Birthday Week

Baptism day for Brother Kwabena, Sister Dorkis, and Brother Sarkodie

Dear family and friends,

 Thank you for all of the birthday emails!

This week was absolutely sweet! It was an absolute blast celebrating my birthday out here in Africa. What's a better birthday gift than teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and having people accept baptismal dates and read the Book of Mormon? It was one of the sweetest birthdays that I have had yet.

On Friday I was soaked the whole day. Here in Ghana, it is a tradition to spray people with water on their birthdays. I completely forgot about it until my companion told one of our investigators that bakes cakes that it was my birthday. I was so grateful that he told her because I got a free cake from her as a present but included was a seriously wet shirt. After that, everywhere we went my companion told the people that we were meeting with that it was my birthday just because he wanted to see me get wet. At first I was a little annoyed about it, but in the end, I was completely fine with it because it cooled me off so much! 

This week we focused on contacting because many of our investigators in our teaching pool are about to be baptized. Majority of the people that we met this past week were super stubborn and hard-hearted. I have noticed that the people here in Techiman are a lot different than Kumasi. Don't get me wrong they love Jesus Christ and listening to people share the gospel, but they are a lot more stubborn about even thinking about changing churches and very prideful about the church that they do go, this makes the work super difficult. We met one man that flat out told us "Quite frankly I won't have any time to read your book. I am a chief elder in my church." We were like ok no problem and then left the Book of Mormon on one of his speakers. Despite not having much success contacting this week one of our investigators told us that he has two friends that are super interested in the church and we gave them a Book of Mormon and will hopefully accept baptism soon.

Vatican City Branch Members at the Baptism

Vatican City Branch Chapel

Yesterday we had an amazing day at church. Eight of our investigators came to church, and we had three baptisms. Brother Kwabena, Sister Dorkis, and Brother Sarkodie. Kwabena and Dorkis came to church three times, and then we baptized them. Sarkodie, on the other hand, was completely different. His journey to baptism was a lot longer. He met with missionaries for six months before I came to the area. His one main concern was the fact that he was hesitant to join another organized religion because of all of the things that have happened to him in the past. He has had pastors rob money from him and a bunch of other stuff that would make me scared to join another church as well. He just said that he needed time to investigate the church and see how it was. He told him to pray and read the Book of Mormon. Even we have been praying for him every day the past couple of weeks and one day he surprised us by saying "Elders I hope I can baptize this week." We were both super shocked and said absolutely; you can be baptized this week!
The baptism service was great, and the spirit was so strong.   The branch president was the one performing the baptisms. He did all three of them with his left hand to the square instead of his right. And we didn't realize it until he got changed as well as the three candidates. We had to go tell them to get dressed again and had to do the three baptisms over again. All of us felt so good after the baptism knowing that it was done right. After the baptism, all three of the candidates were so happy and had huge smiles on their faces. 

I hope everyone has a great next week. I know I will because Harmattan is ending and the start of the much loved RAINY SEASON is this week!!!!

Love,
Elder Ordyna

Pics of Techiman. Looking forward to the rainy season! 

An Investigator's Pet Monkey

Member's Farm where we went Farming

View of Techiman from the top of the Chapel

Being in The World but Not of the World

Dear family and friends,
Being on the mission and this past week I have definitely experienced this quote. "As missionaries, we live according to a set of standards that are higher than back home. That is so we can have the spirit to be with us all of the time." It has also been an amazing experience to live the mission standards and feel the impact of doing so. On the mission, you experience everything, like everything. We see the most awesome things but also the weirdest and craziest things. 

We had a multi-zone activity this past week in Sunyani. After the activity, we were assigned to sleep in the Fiapre apartment. The apartment is right above Joker's Pub, and they play loud music all night long. All night for hours you have to listen to some crazy African songs half of which are in Twi. It was seriously annoying and obnoxious, but it was classic. On almost every corner Ghana has a pub or "spot" as they are officially called here. And at night they are an absolute party. People are dancing, talking, drinking and playing music super, super loud. If I could pick any of the missionary lessons to go and teach it on TV so that everyone in the county could hear it would definitely be The Word of Wisdom. We meet like two drunk people a day. 

Me and Elder Smith making pineapple stew. The absolute best recipe that I ever made on mission so far!!

We are planning to baptism three people this week. Sister Dorkis and Brother Kwabena are two super powerful investigators that have come to church every Sunday for the past three weeks. The other man, his conversion, and baptism is an absolute miracle. He is what I guess missionaries call The Golden Investigator. From the second he started meeting with missionaries, he knew the church was true and that The Book of Mormon is true. The only thing holding him back was his deep anti-religious feelings because he had bad experiences with churches before. Like I have shared before in previous emails many of the churches in Ghana are super Apostate. There is the gift of tongues stuff, and the pastors take all of the members tithes for themselves. Missionaries have been meeting with Sarkodie for the past year. We had a short lesson with him this morning. We were expecting to walk in there and help resolve some of his concerns, but out of nowhere, he said Elders I think it is about time that I baptize. I was so shocked that I didn't even know what to say. We basically just told him that we were super happy for him and that we knew he was making the right choice. We have been praying for him every day since I have come to Techiman. Sunday will be one of my happiest days on the mission with the three baptisms. I have loved Techiman so much and have had such a great experience on my mission so far.
Hope everyone has a great week and I will talk to you next week!!!

Love,
Elder Ordyna

Taking Accountability as District Leader

Walk, Walk, Walk,

Dust, Dust, Dust

IT'S TECHIMAN!!!!

-Quote by Elder Ayeque (new missionary from Ivory Coast)

The Dust of Techiman

Chillin

  

Dust Town

 Dear family and friends,

I officially made it to my third area. Techiman has been a really sweet place already. It is way smaller than Kumasi but super similar. The buildings and the way the city is set up reminds me a lot of Kumasi. There is a main downtown area with banks, office buildings and then a huge food market and then the city goes out from there. It is so much hotter, sunnier, drier, and dustier than Kumasi. We are farther up north and Harmattan is twice as bad up here. The dust is so bad! You walk five minutes and you look down and your shoes arent black anymore they are straight red. I have given up on trying to polish them because as soon as I step out the door my shoes are dirty again. Polishing shoes out here in Techiman is just a waste of time and polish so I just take my brush and clean my shoes off and call it good. 

The Kumasi mission is so big that we have 11 zones and take up three quarters of Ghana. There are 6 zones in Kumasi and then the other five zones are in Obuasi, Konongo, Sunyani, Techiman and Tamale. And all of these places are spread out and far apart from everywhere. So, here in Techiman I am one of 16 missionaries for miles. We get super close to everyother missionary in the zone because they are the only other missionaries that we see. In Kumasi I would see over half the mission every week. Kumasi was a lot of fun and I missed it for my first couple of days. But, now that I have been out here in Techiman for a while I have really come to enjoy it so much!!

Another powerful thing about Techiman is the fact that the Mente Brafo problem isn't bad at all. In Kumasi they love speaking Twi way too much. If you walk up to someone and start speaking with them in English, they won't even talk to you unless you mix some Twi words in. Others only understand How are you and then when you go farther than that they competely shut down and say Mente Brafo!! Which means basically "I don't speak English." It was a super serious problem for us missionaries. It was very rare to find someone that spoke good English and understood it well enough for us to teach them. Most of the time we had to coordinate with members to come out and translate for us which was a complete hassle because many members had no time or didn't care to do missionary work. But, here in Techiman many, many people love speaking English and when you start speaking with someone they will speak it back to you which was a shock when I first came here. Even little kids can speak super powerful English which was completely new to me. The farther north you go in Ghana the more English they speak. 

We have a lot of progressing investigators that we are meeting with right now that we are preparing to baptize. We are planning for two at the end of the month and two more at the beginning of March. Many of our investigators have some minor concerns that we are addressing right now and hoping to help them overcome so that they will feel ready for baptism. From what I have seen already up here in Techiman the work is a lot slower than in Kumasi. There are many, many Muslims and the people aren't as religious here as in Kumasi. But, compared to other parts of the world the work is going very well!!!

I would like to share a story to end my letter this week. This last Saturday my companion and I were just leaving a hotel where one of our investigators works to take a taxi back to our apartment when we saw a lady walking her motobike up a hill. We asked her if she needed help starting it or walking it back to our house. She wanted us to try and start it for her. My companion hops on and tries to kickstart it but nothing. After a couple more minutes the investigator Edmond and his brother Richmond (member) come out of the hotel and start to help us. Richmond gets on and asks my companion to help push the bike to try and jumpstart it. Well... they ended up getting it going but Richmond accidentally hit the gas and the brake wasn't working so he ran it right into a concrete wall. Luckily he was completely fine but the bike wasn't. The plastic body cracked and the steering alignment was completely off. We offered to walk it home for her but she said that she didn't want to worry about it tonight and just left it at the hotel. My companion and I felt so bad afterwards. We told the lady that we were really sorry. We were trying to be helpful and found a service opportunity but the whole thing backfired and blew up in our faces.

I hope all of you have a wonderful week. I encourage everyone to find service opportunities this week. They can be big or small. Just go out and brighten someones day for them!

Love,

Elder Ordyna

We went to a members house yesterday after church to visit with her small. Her husband just passed away and she doesn't see her children a lot so we have been asked by the branch president to visit her a lot to see how she is doing. Yesterday was amazing. We were sitting and talking small to her when she said "Hold on I'm Coming!" She went behind her house and came back with a really long metal pole. My companion and I were wondering what she was going to use that for. We followed her over to a coconut tree and she started banging the pole on some coconuts to knock down a couple for us to eat and take back to our apartment. Then she goes over to a mango tree and starts knocking some down for us. Let me just say for the hour that we were at her house it was pure paradise. We were eating coconuts and mangoes! She even gave us a bunch to take with us. The picture is of the one of the coconuts. The biggest coconut I have ever seen in Ghana. I have officially been in every kind of apartment in the mission. I started in a four went to a two man and now am in a six man. The six man apartment is my favorite so far. It is absolutely a party every day in there!

The Techiman Dust from our Compound

The Techiman Six Man Apartment

The Biggest Coconut Ever (We got it from a member)

Techiman Sunset

Elder Westfall (Companion), Elder Ayequoe and Elder Ordyna

Elder Austin, Elder Smith, Elder Ordyna, Elder Carlson

Techiman and Sunyani Zone Conference

Techiman Vatican City 1

Dear family and friends,

Sorry, I don't have much time to email today. But, I officially made it to my new area in Techiman. It is about 3 hours away from Kumasi. Techiman is a very small town compared to Kumasi. It is like Thatcher or Payson compared to Phoenix. But it is a seriously nice place. It is a lot more peaceful and calm than Kumasi which has been amazing. I have certainly missed my old area Kenyasi and my companion but, I am enjoying getting to know my new companion, Elder Westfall. He is from Boise Idaho and is a great guy. We are certainly getting along very well. We have the same mindset about a lot of things and certainly relate more than a lot of my companions. The area is filled with a lot of progressing investigators that we hope to baptize here very soon. I have some stories to tell but my time won't allow it. Till next week. 

Yabeisha Wi (See you soon in Twi)

Elder Ordyna  

Shawarma Stand

Brother Sampson from Kenyasi (Recent Convert)

With Elder Buhler in Kejetia

Me with Brother Ambros (I Love You Companion, Companion I Love You)(Asuoyeboah Member)

Elder Westfall (my companion)