Lots to catch up on. 6 new posts below.

11-28-11

Well it’s early morning here and we are off to Accra once again to try and get some Elders their driver's licenses. Pray that we get them, then I won't be the only one driving around here anymore. But I don't have time this morning to write much of an email, so I will write one when I get back tomorrow evening. I didn't get the pictures you sent so I don't know what’s up, maybe it just doesn't work cuz its Africa. Well I still don't know if I can transfer from BYU-I to BYU because I never deferred or whatever. Everyone is telling me that if I didn't do that then I would have to reapply? So you might need to check that. But yeah you can find out and see what the deal is and let me know. My toe is broken but healed and it is deformed, but not too bad so I won't worry about it. I didn't get the picture of the nativity set so try again. Okay I will email you tomorrow.

Love Elder Adams

New Companion and 31 New Missionaries

11-20-11

Okay so sorry I haven't emailed, things have been super busy this week. Monday we came home from Sunyani, we were there on splits over the weekend. Tuesday we drove to Accra and did the temple, airport, and MTC thing. Wednesday we picked up the 31 new missionaries from the MTC and I went with 8 of them from Accra up to Kumasi in the van, and a bus took the rest down to Cape Coast. That same day after dropping the Elders in Kumasi I drove back down to Cape Coast. We left at 7 in the morning and we got to the mission home about 7 in the evening. A lot of driving!!!!!!!!! Then Thursday morning we turned around and went back to Obuasi with 4 Elders. Obuasi is a new area that we just reopened. We have a mission branch there. They took Elders out of there a few years ago because they were troublesome. So we drove up there Thursday morning and stayed the night and came home on Friday evening. We met with the Branch Presidency and talked about what we expected to happen now that we are putting Elders back into that area. It was really good, and then we met with a lot of members and investigators that the branch missionaries were teaching. Obuasi has a lot of potential, it is a big gold mining city and they only have one branch there, so we are expecting it to grow really fast and hopefully become a district or something many years down the line. So the whole of the week we were traveling up and down up and down. That’s why I haven't emailed you this week. Don't get me wrong I could have found time, but I was just too tired and didn't want to do it haha sorry.

Anyway, the pictures that you sent were great but I need pictures with my recent converts. I am going to send them some pictures so if it is possible please send me pictures of me and what you would think is my converts or even members. Those are the ones that I need. As for just other pictures

they are fun to look at, but don't worry about those ones. 2nd yes I think my toe is broken. It is still deformed but whatever who cares the pain is going away. 3rd my new companion is Elder Hair from O'Fallon Illinois. He is tight and we were in the same class at BYU-I. We got quite a bit in common so things are going to be sweet. But man I do miss Elder Tadaeo, I freakin love that kid so much!!!! 4th, I fixed that camera that you are talking about and that is the one that I am using, the other one I just left it in the mission safe. It was broken but I fixed the lens for only 50 cedis. So it works great again. 5th, yes please you need to apply to BYU for me I don't want to worry about any of that crap while I am on mission. If you want me to do it I will just wait until I get home from mission. But if you can do it that would be sweet. However, I don't think I ever did a deferment at BYU-I so yeah that might be a problem I don't know. So let me know what’s up. I got the packages this week and they were great. Thanks for all that stuff that you sent I greatly appreciate it.

Love Elder Adams

Request

11-6-11

Sorry I am very busy, but I need you to please send me all of my pictures from my mission on a cd or dvd that you have, or some other way I need them to send to people and things like that so I would like to have all of them if that’s not to much to ask. Please I beg, as soon as possible. I will try to email you tomorrow.

Love you,

Elder Adams

ps. sorry to be so demanding :)

Tour with Elder Gavarret

10-31-11

Well I guess since I didn't email last week I have a lot to talk about, and I will try to cover the last two weeks as much as possible. So let’s go back to last week. Elder Gavarret of the seventy came and toured the mission for a few days so we had the opportunity to learn from him and he really gave me a lot of advice on what I need to be doing as an assistant and my role especially in helping the mission president. It kinda blew my mind a little bit and almost made me feel like maybe I am only doing about half of what the brethren would expect of me. I also gave two instructions in those mission tour zone conferences. There was a little more pressure than normal haha. I had about a 30 min interview with Elder Gavarret after the conference one on one. He was pretty straight forward with me and told me what I did good, but at the same time a lot of what I need to be doing when it comes to taking care of every little detail, planning, etc. and what the duties of an assistant are. But overall it was pretty good. He didn't speak very good English because he is from South America and it was hard at times for him to say exactly what he wanted but he did
pretty well. He has only been learning English for one year. Here is something funny... he told me that he could tell I am a very spiritual person in my interview. I almost started to laugh haha. So it was nice to have Elder Gavarret tour the mission, but it did take a whole lot of work from President and Sister Shulz and a little from us so it was a bit of a relief and relaxing when the tour was over. We could all breathe again. We have a few decisions and adjustments to make now after the tour pertaining to some things that Elder Gavarret mentioned during the zone conferences. Maybe a few things that will change the culture of the mission a bit, but I'm sure its all for the better. So we are in the process now.

As for the rest of this week we taught in our area a few days, celebrated birthdays, went on all day splits in Takoradi and Sekondi Friday and Saturday, and then were in town to worship in our branch on Sunday! And we had two investigators at church and one powerful member referral also at church. So it was a good week. We are teaching 4 people who have the potential to be baptized, and one of them has a baptismal date. It might not sound like much if you were a full time missionary in this mission, not much at all, but for us because of the small time we have its pretty exciting I think. We only get a few hours a week sometimes. We just had FHE with the Laing family in our branch and they invited the women they referred to us so she was there and they are going to be really good fellow shippers so I am sure she will be baptized. She is a sweet sweet girl. I'm happy. Thursday Sister Shulz cooked us chicken fajitas and cheese cake for our birthday dinners and man was it good. She is an amazingly powerful cook. Cheese cake is amazing, but the process that goes on after eating inside can be quite painful if your body isn't ready for that kind of food! I suffered afterward small small. The sacrifices we make haha. We taught the 5th Sunday combined 3rd hour yesterday in church and taught about a branch mission plan and presented to the branch a branch mission plan and how it is to be carried out. It went well but you could tell that 90 percent of the members thought it was some new doctrine they had never heard of haha. The church is still young here.

Today we played football and I tried to kick the dang ball so hard I think I nearly broke my foot in the process, and the funny part was I totally missed the ball. Soccer just isn't my game... Oh and I also got a sty in my eye this week which sucked, and my investigator popped it for me, it was disgusting!!! That's true love. Something else random this week is a got a original Larry Bird Celtics Jersey from a random guy on the street. The old school jerseys from back in the day. So I was on splits and we were moving to an appointment and I saw him so we contacted him and with our smooth talking got him to just dash it to me and all I had to do was give him a shirt he could wear home. I bet it’s worth big money. It's way sweet. We have been in the process the last week also of doing transfer and I swear transfers shouldn't be this hard. We have 31 new missionaries coming this transfer, and only 10 going home so we have to find new areas and apartments and cities that we want to go in to in order to have places to put all these elders. We are opening a new city called Obuasi were all we have right now is a mission branch with no missionaries. That means we need 31 new trainers, and with their companions that is 62 missionaries. Then we already have 18 being trained, that’s 36 missionaries which makes 98 total missionaries training or being trained. Then we have 18 zone leaders which is 116 and we only have 150 or so missionaries so it’s hard to make some many changes work. But it has to work and it will and to be honest we are pretty much finished with the transfers and it all looks to be pretty dang good. This mission is seriously growing. It's crazy. So I am getting a new companion this transfer, that is true and I have to train him before I get out of here so that will be fun again. Well I love you guys and hope you all had a good Halloween this year. Things couldn't be better here, I am really learning a lot and I am happy and enjoying every second of it. God bless you guys. Love you

Love Elder Adams

ps. Tadaeo got the package and loved it, im sure he emailed you.
pss. Things I need ASAP..
1. deodorant (mine is finished)
2. Toothpaste ( I don't like the fake cheap African stuff)
3. Vitamins please
4. Crest White Strips ( Ghana toothpaste and water and my lack ofbrushing are not keeping my teeth white haha)
5. I got some Proactive from someone and that stuff is great. If you can I just need the reparing lotion, its the best for me yet. But if not easy to find or if its expensive don’t worry about that one.

Love you :)

Kakum National Park

10-17-11

Hi everyone,

Well I don't have much time so I will be fairly short this week. We started the week off by having Pres Shulz join us in attending a branch council in our branch. Our branch is very inexperienced and so pretty much we just taught the leaders in the branch how to conduct a branch council and more specifically how to carry out a branch mission plan within that branch council. All in all it went well and they understood, but the challenge will be to see how well they implement what they have learned when we are not around. After that we had zone council report on Wednesday, which was cool because it was sweet to see all of the new zone leaders like Elder Brown and Elder Smith. Those guys are cool guys. Then Wednesday evening through Sunday we were in our own area and finishing up some things in the office so it was a pretty relaxed week and we never had to travel, which is very uncommon now a days. We gave one man that we are teaching this week a baptismal date which was sweet and he said that he wanted to be baptized. Then we contacted this old man with diabetes who is a really cool old guy. We have taught him twice now and he is really progressing, but it will be the real test when we invite him to church this week, so we'll see if he comes. We also met a less active man this week who was baptized a few years back, and due to work he became less active shortly after he joined the church. We met him randomly the other day and came to learn that he was a member of the church, so we visited him at his house and he was a really nice humble guy. He did have a 5 foot marijuana plant growing in his back room so we will have to address that with him here very soon. But after sitting with him for a few minutes we invited him to church. He said that he would come next week for sure, but that this week he had to clean his house because nobody has been taking care of it while he was away. So we offered to help him clean it on Saturday. We cleaned with him in the morning for about 3 hours and by the time we finished his house was spotless clean. And so because of what we did for him he was able to finish everything on Saturday and came to church on Sunday and had a great time. We talked to the Branch Pres about him and he is going to start working with him so hopefully he continues to come. Sunday was our branch conference and we had about 100 people or so there, but about 30 or more of them were from the stake so it wasn't as good of a turn out as we would have hoped for.

The pictures are from today. We visited the Kakum national park and went on the canopy walk and then saw a few crocs along the way. It was a fun day. Well that’s about all I got to share with you from this week. I love you and I am really having a great time. This week will be a fun one because a general authority, Elder Gavarrett, is coming to tour our mission and we are doing two zone conferences and then he may come and teach a few lessons with us so that would cool if he does. So the next few days we will be preparing our instructions and stuff like that, ya know gotta make this a powerful one. Then we will be headed back to Kumasi on Sunday. Right now Pres Shulz is at a mission president seminar so we are just here preparing for Elder Ggavarrett. It should be a good week. Anyway thanks for everything and for all your support. I love you guys, have a great week. God Speed!

Love Elder Adams

Visit members in Kumasi

10-9-11

How's it?

Well it has been another pretty normal week here. Well at least for us. Transfers all seemed to go really smoothly, but it was hard to see that group go home there were a lot of really great Elders in that group. The new guys seem, well green, but they seem to be a good group and we have some good trainers again. After transfers we headed up to Kumasi again to finish the apartment checks and stayed over the weekend. I was able to go to church in Atonsu and then go on splits with the Elders there and see all of my old people which was just awesome. They are all doing really great. The one guy that I baptized named Bright, who was pretty much a straight up gangsta (he just told me a story about how he blew up his brothers car with gas and a match, and then almost killed them with a cutlass) ya he is so powerful and never misses a week. He referred his best friend to the missionaries since I left and he and his wife are about to be baptized as well as Brights wife which is just sweet. But his friend has the same story. They were both just straight up G's living about as low a life as you can live, and now they are both just powerful in the gospel. It is amazing to see the changes the gospel can make in peoples lives. Brights friend gave me a huge hug when he saw me for the first time because he said that he had heard so much about me and was so grateful that we converted Bright because Bright converted him. So anyway I saw them, then some of my favorite members that are still around, but my other three converts are all gone. The one in the wheel chair is is Accra, and the other two are schooling in places a few hours away. But it was a lot of fun and we ate a lot of food. Brother Bright feed us fu fu at 4 pm, Sister Asore fed us yam at 6 pm, and then Sister Dina fed us pasta at 7 pm. I thought I was going to die it was so much food, but we managed to eat it all. It was a great day, and we even got to ride in a tro tro which I haven't done in a long time.

Over the weekend we also got the chance to go to a wedding of some members from Bantama Ward and it turned out to be a big thing. There were about as many people there as you have at stake conference. But when it came to the kissing of the bride things became hilarious. In Ghana affection is something that they never show, so when it comes to the kissing of the bride everyone just goes crazy, they pull out the cameras, cheer, yell, scream, it is just nuts. The groom, who I happened to know, is also a funny funny guy and he made it hilarious. He had his best man pat his lips with his hankey, then he would go in for the kiss and then back out and get everyone to cheer louder, it was just funny. Then when he actually kissed her everyone just went crazy. It was definitely not like back home, but it was so fun and interesting to see how the people were acting at the wedding. Like a bunch of kids. Great memory. Well other than that not much else from this week to share, just a pretty normal week of traveling and going on splits. Now I just have to finish up this pile of office work that we have before us, so I better get back to that. Love you!!!! And God bless you guys.

Love Elder Adams