First Week in the Mission Field

Elder Shirley, Elder Piutau and several youth who are planning to be baptized in October

Elder Shirley with a member of the ward who helps translate (right) and a local youth

Outside the church building in Odoben

Some of the sights in Odoben

The new group of missionaries as the arrived from the Ghana MTC

Elder Shirley and his companion Elder Piutau

Elder Shirley and his companion with the mission president and his wife

September 24, 2018

Another week has gone by! Time goes by really fast out here, but lots of things happen in those quick times! After I left the MTC, I was hit with a major culture shock! Man, now that I am out in the weather every day, it feels so, so hot and I sweat so much every day! People here are so good to us (the missionaries) though and they are all so kind and humble. Life is so crazy out here!! Like it is so crazy being in Africa! People do not have much but they love what they have! They are all super humble and it is really cool!

Nothing is the same as it was back home. I am like the only white person around and all the little kids let me know about it. When they see me and my companion walk by they just look at us and call us “Obroni” which means white person! haha, I have even had a couple little kids run away from me while crying because they have not seen anything like me before!

The work is moving along though. My new companion’s name is Elder Piutau and he is from Tonga. We have extended baptism to 6 people this week and they all accepted! So, we should have 6 baptisms on October 13th! Mom's birthday! How cool is that?? 3 kids that are all around 10 or 11 years old, 1 teenager that is 17 years old, a girl that is around 17 years old and a guy that is probably mid-20s. The girl that is 17 and the older guy told us that they wanted to be baptized after the first lesson! We didn't even ask them, they told us! haha so that was a cool experience! 

My new area is called Odoben and not very many people speak English. I do not really understand anything being said around me, so it is hard to talk to people because I do not know how to respond. Even on Sunday, sacrament meeting was all in the native tongue called Twi. A member from the ward helps translate for us every day. He’s a really good kid, 21 years old. One of the weirdest things for me to adjust to is that I have to cook my own meal every day and I do not have a mom that makes me meals every meal! It's not that I can't cook, it is just that there are not any materials like the ones back in America so I am not used to cooking with African ingredients. For now, I eat eggs and toast a lot. One thing that I would request would be a big jar of extra crunch peanut butter. Peanut butter makes a lot of meals and they don’t have it here. The water here has been fine and easy to access. Also, there are lots and lots of lizards everywhere and cockroaches that are in our apartments sometimes haha, but nothing too sketchy.

Anyways, everything is going good for me this week and I am excited for the new week to start! Love you all!

~Elder Shirley

Questions and Answers:

Q: What's the place like where you live? Is it fairly nice? Do you have a washing machine?
A: It actually isn't too bad for African living, we have the nicest place around but that doesn't mean a lot because houses are not very nice around here. We are one of the only apartments right now without a washing machine but they told us that we should get one by the end of this month. In our apartment there are 4 of us, one is from Hawaii and the other is from Congo.

Q: What is your basic schedule like? What time do you get out of the apartment in the morning and when do you come in at night?
A: We leave the apartment around 12:30 and we get back at night around 6:30 because they said that those are the safer hours to be outside. It is so dang hot outside, I sweat buckets everyday!

Q:  Tell us a bit about the native language Twi.
A: I will be picking up on some of the language pretty quickly because I have to and because I want to be able to talk with people on a basic level. There aren’t any books or anything for me to study from, so I just have to learn to pick it up for the most part. I will just write down phrases and try to memorize them.

Q: So is it correct that you take a daily malaria pill then? And, are you sleeping under a mosquito net every night?
A: Ya, malaria pills are very important but no mosquito net right now, we have 3 fans so it blows the mosquitos away.

Elder Shirley’s funniest statement of the week:

“Something crazy about here is that everyone wears what they want if that makes sense. Lots of little kids run around naked and you see a lot of things that you don\t really want to ! haha. Like the other day we were teaching a lady that was around 35 or 40 and right in the middle of our lesson she started feeding her child if you know what I mean, pretty weird but everyone around here is used to it. Even older ladies will just decide that they don't want to wear clothes that day so you just have to watch where you look. Haha. Everyone is so open about it..... it even happened in church on Sunday.”

Time to Leave the MTC

Having fun in the Ghana MTC

Elder Shirley with the missionaries in his district

September 17, 2018

I am super excited to get out of the MTC and into the real world of Ghana, but I am pretty nervous as well. It will be fun! I will gain confidence with time for sure. I am pretty sure that they have apartments for us but not 100 percent sure. I haven't taken many new pictures this week because everything is the same here at the MTC, but I will send you lots next week! I have quite a few people writing me right now so I feel the love and support from back home! I miss you guys a lot! It will be good to have some new stuff to email you about next week after I get into the field.

Love you!

~Elder Shirley

Daily MTC Life

Elder Shirley with some of the missionaries in his district

The track and volleyball courts at the MTC, along with a view of Accra in the background.

September 13, 2018

Well, this week was not as exciting because I have learned to settle into the lifestyle a little bit but there is still a lot more to learn! Every day goes like this. Wake up at 6:30, then you have til 7:15 to get showered, dressed and ready for the day. You then go to your assigned classroom from 7:15 til 8:00 and do your own personal study. After that we have breakfast for a half hour and then back to the classroom to learn about how to teach and lessons in Preach My Gospel. We stay there in the classroom from 8:30 til 12:30 with like 2 breaks of 15 minutes somewhere during that time. 

After lunch we go back to the classroom and learn some more. We sometimes do 30 minutes of reading the Book of Mormon, which is my favorite time because it is something different and it helps with always having scriptures on hand for when we leave the MTC to teach people. So, we are in the classroom from 12:30 til 3:45 with a break or 2 of 15 minutes again and then we leave for a 1 hour break of sports time where you can play soccer, basketball, ping-pong, volleyball or run around a track that is about 200 meters long. Usually I play basketball but I will occasionally play the other stuff too.

After sports time we go back to class from 5:15 - 6:00 and plan for the next day. 6:00 - 7:00 is dinner time and then after dinner we go back to the classroom. We do what they call teaching appointments here where we teach our teachers as if they are investigators just so we can practice how to teach real investigators once we get out into the field. I like these times because if helps me understand how to teach and I also like these times because it is something different than classes again. After we finish classes that night at 9:00, we go back to our apartments and get ready for bed, which includes journal writing and reading the scriptures, stuff like that.

The MTC really is a great experience and there is a big feeling of joy all of the time around here! It is a really good environment to be in all of the time. Here at the MTC everyone either speaks French or English and it is super fun to interact with the elders that speak French because we spend lots of time trying to understand each other. Haha, it is pretty funny. The other companionship in our room only speak French and so we have troubles understanding each other sometimes but that is what makes it fun. You learn how to use hand signals and really simple English so that they can understand. Also, they teach us some words in French so that has been fun to learn those words too. They are studying English so they get a little better every day but still have a lot to learn.

Anyway, that is it for me now! Mission field starts on Tuesday and I am super excited to get out of the MTC and teach real people!


Love you!!
~Elder Shirley

Questions of the week:

Question: You said you eat the same food everyday. Does that mean breakfast, lunch and dinner?
Answer: Breakfast is always some type of oatmeal stuff, a banana, bread, and beans, like the beans that you would eat in pork and beans in a can. Kind of weird to eat beans for breakfast. Lunch and dinner is like always rice with some kind of chicken with some type of cake and a piece of fruit.

Question: Have you noticed your testimony increasing? Has it been easier to understand the scriptures after lots of hours of study?
Answer: My testimony has grown a ton!! I enjoy reading and studying more for sure.

Question: What do you do in your personal study time?
Answer: Personal study time is usually reading over chapter 3 in Preach my Gospel and reading chapters in the Book of Mormon.

Question: What do you do for working out each day?
Answer: I usually play basketball, but I have occasionally played soccer and ping pong. I still haven't lost in Ping Pong. haha

Question: How is it going as zone leader? What opportunities have you had to teach or lead this last week?
Answer: Zone leader is good but it is pretty easy here at the MTC. I have had the opportunity to conduct a meeting and stuff like that. My companion and I go around each night to a different companionship in our zone and just meet with them to get to know them better, and then we share a scripture with them so that has been fun to do and get to know everyone around here and their background.

Question: What is your companion like? What about your Mission President?
Answer: My companion is really strong in the gospel, he was only converted 3 years ago but is so smart already. He has been good for me and I also like the MTC president. He is super nice!

Enjoying the Ghana MTC

Elder Shirley with his MTC companion Elder Dilebo, from South Africa

Meeting room in the Ghana MTC

Letter calling Elder Shirley to be a zone leader in the MTC

Accra Ghana temple

September 6, 2018

Wow, what a week it has been!! Just to let you guys know, my Pday's are on Thursdays, so I will write again next Thursday and then the Monday after that since we leave in two Tuesdays (Sept 18^th)! So, they will give me one more chance to write back home on the day before I leave the MTC. Just like you guys back at home have been adjusting, I have been and still am adjusting to this mission life. It is a lot different than it was back home but it is a lot of fun and learning. I am enjoying the MTC a lot! The good thing is all of the stuff that we do is inside and the MTC is super nice here. We always have air conditioning and there is easy accessible water to drink and we get one sports time every day, although it is only for 45 minutes and that time goes by super fast. My companion’s name is Elder Dilebo and he is from South Africa. He is a really nice guy and knows a lot about the gospel. He is a convert to the church and was converted 3 years ago but he is already super strong in the church.

Let me tell you, they give us so much food every meal. You would not believe it. Mom, just imagine how much you make for the three of you now left at home in the family......that is how much food they put on a single plate. So we never go hungry which is good. The food is literally the same thing everyday, so it is getting old but it isn't bad to me. Every lunch and dinner is a meal made up of a huge plate of rice with chicken on the side in some sort of way. The meat is most of the time a lot different than the meat we have back home. There are a lot of different spices in it, but it doesn't taste too bad most of the time. It doesn't always look the best but you just have to get over that and eat the food. haha.

Anyways on Friday morning, me and my companion were made zone leaders! Pretty crazy right? We are zone leaders over about 23 elders and it has been a lot of fun to be that! All of the Elders here are such good people and everyone is always so happy. It has been really fun to make a lot of new friends here and talk with them about everything. There is definitely a feeling of comfort here. On Sunday we had fast and testimony meeting and it went really well. Since me and my companion were called as zone leaders, they asked us to teach the priesthood lessons for two of the districts, him teaching in one of them and me teaching in the other. So our sacrament meeting consists of about 23 elders and sacrament meeting goes for an hour, so during fast and testimony meeting, you don't really have a choice of if you want to bear your testimony or not because everybody had to, in order to fill the time! haha. It was a really spiritual meeting though and the spirit was really strong in the room. Also, the beginning of sacrament meeting goes a lot faster here because the sacrament only has to be passed to 23 people and there are no announcements or anything like that. Church started at 9 and we were already to the testimonies by like 9:10.

We are learning a lot in the classroom about how to teach people and a lot about chapter 3 in PMG, so that is good so we can be prepared once we get to the mission field. I am still getting used to getting up in the mornings because I really am not a morning person, but it hasn't been too bad so I am doing good! Yesterday, we went to the temple here in Ghana and let me tell you, the spirit was so, so strong in that room and I could feel that feeling of love from my Heavenly Father. I also could really feel the presence of my whole family in that session with me as well. It made me reflect back on the session we did as a family right before I left, and it was a special moment for me.

The biggest culture shock for me is just having all the Africans here and getting used to their accents. They are all such good people though and they are the nicest. Also, half of the people only speak French and half speak English so sometimes it is really hard to have conversations with people. Also, in our big meetings when we sing hymns, half of the people sing in English and half in French so it sounds actually really cool and really powerful!

Anyways I don't know if there is anything else to tell you as of now, but I will be excited to hear from everyone again next week!!

Love you all!

~Elder Shirley