The Week of Finding and Progress - Jan. 29-Feb. 4, 2019

Jan. 29-Feb. 4, 2019

Another week out here finished just like that. 2019 is going by super-fast.

My week was super busy and pretty awesome. The area is still suffering small small but we also had some miracles that are adding to the progress of the area.

 

Travel to Kumasi for Zone Conference

The week started with the whole zone heading out to Kumasi Tuesday morning for zone conference. We had to wake up at 5 am and leave Nkawkaw at 6 am to get there on time. There was some serious traffic on the road but luckily, we were able to make it on time. I had the "pleasure" of instructing at the zone conference on how to be an effective missionary. It was a great and uplifting conference.  We talked a lot about improving the mission culture and striving every single day to be better than we were yesterday. Afterward, I had my interview with President Webster. It was a seriously crazy one because he talked about his plans for me for the rest of my mission. I only have three more transfers (18 weeks) which is super crazy. It looks like I will be zone leader for one more transfer and then end my mission training a new missionary!!! It should be awesome!

Wednesday and Thursday were days full of just straight contacting and walking the dusty roads of Nkawkaw trying to find people to teach. As we exercised faith and relied on the Spirit we were guided and directed to people that were ready to receive us. The first was a young girl named Dora. She told us that missionaries had come to her house numerous times and taught with her, but she didn't have any desire to do anything they told her. She was comfortable at her church and what she was doing in life. I guess she has seriously softened her heart a lot because she was willing to listen to us and even read the Book of Mormon. We even gave her a baptismal date. At the end of the lesson, she told us that she now feels something different with us than other missionaries in the past and wants us to continue to visit her! Sadly, she wasn't able to come to church, but we will hopefully make progress with her this time around! As we were finding on Thursday it got to the point where we would stop for a second at each intersection and ask each other what direction do you think we should go? And then would walk down the path that we felt was right. We did this for 20 minutes or so and at this point, we were out in the middle of nowhere. We were walking on a straight bush trail that eventually led to some houses and then split into two. I thought we were completely lost at this point and just wasted time by coming all the way out here, but then we were inspired to go down the path on the right which led to more bush. About one minute down the trail we ran into a guy that was just sharpening his cutlass on a rock. We introduced ourselves to him and then told him that we were missionaries like we always do. We then found out that he has been searching for a church to attend for a while now. As soon as we heard that we were both super excited. (Everyone goes to church here in Ghana and it is super hard for people to stop going to their church and come to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints even for just a one day visit.) We set up an appointment to meet with him and we gave him a Book of Mormon. The next day we headed out to his house and met the whole family! We had an amazing lesson with him and his wife and the spirit was so strong. He wasn't able to come to church yesterday, but he said that this next Sunday he will bring his whole family to church. Lastly, while we were just walking around a random man called to us named Sampson and said that he was investigating the church in Kumasi and he just recently moved to Nkawkaw and wanted to know where the church is. We gave him directions and then even set up an appointment with him this coming week. 

With the help of the Lord, we were able to find a lot of sweet people that I hope as we meet with them and they feel the spirit and even come to church they will progress and come to know that this is the Church of Jesus Christ and even prepare themselves to be baptized. Every day we are seeing more and more progress in the area. The hand of God is in this work and preparing people every day for us to find and bring unto Him.

Even on Saturday and Sunday, we had two successful meetings that I hope will also bring blessings and progression to the area. On Saturday my companion and I met with the District Presidency to discuss missionary work in the district. We came up with a lot of powerful ideas to get the work moving around here and hopefully as they are put into place, we will see some great results. Yesterday after church we also had our branch council meeting. The meeting was themed on missionary work. We were able to talk about each one of our investigators and their needs and even able to set up appointments with members to come with us and teach them this week. 

This week we made many steps in the right direction and hopefully we will see some results in the coming weeks!!

TILL NEXT WEEK!!!!

Elder Ordyna