Most Stressful and Spiritual Week

Hi everyone,

I thought I would start my email this week a little differently. This week was absolutely amazing. We had the privilege of gathering the whole mission together in Kumasi (all 180 of us) which never happens. This is the first time in two years that the whole Kumasi mission has been together. Our mission is so big and spread out it makes it super expensive and nearly impossible. But, we also had the sweetest experience of having two apostles (Elder Anderson and Elder Soares) and a member of the Presiding Bishopric (Bishop Waddell). The spirit in the room was remarkable, and as soon as they entered the room, I gained a testimony that they were both chosen by God to be apostles. Both men seriously talked by the spirit because the majority of the things that they talked about really impacted and touched me. Elder Soares talked about how we can know if we are successful missionaries and it is not just by the number of baptisms we have but many other things. The one that I loved is we can know we are successful missionaries if we see the gospel of Jesus Christ and the spirit impacting people's lives through us. That is such a powerful thing. We know we are effective and successful if we are helping people come unto Jesus Christ and to change their lives. Elder Anderson talked about life after the mission and gave some seriously powerful advice on making important decisions in life. It is all about the spirit.

FM at Ma Konadu's House

As Elder Anderson was talking, he also prophesied about a lot of things pertaining to missionary work in Ghana. He said that Ghana is a very important country in relation to missionary work because the people are very believing and love Jesus Christ. And then he said that Ghana will have many temples coming very soon and that Kumasi will have a temple in the next five years which was seriously so cool to hear! There are many faithful and prepared members of the church here in Kumasi wanting to perform their temple work. The Accra Temple is just super far for many people. Having a temple here would be such a huge blessing.

I am so grateful for this past week that I have had to feel the spirit and be inspired and uplifted by God's chosen servants here on the Earth. I am grateful also to be serving in this part of the world and to be in the middle of the Lord's work here in Ghana. The church out here is a lot like how it was during pioneer days, and it is so sweet to see the church grow and more and more people receiving the knowledge of the gospel. It seems like a new branch opens every month out here which is crazy.

Love,
Elder Ordyna

 Lake Bosomtwe

 Daban District with our sweet district jerseys

Tro ride back from the lake with the whole zone

Lake Bosomtwe again. We went again which was super sweet.

Eating lunch at Sister Veronica's with Elder Amaechi, Elder Moak

Visiting Sister Jessica with Elder Moak and Elder Schmidt

YOU DEY DO YOURSELF

The family that we have been teaching came to church last Sunday. We are still working on the husband though. But, the wife is serious and really wants to be baptized. 

Dear family and friends,

It wasn't super busy with office things, so we were able to go out and visit a lot of our investigators which was sweet. 

FHE 

We have this one family that was referred to us by Brother Francis (a member). I have loved meeting with them. They are all really smart and very eager to learn more. The wife even asked us last time when the next baptism date was. She has only come to church once but has really been touched by what she has seen and felt while visiting the church. And she has also become really good friends with a lot of the other members which has been really great to see. Daban is such a loving and inclusive ward. The husband still hasn't come to church. The first time he was really worried that he would have to pay collection and he didn't have any money, so that was why he didn't come. But, we talked about tithing and got everything resolved with him. He then told us that he would come to church, but he still didn't show up. We will continue to try and discern his problem, and hopefully, we will be able to work everything out. It would be such a special day to see both of them baptized. 

The girl is Sister Jessica, she is one of my recent converts, and it was her birthday

We have some other investigators that haven't been able to make it to church for a couple of weeks now because of some various personal things they had to do but overall our area continues to progress pretty well. We have a lot of people to teach, and the members are really helping us in our work.

The whole mission has been seriously preparing to hear from two apostles this upcoming Sunday. I am so grateful for the opportunity that we have to hear from them. I am grateful for the inspiring men that God has given us to guide us and help us to know the will of the Lord.

Love,
Elder Ordyna

 The elder in the middle next to me was a brother in our ward that came home early from mission for health reasons. He was cleared to go back to mission this past week, so we took him to the airport and bid him farewell. We also picked up a missionary coming home from the mission this week. It was interesting to see the difference between the two of them.

Buy quality or else YOU DEY DO YOURSELF, and you just don't want to DEY DO YOURSELF

Chick fil a sign Ghana version

Calling Day

Happy Mother's Day

Hi everyone!!!

This week was a busy one but went by seriously fast. We had a lot of little final things to finish up before the big calling day. We had to run out and fix some credit and give some new phones to people because theirs broke. But, the big calling day went seriously well. After we fixed all of the minor things, there weren't any problems. Along with the other 180 something missionaries in this mission, I was also able to call my family. It was such a great experience and so great to see and talk to each one of them. I am so grateful for such a wonderful family!

Over 5,000 cedis that we used to pay for all of the phone credit for the missionaries to call home on Mother's day

We have been teaching a lot of people recently that have really been progressing well recently, like a family we met a couple of weeks ago. They are all progressing well towards baptism hopefully at the beginning of next month. As a mission as a whole, we have definitely been seeing some serious negative results recently. Baptisms have been down this whole year, and there has definitely been a halt in the work recently. President Cosgrave asked the entire mission to have a mission-wide fast last Sunday.  It has only been a couple of days, but I and other missionaries have already seen the results of the fast. In the mission baptisms and other key indicators are up, and in my area, we have found two new people that are serious about the gospel and are planning to come to church this Sunday. God is aware of his servants and I know that this is work and He is guiding it.

One of the security guards at the mission home named Bukari coming out to open the gate during a thunderstorm.

Picture of the massive flooding that has been happening because of the rain. Dry places are literally turning into swamps.

To end, I will tell another story about how Ghanaians hate the rain. It is like everything shuts down inside them or something. The whole town shuts down as well. It is seriously like they are robots and as soon as they get wet, they shut off. On Sunday morning I woke up to the sound of rain. And instantly thought oh-no!!!! We were running a little late to the chapel, and when we got there, only 15 members were there at 9 and at the end of sacrament meeting the number remained the same. Noone wanted to come to church because of the rain and the rain even stopped at 8:30, thirty minutes before church even started!

Elder Ordyna

Hurricane Daban

May 1-7, 2018

Baptism picture (Mary, Phillipa, Kenneth, Jessica) with Elders Ordyna, Ellett, Momotimi, Moak and Schmidt plus member Elvis

Dear family and friends,

This week was definitely another sweet one out here in glorious Daban. The members are still so motivated to do missionary work and helping us in so many ways. Daban is the newest ward in Ghana, but it is still the most powerful one in all of Ghana. We had a four-person baptism this last week, and all of them were referrals from ward members. I have seriously learned how important members are to missionary work. The work goes a lot easier, and the investigators progress a lot better and quicker when members are fully involved. 

Kenneth with his sweet Kente scripture bag that my companion and I gave him. This guy was one of the people baptized last Saturday. And seriously powerful and will definitely serve a mission in a few years.

Investigators at Church

This past week we had a crazy powerful storm. It was another hurricane-like storm. Sorry.. do not get alarmed at my title. We did not have a hurricane hit here we are too far from the ocean, just a huge hurricane-like storm. I have seen plenty of storms here in Ghana. It rains every day here and when it rains it rains non stop for like three hours. But, the storms have seriously gotten worse and worse. I have never seen a storm flood before out here. But, in this last storm, it flooded absolutely everywhere! There were feet of water. A lot of roads closed because the water was extremely high, cars couldn't drive through, and all of the gutters and things overflowed. There were even thousands of houses that got flooded. This past Sunday only like a quarter of the members of the ward were at church yesterday because the majority of their house's flooded and were cleaning up afterward. So, we have been going around and doing a lot of service for people. It was the craziest rain storm and the most water I have ever seen. I absolutely love the feeling that I get when serving.

A house literally built on a rock

My companionship at a members house while we were helping them clean up after the rainstorm

Mission life is amazing, and I am enjoying every minute of it. In a month I will be at my one year mark!!

Love,

Elder Ordyna

Great Warrior 

Cars in the Mission Home parking lot 

Don't Bribe the Police

Have you read your Bible today? Every Tro-Tro or taxi in Kumasi you will see inspirational and religion
quotes on the back.

A MEGA STORM.....AND DUMSO

Office Life

Dear family and friends,


I survived transfer week in the office for the second time. Transfers in the office aren't just a day like it is for the other missionaries but it extends two days before and a day after the actual transfer day. On Monday we weigh and organize everything for the departing missionaries and then the next day we wake up at 5:30 am to take them to the airport. In the afternoon of that same day we go and pick up the new missionaries from the airport. Then Wednesday is the big transfer day. We are constantly driving people back and forth and making sure that everyone gets where they need to go. And then on Thursday morning, we wake up at 5:30 am to take the missionaries headed to Tamale to the bus station for their 7-hour trip. But, I can gratefully say that we didn't lose anyone, and everyone made it safely to their new areas which is a big plus.

Metro Mass Transfers

On top of a super busy and stressful day driving everyone around and making sure everyone got to where they needed to go as we were driving back to our apartment in the evening a huge rainstorm hit. It was honestly raining so hard that even with our windshields going back and forth as fast as possible we couldn't see anything out of the windshield, so traffic just stopped for like an hour. As we were waiting all I saw out of the window of the car was a huge river rushing past us. If a hurricane could happen super far inland that was basically it. It destroyed absolutely everything. Pretty much every electrical pole in Ghana came down, so we have been without power now for almost a week. 

Even this past week we were able to do a really special service project for a woman and her children in the ward. In the storm, a part of her roof blew off. So, we went over there and helped her to nail and put the metal sheets back on her house. It made me so happy to see how happy she was and even reminded me of the times that I went to Mexico to build homes for people in need. God loves all of us and wants all of us to be as happy as possible. And when we serve others, we are instruments in God's hands to help other people to be happy and have joy. 

FUFU

Nighttime Fun with Investigators

Elder Moak and I with members Stella and Anita

Stirring banku at Elvis's house

This week has been another successful week in the proselyting department. Things continue to go super well for us here in Daban. The members are so motivated and pumped up to do missionary work is so great to see and also it awesome. Here in the office, we get hardly any time to proselyte, so it is so nice that the members give us referrals instead of contacts. The five-person baptism will be this Saturday which will be so cool. There will be three of our investigators (Kenneth, Mary, and Jessica) and then the assistants will have two (small Mary and Phillipa). Something that will be so awesome is that it will be the first baptism in Daban Ward this year and since November of 2017. Plus, on a super happy note this past week one of our members Francis (the new Elders Quorum President) gave us a family to teach. The family is powerful and so ready to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. It was my very first lesson with a family out here in Ghana. It super hard to get all of the members of a family to all have time together to sit and listen to us as a family. But, this family is so interested that they all sat and were so engaged the whole time. We gave each of them a Book of Mormon, and they said that they would have scripture study and prayer every day. Plus, they all accepted a baptismal date for the last Saturday of May. Teaching this family really made me grateful for the family that I have back home and for the gospel of Jesus Christ that blesses each of our lives. 

I love you all and hope everyone has a great week! Enjoy the new month of May which means my year mark is the next month!

Love,
Elder Ordyna

DABAN FC

Missionaries serving in Bantama Stake

Investigators at Stake Conference at Bantama 

Pizza restaurant in my area called Piri Piri Pizza and the pizza maker is a legit guy from Italy named Tito.

The Grand Durbar

Family and friends,

Daban District Motto: Missionary Work is "Daban"! with Brother Francis (member and groundskeeper of the mission home)

This week in the office was great. We didn't have a lot of office work to do so we were able to go out and proselyte the most that we have been able to this whole transfer. It was seriously great because we have a lot of people we are preparing for baptism and we needed to finish teaching and go over some final things with them. On May 5 we are planning to baptize 6 of our people. Mary and her brother Kenneth, another Mary, Phillipa, Jessica, and Sharron.

We went to all of them this past week, and all have told us that they can't wait and are still doing all they can to prepare for their special day. I love baptism days out here!  The spirit is strong, and it makes me happy to see people take such an important step in their lives.


This was also the last week of the transfer, so all us missionaries were anxiously waiting for our transfer news. The last week of the transfers are the craziest ones out here. This past weekend I got my transfer news. My companion and I are both staying put here in the office and Daban. 

I am really looking forward to this next step in my mission and am so happy to be here in Kumasi. I am so grateful every day to be a missionary and for the opportunity that I have to serve in this mission. Time is going so fast, and it is almost already half over. I am happy I have been able to be an instrument in the Lord's hand to bring many people to the restored gospel and help many people. I wouldn't regret it at all. All of the people out here are so kind and being a missionary is absolutely amazing!!

Small girl in the middle (Phillipa) is preparing for baptism

Daban Apartment

On a cultural note, today my companion and I were in the office working on some things, and one of the security guards came down to give us some mail for President Cosgrave that was from the chief of Daban. It was written out to the Head Pastor of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. President Cosgrave opened it, and it was an invitation to a Grand Durbar here in Kumasi. A Grand Durbar is where all of the town and village chiefs come together and have a huge when I say huge I mean huge, gathering. It is an all-out party with dancing, food, and drinking. The main purpose of the event is to have all of the wizards and juju men perform their best rituals and things for people. It happens about twice a year and is basically is just a juju men party. It sounds pretty scary to me so I will not be going anywhere near that one.



I love you all and hope all of you continue to enjoy life and count your many blessings the Lord has given you.

Love,
Elder Ordyna

Elder Moak and I helped our land lady spray weeds 

                                                                                    

Investigators preparing for baptism (sister mary and brother kenneth)

Companion and I preparing fufu

Teaching 9 year old Phillipa with DVD player