Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Also, Some Photos

Here are some photos from Elder Jones of our Sammy boy. Thanks Elder Jones :)



Nov 22: African Stake Conference

Sam's email from Nov 22:

"Dearest Family,

Well i guess i will start my Email off by answering the 2 very important questions that mom asked. First Question -Did i get and letters? Why yes i did get letters, i got a bunch of them from people in the ward, they were awesome, please thank everyone for me. Second Question-Did i get any packages? No, but i am sure i will get some very soon.

On Tuesday i got a call from president asking me to train again. I was pretty surprised to get that call because there are only 3 new missionaries coming into the mission. They are from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia. I don't know which one i want to get, but i will find out who i got on Wednesday. At first i was i wasnt too excited because training is somehow hard, especially when its someone from outside of Ghana. If they are not from Ghana, you have to help them get good food they can eat and just introduce them to things like that. As i have continued to think on it though i thought about how cool it is to train and now i am pretty excited. So next week i will let you know how everything went down.

Also this week we contacted a super sweet guy named R, we sat down with him and for some reason we started talking to him all about baptism. He told us he had never been baptized and we jumped at that opportunity and invited him to be baptized, he said yes right away and sounded very excited. We talked to him a little more and then left. The next day we came back and he told us some pretty crazy stuff. He told us he has been addicted to drugs for the last 13 years and has been trying to quit. He also told us that he hasn't been sleeping very well at all for the last like 6 months, but he said the night we came and saw him he was able to sleep for most of the night. He told us that he is excited to be baptized and is so happy he met us. It was actually a way awesome experience. He wasn't able to come to church this Sunday, but we are going to see him tomorrow and i hope it goes well. R is a way sweet guy and i am happy we decided to keep contacting that day.

Another cool thing that happened is we had an all Africa stake conference. Elder Dallin H Oaks gave a awesome talk. He said some really bold things that truly needed to be said. he said that bride price was an evil tradition that needed to be stopped. For a second i thought a lot of the members were going to get offended, but it was cool to see them sustain him as he talked. He said some other thing that the people really needed to hear. I hope the African people will listen to the council. During the talk i was sitting next to one of our investigators named J. Through the whole talk i kept looking over at J and i was surprised to see him nodding his head in so much agreement. J has only been to church 2 times, but it sounds like he knows the truth when he hears it.

As for everything else i am dong great. I am truly loving my mission so much. I remember this time last year i was so homesick, but for some reason i was able to stay, and for that i am so happy. I would never trade the experiences i have had here away for any thing. Thank you all so much for the awesome emails. I hope you have an awesome week.

Sincerely, Elder Beck"

Nov 15: White People Day and Uncle Mike

Sam's email from Nov. 15:



"Dear Family,
This week was pretty awesome.

One of the things that made the week so awesome is that we went to the Temple. The Temple is like the best place to be on mission. When they let us go to the temple is seriously feels like i am back at home again. Every time i go I learn something new that i never expected. After my mission is over i am going to go to the temple all the time.

Also i got to see a ton of white people this week. First a got to see my uncle mike! i got a call from him on Tuesday and he said he was going to try and come out and see me. I was very happy to talk to him and i waited the whole day to see him, and no uncle mike. Then uncle mike called me again the next day telling me again that he would be coming out to see me. I said okay , but was thinking it might be too good to be true. To my surprise he called me and said he was at our church. So we went to the church and i got to talk to my uncle mike. He had an old Idaho accent which was something i haven't heard in a long time. He sounded like he was really enjoying being in Ghana. After uncle mike i had the wonderful opportunity to go out to lunch with a young white couple that somehow knew Elder Jones back home. That day was pretty cool. Years from now i will tell my children about that day and i will tell them it was white people day.

We have been teaching a women named sister I for a while now. She has been coming to church the last couple of weeks and she had a Baptismal Date for the 27th of this month. The other day i woke up and I just came into my mind. I started talking to Elder Jones about her and we both came to the conclusion that her baptismal date should be moved up. I don't know why this Idea came into my mind, but the more i thought about it the more i thought it needed to be so. So that day we went and talked to I and told her that we really felt she was ready to baptized. When we first told her she agreed and thought she she also be baptized sooner. So the next day we had one of the zone leaders come out and interview her. I think the interview scared her because when we went back that night she sounded very nervous and told us that she wasn't sure if she was ready. We sat there for a while and we all came to the conclusion that Irene needed to pray. We told her to pray and ask God if it was right. So right there she said a prayer. As she was praying i was praying inside for god to please answer her prayer. The prayer she said was powerful, i could tell from her voice that she really wanted to know. At the end of the prayer we asked her how she felt and she said i will be baptized. We asked her again how she felt again because i really didn't want her to just be baptized to make my companion and I happy. She said she was worried about it, but now she is not. We said okay and finished the lesson up some more and went on our way. As we were walking after the lesson it just hit me that that was the answer to her prayer. Just the small peace that she felt about it. God will always answer our prayers, but we just need to be listening. I think a lot of times we don't recognize the answer that God gives us. Well i dont wanna be too preachy, but to continue with the story I was baptized on saturday and confirmed on sunday and she was very happy about. I don't know why we decided to move her baptism , but i am glad we did.

On Saturday we also had another man named I baptized. I don't know if i have told you about I, but he is a awesome guy. Is is one of the humblest people i have ever met in my life. As we taught him i could just feel that he knew what were telling him was true. the whole time we taught him, he never doubted anything we said. He was also very ready to be baptized and i am so glad i had the chance to be a part of that.

Today was also pretty cool we got up early and went to a place called Makola Market. It was sweet we missed traffic and we were able to get in and out really fast. I bought a couple of ties and some jerseys from the world cup. The jerseys here are way cheep.

As for everything else i am doing great. Transfers are coming up next week, but i am almost positive i will stay. I hope that elder Jones will also stay it would be sweet to be with him on Christmas. Thankyou for all the emails. I love you guys a ton.

Sincerley
Elder Beck"

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Nov 8: Not Exactly Spaghetti

Sam's email from Nov. 8:

"Dear Family

This week was awesome. Elder Jones and I have been working really hard. I am very happy this week because i got some news about Cantonments, all of my recent converts there are doing really good. They were able to baptize all the people that elder Madamombe and I were teaching before i left. And they were able to get Brother A confirmed! I really miss Cantonments and I am happy it is doing so well.

We are teaching a man named brother E, he is an older man with white hair. We have been teaching him for about 4 weeks now. He used to be a Muslim, but he slowly became a Christian. That is a really good thing for us because right now we are not really allowed to teach Muslims unless we get permission from president for like a special case or something. And since brother E is a Christian we have complete permission to teach him. We have been going to teach him and he understands everything really well. Each time we leave we will leave him a pamphlet to read. The thing that suprizes me about brother E is he goes into the pamphelts very deep. Which is something i am not completely used to because most Ghanaians don't keep the commitments we give them to read the pamphlets. But anyways he reads very deep into each point the pamphlet makes and then when we come he asks us a ton of questions. Somehow we are usually able to answer all his questions.( i think because heavenly father helped) We got him to come to church this week and watch conference. I am pretty sure that he is going to have plenty of questions as we go back to see him this week. I really love teaching brother E because he has such a strong desire to know the truth. The other day we went to see him and he said something i really loved. He said " you are telling me that there is only one truth on the earth, and i want to know if you have the truth." We he said that it was really cool because you could just feel the desire he had from his voice. I really hope as we continue to teach brother E we will be able to help him find the truth.

Elder Jones has been trying to cook lately. And sometimes his meals turn out to be very delicious, but sometime not so much. The other night he made me laugh very hard. We were walking home and he said to me "elder beck I think to night i am gonna make spaghetti" I asked him if he was sure he could do it, he said "yeah its not as hard as you think" Later that night I heard screams from the kitchen screaming about spaghetti. The problem is Elder Jones will ask more for advice on cooking but i don't really know anything about cooking, but still i give him the advice anyways. That night my advice turned out to be the worst thing he could have done in cooking and his spaghetti turned out to not exactly be spaghetti. Then last night we had another funny experience.I wanted to eat something called Japadees Now i don't know how to make Japadees, but elder Jones does. So I convinced elder Jones to make them. He said all i had to do was find some flour for him to use. So i went around in the kitchen and under the sink i found a bag of some white stuff. I took it to elder Jones and told him it was flour. So he took it and went and started using it to make the Japadees. I went in the other room and i kept hearing Elder Jones say "elder Beck are you sure this is flour?" and to be honest i really thought it was flour, so i told him again it was flour. About 30 minutes later i heard elder Jones, and i went into the kitchen and elder Jones said " I think something is the matter with this flour. Its not working." He had tried to cook it but it just broke into pieces. Just as this is happening Elder Maloni walked into the room and said " hey what are you doing to my corn Mill" It was pretty funny, and it made me laugh very hard.

As for everything Else i am doing great. I am really enjoying being on mission. Thankyou so much for all the Emails. I love you. Have a awesome week."

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Nov 1: Matahecko

Sam's email from Nov 1:

"Dear Family,
Thank you so much for the emails. They were completely awesome. Mom thankyou for washing the Boat i am very proud of of you. I know that is is not easy at all. Dad i am very happy to hear that your cancer Markers have gone back down. Its good to hear that you guys enjoyed your Halloween. I was curious to know if it was going to be big this year.

As for me things are going pretty well. Right now we are teaching a way sweet lady named sister G. We contacted sister G one of the first days i was in Mataheko. She is an older women that sells rice on the side of the road. We have been teaching her for a while and it has been really cool to see her progress in the gospel. At first we invited her to come to church and she told us that she doesn't go to church because all the people she sees go to church are Hypocrites. We continued to teach and slowly but surely she has had a change of heart. We talked with her a lot about baptism. We invited her to be baptized and she accepted. After she accepted she starting asking a ton of questions about the commandments. She asked us if it was bad to drink alcohol, even a little? we of course told her yes and explained why. Then she said " well i guess that means i need to stop drinking, my daughter will be happy i learned this, because she hates it when i drink" The she told us about how her and her daughter always fight when she drinks. I thought it was really cool that the gospel just has a way of changing peoples lives. It just makes them realize the little things that they can do to make there lives better. I remember when i was with elder Madamombe, people used to always ask us if the church would help them. They we really asking if the church would give them money to start a business. I never know what to tell those people, but when i became companions with elder Madamombe he used to always say the church will help you to help your self. And now that i think about it , that is very true. The gospel is now helping Sister G to help her self.

Mom you asked a question about V, the fastest man in Ghana. His baptism was coming up, and his work called him to go away so i haven't really heard from him. But Elder Madamombe told me he is back in town and they are planning to go and teach him this week. So i hope very much that they will be able to help him out. I miss going to see all the people in Burma camp.

I am enjoying being here in Matahecko. The only hard thing about this area is that the people are not very open to letting us teach them. In Cantonments i could just go up and see some people pounding FoFo and join in and they would almost always let us teach them, but here in Matahecko i am among the Gaa people. (Gaa is a tribe in Ghana, like twi, but not twi) The Gaa are nice people, but they are not as open as you would think to letting us teach them. So right now we dont have a lot of people to teach, but now we are trying to work more with the members and hopefully that will get us some more people to teach. I think that will be easier than contacting all day. But then again working with members is not as easy as you would think. I will let you know what happens.

As for everything else i am doing good. Elder Jones and I are enjoying being together. I am glad that everyone is doing good. Well thank you again for all the emails i love you all a ton.

Sincerley Elder Beck"