Happy New Year! 2018

Recent Convert Musah

Dear family and friends,

Happy New Year!!! Hope everyone had an amazing Christmas and a wonderful New Year! It was amazing to talk to my family last week and glad to know that all is well back home! This week definitely has been a crazy one here in Ghana!

New Year is the biggest holiday ever. The Ghanaians celebrate much more than we do back home! For a straight week, there have been fireworks going off every night. And these things are nothing like the little ones we have back home. These people are setting off the huge ones that they do at stadiums and concerts. Except, it isn't at a stadium it is in their backyard next to houses and buildings! The past week it has sounded like they were fighting a war outside. 

And then New Year's Eve was nothing like I have ever seen before. Everywhere you look in Ghana you will see a church. And they aren't like any of the churches back home. They dance, sing, and pray for hours and the top of their lungs and with huge speakers. They even have something that they call the gift of tongues. Which is just them blabbing out random stuff into a microphone nonstop for hours at a time. They believe that when they should pray no one should know what they are saying except for God. And on New Year's Eve all of this stuff completely escalated like three levels. All of the churches had something called Watch Night. Where they stayed up all night singing, dancing, screaming, and yelling random stuff into microphones. Every single church in Ghana has watch night. So, basically, I had absolutely no sleep last night or even the past week for that matter.

We even had some investigators call us and said that they were at the chapel and no one was there. They asked us if we had Watch Night. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the only church without Watch Night. The people here love it so much that they didn't even show up for Sacrament Meeting they just wanted to know if we would have Watch Night. 

Plus, with all of the holidays, people have been very busy and it has been hard for to meet with our investigators and the new people that we find each day because they are never at home or available for us to teach them. I am ready for this week when things will get back to normal and we will be back on our normal proselyting time. Hope everyone has had a joyful holiday season and had a great break from school and work! I love and miss all of you and will see you next year. ;)

Love,

Elder Ordyna

School in Kenyasi (On Sundays it's a Church)

Happy New Year from Me, Elder Bamba, Elder Buhler and Elder Lephoyo