Green Green Soup

Hello, friends and family!! I'm sorry it's been a few weeks since I have gotten you an email. I have been very busy lately and completely forgot to get y'all an email!

So the last few weeks, a lot has happened. Lots of changes and lots of running around to different places. But it has all been good things, and I have learned a lot. Let me tell ya all about it!!

So about a month ago, Elder Kennedy and I had Humjibre's first branch conference!! In our new church building!! And we had a wonderful turnout. We had a whopping 20 investigators at church! That's the most I have ever had at one time! I love to see the church grow as I have been here. We started off with 40-something members, and we were worshiping in a schoolhouse. Now we are 60-plus members and a nice new building. We are progressing quite well.

Another highlight experience was we had a GKM mission tour led by Elder Neilson, the Africa West area president. We traveled to Kumasi to have this conference, and let me tell you what, it was a fantastic day. I learned so many things from him. One thing I really liked that they stressed on was how hard missions are. Because they are seriously so hard. But they said, "The greater the challenge, the more profound the miracle." They expounded upon how challenges are hard but that's because they are supposed to be, but challenges are "Gold mines of spiritual growth." I thought that was cool. Also, something that he said that caught my attention is supposedly the grounds for the Manti Temple were dedicated by Prophet Moroni (I don't know if this is doctrine or not, it's just something Elder Neilson said), but that was my main takeaway.

Next on the list, I have some baptisms. Some of Kojo Fordjour's (village chief) grandchildren were baptized. Kojo is literally one of our strongest members and is quite the missionary in his old age!

We had transfers this past week, and this one affected me pretty good. I lost one of my most favorite companions yet, Elder Kennedy. I sure did enjoy all of my time with him and am so grateful for his wonderful example in my life. But now I must have more to learn. My new companion is Elder Kashindi from the Congo. This is my third Congolese companion. I'm excited to see what the next few months have to offer.

After all of this schedule-packing fun I have been having, somewhere amongst the madness, I took some time to sit down and eat some new food. The first one is called green green soup with cɔcɔnte, pronounced (cone cone tey). The cɔcɔnte is cassava flour that has been driven like banku. It was really good. It's the perfect in-between of fufu and banku. I ate it with a soup called green green. Don't ask me what was in it cause I have no clue besides large amounts of green slime. It was pretty good though. The second honorable mention was fish heads. If I am being completely honest with you, I love all the food here, but I did not like fish head. The only reason being, it was sour and I don't know why. I will definitely try it again. But for my first time, I wasn't a huge fan.

My personal studies have been crazy lately. I have been studying the later end of the New Testament. And I have found my all-time favorite chapter. It is Ephesians 4! There's lots of great things in this chapter. Ephesians 4:5 says that the one God that we worship has one "Faith," or in other words, one church. And one baptism. The word "one" appears seven times in verses 4-6. Oneness and unity are important themes in Ephesians. I see good correlation with modern scripture D&C 105:3-5. Oneness and unity are a celestial law.

I want to shift and talk about the rest of the chapter, mainly verses 11-25. It talks about the importance of having living prophets and apostles. True prophets and apostles with real priesthood are so important. Without them, we cannot maintain unity and pure doctrine. Without authority and revelation from God, the doctrines become polluted with ideas and philosophies of man instead of what God wants. And we see this today. What once was declared by Jesus Christ is now confused and preached differently in every church, creating large amounts of confusion. And in 1 Corinthians 14:33, "God is not the author of confusion but of peace." It also talks about once you are on the correct path, stay there. Don't let yourself stray as many others do.

Anyway, lots of good stuff, lots of rain here, lots of humidity, and lots of love! I hope y'all have a great week! ~Elder Gilbert

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Sɛrcɔla Squad

Hello friends and family!! It's been a crazy few weeks, so let me tell you all about it!

To start off, last week we had exchanges with the zone leaders. Our zone leaders live about an hour away from us in Bibiani, and their area is about another hour away. It is called Nyinahan, pronounced (N-hee-nee-hee-nee), it's a nice little area. I went on exchange with Elder Tano. I have a picture of our exchange down below.

The next highlight of last week was we held a baptism service for five of our people!! We have been working with them for some time now, and I'm so happy they have gained a testimony of this great work for themselves!! Pictures down below!

This week we had zone conference. I learned so much. It truly was a great conference. Something funny that we did at zone conference is the entire Bibiani zone decided we all wanted to go to zone conference with buzzed heads. Kinda sounds weird now that I'm typing it out, but it was funny in the moment, so we sent out a decree in the zone, and many didn't shave their heads but many did. So we all ganged up and took a photo after. It was pretty good. Bald in Twi is sɛrcɔla, pronounced (sir-cola), so we called ourselves the sɛrcɔla squad.

When we go to zone conference, we travel up to Kumasi the day before and stay in the mission office. There is a small basketball court. The only shoes that I had were my nice dress shoes, and I wasn't about to ball up in those. So I played a few rounds barefoot. The sucky thing was right before we were done in the last game, I was running full speed trying to defend Elder Mills and accidentally kicked an uneven piece of concrete and instantly turned my toe purple. It was not nice. But the next day, Elder Mills found some Mountain Dew Voltage, and we got to enjoy some American soda. So that made it all better. So huge shout out to Elder Mills for seeing that blue mtn brewski and buying it for me! Anyways, it's always fun to see my homie Elder Mills.

Another thing is power in this place sucks. We are entering into rainy season, so it rains nearly every day. But the power grid in Bekwai must really suck because we get even the slightest drizzle of rain, the power goes out. And it's not for a small time either. It's for days on end. The longest one has been four days so far, and I am not enjoying it. We typically run out of emergency water after three days. Emergency water is for cleaning and flushing toilets only. Not for drinking. We ran out of drinking water, and thankfully we had a life straw, so we just started drinking our emergency water.

One of my favorite drinks here in Ghana is called Malta Guinness. It's just a nice malt drink. I drink one like every day. But they came out with a limited-time cocoa malt, and I'm obsessing over them small. The only sucky thing is the only way you can buy them is in glass bottles, and the only place you can buy them is in bars, which sucks having to roll up to the bar to buy some malts. But they're so nice, so it's worth it.

Another highlight is while in Kumasi, I got a package from my Aunt Debi. It is packed full of all sorts of American goods! I'm so thankful for packages out here. They make life so nice.

A huge miracle I saw this week is one of our recent converts who was baptized last week got super sick this week. We went to Kumasi and returned on Saturday. We went to see her on that day. It is important that she comes to church the next day to be confirmed and receive the Holy Ghost. So, when we went to see her, she was completely bedridden. She reported being sick for three days and each day just getting worse and worse. So, we told her about priesthood blessings, and she desired we give one to her, so we did. We made sure her needs were taken care of, and we left. The next day at church, she was the first person there! She was completely better! It had literally been less than 24 hours that we went to see her. And she looked better, and she told us she has completely recovered, and we could see it! It was so cool.

You know, I no longer need more proof that the church is true. I already know. But when things like this happen, all I can do is smile and thank God that I was there to witness it. Anyways, that's all I've got for y'all. Talk to ya next time!

~Elder Gilbert

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