04/24/17 "Abunuabunu soup with snail. Yikes."

What a week it has been in Obuasi!

It was somehow odd this week...I was having some serious stress in our apartment, and I had a quick dose of homesickness again. Kind of odd, but truly there is peace at home, I guess I was just missing that.

One of the recent converts here in Obuasi bought the full disk of Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit movies and had it on when we came to visit him. He switched it off when we came in, but I can spot Lord of the Rings music from a mile away! :)  THIS PROBABLY DIDNT HELP MY HOMESICKNESS.  Hahaaaa!

We have had a miracle here in our companionship also. We had some debate about our planning sessions, and after praying for a few days for help, the Lord totally answered my prayers in a way that I was not expecting. We started our weekly planning, my companion looked at me and said, well, lets do it your way. Last week, it was a mess of planning and we were having some argument about using the Preach my Gospel during our planning, and this week, it was so great.  Now we are closer than ever, and all is well!  :)

We had a lot of meals given to us this week! One of our members gave us banku (my least favorite food when I came to Ghana) and I downed both balls. Holy heck, it was soooo much food! :)  Each ball is like the size of Goliaths fist, seriously. But, they were defeated. I have really come a long way from where I started with the local food.  God does seriously do miracles for us today.

On a food note, I have a sweet case of food poisoning. I ate fufu with snail and abunuabunu (Kontombre soup). Snail is really odd when it is only boiled. It had a faint taste of the smell of sewage, so I honestly have no idea where it was raised up or if it was just picked from the gutter, but it did not taste that sweet. I have had fried snail, which was great, but boiled snail?  No thank you. I was fine for the rest of the Sunday, but when I went to sleep, my body definitely disagreed with the snail.  So I spent 2 hours just throwing up the snail and fufu, I guess that is ironic that I sent the snail back to where it came from... ha. ha. Not funny.  So after I got all the big chunks out and was left to dry heaving, I took the Zofran from Mama G and got some sleep! God bless that woman. I am super weak today, but hopefully a little food tonight and a good night's rest will fix the problem. Guess I can check snail off the bucket list!  :)

In light of the sickness, Elder Austin and the others in our apartment were able to give me a Priesthood blessing. The Spirit was so strong as he was speaking, I knew it really was the words from the Lord. And honestly, I don't think I would be able to be out and about today if it weren't for the blessing this morning. Just as it says in James:

14 Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:

15 And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.

16 Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

The Priesthood power is real and it does perform miracles in our lives as we have faith.

Love,

Elder Wawro

PICTURES:

Yesu Sorre - Jesus Stand up (the Resurrection)

Transfer week has finished, and I am safely in Obuasi. now for the weekly update!

To start, I left Mpraeso Wednesday at 5am to go to Nkawkaw to then go to Kumasi. A funny miracle happened just before, which will be at the close of this letter. We had a long day of travel, seriously. It was about 3 hours to Metro Mass where the missionaries meet for transfers. We spent 3 hours there waiting for the Obuasi tro to come, which was sweet because I had time to catch up with a lot of my friends! We waited in line for about an hour to get our tickets for the bus to Obuasi, and finally got on. The funny thing was, they loaded more people than they had seats for, and since I was loading a lot of the luggage for our group going to Obuasi, I jumped in at the end, and stood for the 2.5 hour ride. Yikes! :)  good thing missionary work gives you strong legs, I was feeling it!

I am in an apartment with Elder Morford and Elder Austin, the zone leaders, and my companion, Elder Kanu, from Calabar, Nigeria. It is the smallest apartment I have ever seen! Our room is maximum 15ft by 15 feet, but the bathroom is sweet, and has hot water, so I have no problem. Our bed is a bunk, and I have the bottom. I am sure you will enjoy the pictures next week, I am exactly the length of the bunk, it is awesome! :)  hahahaa!

I have had 3 free meals (f.m's) since I have been here, hallelujah. The first was Thursday, my first day here, and a family fed me fufu with palkm nut soup. sooo nice. Then Saturday, I had banku with okro soup, also delicious. Interesting to see how far I have come with the Ghana food.  I honestly thought I would never get used to it, but it is fantastic!!! Then, last night, a member invited us over to dinner. We went and answered any of the kids questions, then they sent us home with fried rice, also sweet!  :)

This week, I also helped a baby chicken out of the gutter (it was a clean gutter). So cuteee to hold a fresh from heaven chicken.  :))

Well, we are back to internet cafe' life here, but this one is not too bad. Has its quirks, but Dropbox is working, so I can't complain.

(Mom:  I was asking Gabe about travel, since it seems Ghana is laid out so differently than the U.S. where we have maps, GPS, etc...how does he get around in a new area and know where he is?)  We get around by taxis and feet, no GPS, there are not solid addresses like back home. There are really only a few street signs, but nobody uses them, they just tell the driver the side of town or the shop they are going to.  No road signs and no addresses...

As for the miracle, on Tuesday the electric company cut our lights because the guy who pays our bills in the mission decided not to I guess. So we go home from our day, I needed to pack, and we had no lights and no pump to pump the water. So we took a last minute taxi to the company head quarters. first miracle: We caught the head guy in his car in the entrance as he was pulling out and he asked if we needed help, and took us inside to help with the problem. Then we went inside and Elder Boyce brought most of the money he had to see if we could pay the bills ourselves. Second miracle: Elder Boyce almost didn't bring his money, but decided it wouldn't hurt. hallelujah, because he had just enough to pay for it.   Next, so they sent a technician and we started to walk home. I ended up tripping into a huge hole just the size of my foot because it was so dark, and the guy at the office decided to have mercy on us and drove us home. He mentioned on the way home where he lived. turns out I had been to his house before but he wasn't home.  They sent a technician at 9:30pm to our house to fix the lights. Turns out, he went to the chapel, and not our house just assuming he knew. So we waited for like 30 minutes waiting for this guy to come to our house, and he didn't. Then...now knowing this office guy's house, we walked there to ask him to call the technician again because he went to the wrong place at 10pm. We found his house but he was watching tv, and we really needed the lights because I can't pack in the pitch black. So we were outside calling to him from his gate but he wasn't responding. We said a prayer and my first thought was to go to his neighbor's house. Funny thing is, the only people in the house were twi speakers. Then out of nowhere, this guy came out and asked if we needed help, he directed us to his friends house who had the office guys number. We called him, and the office guy came outside. We talked, and he said that we should connect our power box back for the night and they will send a technician to check it the next day. We went home at 11:30 or so, and all was well. Truly God does care about his children, in their most desperate time of need, even for the small things. I hit the sack around 3:30am after packing and woke up at 5am to go to Nkawkaw. The Lord is wonderful and does answer prayers.

Love you all!

Elder Wawro

PICTURES:

 I am sitting on a little metal bar behind me, because my head would have hit the top of the shop if I was standing! :)

Elder Boyce and I got matching pants, but the tailor put a weird fabric pattern in a wrong place...ha ha ha

Packing to leave to Obuasi

Banku and fufu

Banku and okro soup

New companion, Elder Kanu

Rescued baby chicken!