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!