Elder Collin Park

April 15, 2013

 
Hello world!

This week was a very difficult week.  Since I am new, I do a (training) program that means I will be training for 12 weeks. Every week more and more responsibility is put on me.  I just finished up week 11 of the training.  Week 11 sucks.  I was the “senior” companion for the week.  I had to pretend that Elder Skouson was a brand new missionary from the MTC.  I had to take the lead in everything. It was difficult. I learned so much this week.  learned that I need to study more and harder.  I need to be a little more bold with certain things.  Everything is good, I just need to work on certain things. This 12 week program is supposed to help missionaries train right after they are done training. This week is the last week of the transfer,  let’s see what transfer news brings me.  Elder Skouson and I are a little excited, but nervous about this news.

On Thursday, Elder Skouson and I decided to walk to a part of our area that I have never seen.  We walked about 45 minutes to Claratown, it took about 15 minutes to walk through.  We did teach one lesson to a man that was taught by missionaries in Ghana.  Haven’t seen him since.  We then decided to walk home.  An hour later we reached our apartment.  So in all, we walked all day teaching lessons, then walked 2 hours home. it was fun though.

On Friday we spent a lot of time in the apartment.  It was the anniversary of the war starting, so tensions were a little high (some want to have another war, most don’t). Our mission president told us to stay inside, so as normal 19 and 20 year old boys, we got hungry, we went and bought noodles and sauce and bread.  We made spaghetti!!!  It wasn’t as good as anything back home, but it was good to not eat rice for a day.  It was sweet!!

Saturday we had baptisms again.  I was able to baptize a husband and wife:  Richard and Victoria Nagbe.  It’s really rare to teach both the husband and wife.  We were very lucky, and we will be teaching his children this week.  Richard walked into church with the desire to be baptized, we had never met him before.  This happens often, everyone wants to be baptized, so we just shrugged it off and said we'll see you next week. ....... and we did.... with his wife... we were stunned!  We followed them to their house and taught a lesson which was really good.  I love this family.  He calls us almost every day just to say hello.  I love them!!

After the baptisms we were lucky enough to have a member want to cook a FM (free meal) for the entire zone! 24 missionaries!  It was sweet! (it also meant I didn’t cook that night!!!!)  I’m not sure what it was, but here you don’t ask what things are, you just eat it. But it also rained Saturday.  It rained and rained and rained and rained.  It rained really hard for a long time!  On the way home we had to walk through water that was up to my knees. and of course my rain boats were at home... so we just went through it.  We took a bunch of pictures there in a corn field.  It was fun. I look totally different.  I have lost weight and tanned a lot!! I I’m trying to send pictures.

To answer some questions that I keep forgetting to answer.  The krio is not coming, mainly because they don’t speak it here. they speak kalokua (can’t spell it. sound it out slowly) it's basically really bad English but it is super fun to speak. I am getter better the longer I stay. Sometimes it’s hard to understand, but it’s coming on small small.  I mentioned a while ago I got a lapa.  A lapa is just fabric that is about 6 ft by 3 ft.  The women wear it like a skirt over shorts because its hot (and super comfy).  We wear them all the time around the apartment.

Last week i mentioned about a guy outside our apartment. I then said don’t judge the Book of Mormon before you've read it.  This man was just bashing on the church and saying things that were totally wrong about the church.  Moral of the story:  don’t judge things when you don’t know much about them.

I love you all and miss you all. I pray daily for all my friends and family.  I challenge you to recognize when the lord has blessed you or helped you.  He has his finger in everything!

Elder Park
The White African
T.I.A.