Mom: I'm WAY behind and leaving town for a week, but am determined to add the rest of Gabe's emails to catch the blog up when I return.
This week has been great, but not much to write about, it has been about the same same work we do every week, nothing huge that happened!
We started the week off by making some s'mores! Elder Erickson bought some stuff to roast marshmallows and roast hot dogs. So we did that Tuesday night, and wow it was wonderful! Never thought i would get to eat s'mores in Ghana, but the Kumasi mall is a lifesaver and had some marshmallows! :)
We had a Zone Conference on Tuesday also, which was pretty good. The schedule of it was quite odd, but it was a really great conference. We talked about following up on us as missionaries and a little rep for the Mission Tour that was going to happen with Elder Kacher, but now has been moved to next year sadly, but i hope i am there for it. I had to say my last goodbye to my trainer too, his conference was right before ours, so i caught him at the start of our and the close of his as well and his Companion, Elder Zurek who is from Houston. Sad to see them go, and seriously, i think i know like 25 people aside from those who will leave in the next 2-3 weeks. Wow, time is going by so fast.
We had some members really help us this week which was amazing. We had first, Brother Jude who is almost done with his mission papers. HE is our piano player at church, nand he is a great teacher. HE also teaches our Gospel Principles class at church. Then we had Sister Juliet, who is a returned Missionary, and she came home in May. Then we had Brother Patrick who also loves to help, and he will send in his papers in the next few weeks, so we are excited for him! :)
We celebrated YaaYaa's birthday on the 12th this week, we did the traditional Ghanaian birthday: First, they choose what they wan to eat, then they are exempt from house chores, and we buy "champagne" (sparkling drinks of sorts) and we had tons of fun! I made sure to take a lot of pictures this week! Dropbox is being stubborn, i want to upload some new pictures, but it is rejecting me on all fronts, so i will attach maybe a picture of or 2 if i can! :/
Last week i also was working on building my testimony of Jesus Christ, and this week i continued on that note. I read the Book of Mormon with the question in my mind of "how can i come to know the Savior?" Let me tell you, the Book of Mormon brings peace that no other book does. Anyways, i read from Alma 32, when Alma is talking to those who are poor inspirit and helping them to understand faith and worshiping God, and a scripture i have read a 1000 times hit me this week.
21 And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.
26 Now, as I said concerning faith—that it was not a perfect knowledge—even so it is with my words. Ye cannot know of their surety at first, unto perfection, any more than faith is a perfect knowledge.
27 But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.
First, to have faith, is not perfect know;edge, but to have hope for something that you cannot see. Then, once you have this hope, you work on it by experimenting on it and trying it out. We are promised that if we give place in our hearts for this faith and hope, and act upon it, then we will eventually come to a perfect knowledge as we see that it is a good seed in us and as we see it swell in us. As i read these scriptures, i was filled with peace in my heart concerning the matter of me not knowing Jesus Christ 100%. Truly coming to know the Savior is a life-long pursuit, and if i don't know everything now, it is okay because i am heading in the right direction. The Book of Mormon does answer the questions of te soul if we just give it a little place in our life by reading from it and praying about it.
Patrick is the other guy in this picture by the way :)
Elder Wawro