did, and she did it well. Tonight we are going to her house for FHE so it looks like she does like us after all. The speakers for sacrament meeting were me, the 2nd counselor in the Stake Pres, and then another return missionary. Oh, and Elder Smith conducted the meeting. And we also were the teachers for the gospel principles class. So that was all of the assignments for the week. We provided them the materials that were available and then wished for the best. So that was the preparation.

With the rest of our proselyting efforts this week we contacted, taught the new investigators that we have, and continued to meet with members and less-actives. It was a really really good week in that aspect of the work. We have 12 new investigators and are teaching many that are already progressing well. It is so exciting to see how fast the work is going already. Funny story. Wednesday, Prosper, our mission apartment preparation specialist, came over and brought us our new closet (dresser), and then decided that he was going to refinish it in our room while we were having our companion study. We were listening to the conference cds and by the end of one of the talks Elder Smith was pretty much gone, and when I say gone I mean high. He was in a whole different world and he couldn't stop laughing for a while. It was so funny, and then for the next few hours he felt pretty sick. It added a little bit of excitement and entertainment to the week. Friday we had interviews with President Sabey and we talked about our responsibilities with our new assignment and all that. He said that what we are doing could actually be the first time it has ever been done in the world. I doubt that, but he had never heard of it before. It isn't often that the missionaries work directly with the stake like this. The group is the stakes responsibility, but we are somehow managing it. It's cool, but crazy. Saturday we cleaned the chapel with a few of the members for about 4 hours and got everything looking perfect for Sunday before we went out proselyting.

Sunday morning came around and I am not going to lie, I was nervous. Mostly just because the success of the day was sitting on our shoulders, and at that point all we could do was pray. 10 min to 9 there was only about 9 members at church and then us, the Kiffer’s, and the assistants. We started on time and everything went smoothly. By the time sacrament finished there were about 20 members there. The only hiccup in the day came when I started speaking. It turned out that the guy we asked to speak in church didn’t show. So things were adjusted a bit and the only two speakers for sacrament meeting were me and the 2nd counselor from the stake. But it went very well and you never would have been able to tell that there was a problem. Now the crazy part. We had 2 people that we contacted during this week come to church!!!! And in all we had 5 investigators at church on Sunday. That might be the best part of the whole week, I was so stoked. We had about 10 people in our investigator class, some members, and it just went awesome. Everybody that we gave an assignment did awesome, and by the end of church we had a total of 48 members there and that was not counting us, the assistants, or the Kiffers!!!!!! So awesome. The members here are powerful and really there isn't much we needed to do, they will do it all on there own. Now the idea to do this whole thing came from Pres. Sabey, and the Stake President wasn't 100 percent sold on it, but they thought it would be okay to try. The entire Stake Presidency came into Priesthood with about 30 min left and we had one of the best lessons.( it was in English :) ) So today the Kiffer’s told us that the Stake loved what had happened and were completely sold on the whole thing now after Sunday. The Lord really makes things move when it is time, and that is what he is doing here. I have seen the hand of the Lord in this work more this week, than I think I have recognized my whole mission. Now we can focus mostly on our missionary efforts and should have a group little sometime within the next month. We poured out our hearts Sunday night to our Heavenly Father for all the blessings he brought us this week. I am gunna love it here in Atonsu.

About Kumasi. We got lost today and we showed up 1 hour late for the activity. This place is big hahaha. Well I am tired of typing so I hope that is good for the week, I love
you and hope that all is well. The church is true and this week was awesome.

Love Elder Adams