NEW COMPANION and MORE FOOD

The weather here has been HOT.  funny that.
I'm trying to think about what we can do for Christmas and Christmas trees/  decorations.
thinking of going to cutting one down.

So my new companion is cool,
His name is Elder Chimuka from Zimbabwe
He was best friend with Elder Wicho (my MTC companion) before they both came on mission.  He is 6 months (2 transfers ahead of me)  he arrived in ghana the same time i got my call!!!!  pretty crazy i know.

hey did you end up telling blaze to look out for the kid from melbourne at convention
Markus Thom.  The office couple were telling me about him.  I will no longer be the lone Australian in the Mighty Ghana Accra Mission

We went mountain climbing today, so i put here's some photos for you guys to check out.  finally see where ive been living for the past 3 months.

We celebrated thanksgiving last week.  it was pretty fun! is that something that you guys do?  We have mashed potatoes and boy were they amazing! with beef ( no turkey here) and beans and carrots and bread and gravy... it was quite a feast.
plus pineapple and mango.

i told them i will make pav for Australia Day. might even have a barbie!!! lol
Which reminds me are you able to put in one of those easy pav's?
i don't know what they are called but hopefully you know what i'm talking about.
if not i will just suffer trying to make one from scratch!!! lol
i was thinking of making some lamingtons as well!

I'm in the coolest place in the mission and loving it out here! the branches are cool, the members are cool, the work is sweet and plently FM(free meals) and everyone just says that the Koforidua elder's are the luckest and that we will suffer when we go to Accra....  My Companion was telling me some pretty crazy stories! but i'll leave them for another time!

We planning on having a baptism on Christmas (they call it a 'White Baptism' ) not sure why, it doesn't snow here but anyway.  the branch presidency were very excited about that.

One of my new words which Ghanians understand 'plenty' and 'smallsmall' 'bigbig' 'so you understand very well'

P.S    and m&m's, nutella and skittles are the bomb :D

Love you all lots and lots
ELDER ANDERSON!

More Baptisms, BIG Fufu and Goodbye to Elder Tukon

The prophets card game is soo cool! there are some way interesting facts on them and we played it last night after we planned and ate brownies the Sis Cranny made for us with ice cream and a whole heap of laffy taffys, jolly ranchers lemonheads, starburst and nerds!!!! it was fun!!!! we are going to make cookies this week and Sis Cranny is going to make the Lehi Roller mills brownies for us!!! that mix smells amazing!!!!

We had another baptism on Saturday and we baptized the mother of two of the people from our last baptism. She was so excited to be baptized. She has been coming to church for just over three months now. Her husband is a member but they were not Yet married, so she couldn't be baptized. And finally on the 1st they did their marriage! It was so exciting and man she was so excited she even came an hour early to the baptism (which started half an hour late cause we were waiting for the Branch President and the Branch Mission Leader)

She made a BIG fufu with hen soup lol, (chicken soup). We went and pounded it for her! I have some nasty blisters and chunks of skin missing from the palms of my hands! But it was cool!

We also baptized her small son's friend and his mother!!! It was amazing, we are currently working with the rest of their family.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/video/video.php?v=1232000615666&comments

My companion is going home!
We sort of had a little party today for him. Made a huge soup, pounded heaps of yam fufu and like 6kg of chicken and a huge tuna fish and ate it on our landladies balcony.

We are traveling to Accra on Wednesday and i will be saying goodbye to him!!!!!! i cannot believe he is going home already!!!!! 3 months! wow and i get a new companion!!!!!

Everything is COOL with Elder Anderson

8 Nov 2010
As for me it (my week) was very cool!  and tomorrow i finally get to go to Accra again!!!! its only been 10 weeks but still!!!  we are going to the temple :)
and i will finally be able to buy normal things and not be ripped off by bush bums!!! lol

This week was cool.
We went to this park/rain forest thing this morning to take photos.

1st area cont... (Korofidua)

October 4th

No baptisms this week but we have 16 for next week which is exciting. also next week is Zone Conference which will be another FIRST!!!!!!!!

Transfers are Wednesday week so we will see about those 2 extra elders. you never know.

No conference yet. I think we dont see it till november!!! but we get the Liahona every issue and the talks are normally in there. so that will be cool.

Testimony meeting was interesting, i understood maybe 4 or 5 testimony's the rest were all in the native language (which i am picking up slowly) It is called Twi, pronounced Trrrrreee

 

October 12th

I MISS DRIVING!!!!! SOOOOO much!

Okay so i had a really good week again. we ended up having 15 baptism's!!!! We are going to a split with the missionaries from Suhum as they need to have a candidate interviewed for baptism.)

The Cranny's who are the couple in our District said it was the biggest baptism they have been too since they have been here (1 year)

Sept stats: 175 Baptism's and October Goal is 221!!! (for the mission)

We started the BOOK OF MORMON CHALLENGE at Zone Conference, which is cool and i think you should all do it as well!

This is what you do;

Get a clean Book of Mormon (The blue missionary one) and then in;

RED - mark all the references to Jesus Christ

ORANGE - Make anything that he says (Include when his prophets say "and thus saith the lord'

GREEN - All of the Christlike Attributes (D&C 4: 5-6)

BLUE - The Doctrines of the Gospel

So Wednesday is my 2month mark!!! WOW that has gone fast! only 22 months left :)

and 4 months till i am no longer a teen!!!!!!! I know it is hard to believe!!!

Transfers are this Wednesday, meaning our area is being split! Elder Takon and I will be in Effiduase and Oyoko and the New missionaries will be in Koforidua!!!!!!  Crazy to think, but president said because we have found so many good people that there is work out here. (and i get my package!!!!) The Cranny's are going to go pick the new missionaries and get it for me :)  (He was going to close down this area before i came out here because of the lack of work!!) But he decided to give it one more transfer to see how it would go (thus it being 'white-washed' with Elder Takon and I) 

Our branches are very good, i will be sad to leave Koftown and the sweet people that we have there but the new missionaries will be staying in the same apartment as us so we will be able to keep up.

The roads here are crazy! i felt like i was going to die today!!! We went to a place called Boti Falls, Umbrella Rock and the "magic" palm tree!! they were amazing! but man Ghanian's try to rip you off! We went there with our district and there are 3 "obruni" (white man) and they guy straight up was like 'white man 3 cedi's black man 1 cedi'. i cant believe how blatantly racist they are they see a white person and just see $$$.. We bargined with them. i just try and imagine what would happen back home home if anything like that happened. or if everytime a dark person walked by everyone yelled out "BLACK MAN!!" like they do to us fair people. They eat there coconuts before they are ready, (like when we eat them) the flesh is still slimy and there is a lot of milk inside (which is more like water)

I heard some statistics at a members house on the radio about the road toll, from April-June there were 500 deaths on the roads and July -Sept was 800 deaths!!!! The roads are crazy!!!!!

I MISS DRIVING!!!!! SOOOOO much!

Okay so i had a really good week again.
we ended up having 15 baptism's!!!!  (we are going to a split with the missionaries from Suhum as they need to have a candidate interviewed for baptism.)

The Cranny's who are the couple in our District said it was the biggest baptism they have been too since they have been here (1 year)

Sept stats: 175 Baptism's and October Goal is 221!!! (for the mission)

We started the BOOK OF MORMON CHALLENGE at Zone Conference, which is cool and i think you should all do it as well!

This is what you do;
Get a clean Book of Mormon (The blue missionary one)
and then in;
RED - mark all the references to Jesus Christ
ORANGE - Make anything that he says (Include when his prophets say "and thus saith the lord'
GREEN - All of the Christlike Attributes (D&C 4: 5-6)
BLUE - The Doctrines of the Gospel

So Wednesday is my 2month mark!!! WOW that has gone fast! only 22 months left :)
and 4 months till i am no longer a teen!!!!!!! I know it is hard to believe!!!

Transfers are this Wednesday, meaning our area is being split! Elder Takon and I will be in Effiduase and Oyoko and the New missionaries will be in Koforidua!!!!!!
Crazy to think, but president said because we have found so many good people that there is work out here. (and i get my package!!!!) The Cranny's are going to go pick the new missionaries and get it for me :)
(He was going to close down this area before i came out here because of the lack of work!!) But he decided to give it one more transfer to see how it would go (thus it being 'white-washed' with Elder Takon and I)
Our branches are very good, i will be sad to leave Koftown and the sweet people that we have there but the new missionaries will be staying in the same apartment as us so we will be able to keep up.

The roads here are crazy! i felt like i was going to die today!!!
We went to a place called Boti Falls, Umbrella Rock and the "magic" palm tree!!
they were amazing! but man Ghanian's try to rip you off!
We went there with our district and there are 3 "obruni" (white man) and they guy straight up was like 'white man 3 cedi's black man 1 cedi'
i cant believe how blatantly racist they are they see a white person and just see $$$
We bargined with them.
i just try and imagine what would happen back home home if anything like that happened.
or if everytime a dark person walked by everyone yelled out "BLACK MAN!!" like they do to us fair people. They eat there coconuts before they are ready, (like when we eat them) the flesh is still slimy and there is alot of milk inside (which is more like water)

I heard some statistics at a members house on the radio about the road toll,
from April-June there were 500 deaths on the roads and July -Sept was 800 deaths!!!!
The roads are crazy!!!!!

KOFORIDIA (First Area)

While Elder Anderson is serving in the Accra, Ghana Mission, he will serve in different areas that the mission encompasses.  His first area was Koforidua...

He writes....

7th September 2010

It is HOT!
It is STICKY
It is the rainy season
and its still HOT!

it rains nearly every day, we just have to find someone to teach under cover when it rains!  We (me and my companion) are in a little town called Koforidua. We are both new to the area, he was the old AP so trying to find our way around it terrible!

The streets are not named so that is hard then no one knows where they live. we are covering 2 branches and no one seems to know the boundary's for them! and I'm the only whites person.

a little girl saw me and started crying she didn't know what i was. most kids just call out abruni (white man) and smile and wave its pretty cool

There is not a drop of milk like back a home and cheese is far and few between!

We have 8 investigators with baptismal dates! i know already in just 5 days! and we had 16 investigators at church yesterday! The work is really ready to be done here. The Ghana Accra Mission has the the 2nd highest baptizing mission in the world for the last 6 months! (Some Brazil that just opened up is beating us but hey 2nd is still awesome!)

The things here are funny to buy. Some things are so cheep like taxis. 35cents from my house to yours! but Nutella is like almost 10 bucks (equivalent) for the little one! You can get $2 recharges for your phones! and everyone one here has a mobile!

My branch's are nice and the branch missionaries and mission leader are so helpful they come out with us, and show us around, been on splits twice already!

Mission life is fun (hand washing all my cloths is not) but something i must do if i want clean cloths. lol

We have our first district meeting tomorrow so i get to meet the district and then our First Zone Training on Friday.

14th September 2010
we had 18 investigators at church yesterday 17 last week and we have a baptism this saturday and another on sunday! They have to attend church 4 times before they can be baptised so the ones this week are member refferals. the members here are so great with the missionary work both branches have about 140 members and the chapels are pretty normal! except that the font is outside in the courtyard! lol weird i know! but cool

It is has been the 2nd highest baptizing mission in the world for the last 6 months! 3 per companionship per month on average! We have 17 investigators with baptismal dates!  so wow
The temple is very nice. no white (but then again neither is brisbane) but still awesome! just a tiny bit bigger than Brisbane. beautiful and there is alot of natural wood its cool as!

21 September 2010
My Companion's name is Elder Takon, he is from nigeria and is pretty cool! He was the AP and goes home at the end of the next transfer!

We actually had 5 baptisms over the weekend! 3 on sat and 2 on sun So i was pretty chuffed!!!!!

As for my companion wanting anything he wants cookies. they are his favorite and nearly impossible to get good ones here. The couples sometimes bring some around for him (which is good cause i get some too!) lol

One thing i love here is the bread! i don't know if i told you but there is a big bakery right near our flat called B. Foster Bakery and the bread is amazing!

i eat so much of it!