Learning How To Survive With Little Things and Not a Lot of Light

A hot, sweaty P-day activity

Having fun on P-day

Elder Shirley walking with kids in Odoben

One of the church buildings

Elder Shirley's kitchen

Meat loaf made of canned corned beef

Elder Shirley with the missionaries from his district

Elder Shirley with his companion Elder Piutau

** Last week we didn’t get an email from Dan due to the ongoing power outages he is experiencing. It was good to get an email from him this week, although it was delayed a couple of days.

October 31, 2018

It has been a crazy last couple of weeks because of the light issues here in Ghana. For the last 3 weeks we have not had power on Mondays so we just email whenever we can, so I never know when I will get to email! It is all part of the adventure though and it makes for an exciting time! There has not been anything too exciting to report on though, just the normal proselyting everyday but lately we have also been traveling a lot to other places for different events so it has been pretty busy too.

The last 2 Mondays we have put together activities here at our chapel for our district and it has been a lot of fun to get to know everyone in our district a lot better! In our apartments we are not blessed with ovens but our chapel has an oven so the last two weeks during our activities we have used the oven. On the first week we made something called Pani Popo which is a Tongan dessert, it is basically the same thing as a cinnamon roll but instead of cinnamon they use coconut. It was so so good and reminded me of my favorite dessert back home which are cinnamon rolls. Also we played basketball for awhile and we played rugby for awhile so it was a lot of fun! Then this last week we got together again and made meatloaf! The meat loaf was super good and we also found potatoes in an area nearby and that was amazing because it reminded me of home and to me a potato has never tasted so good! haha! The meat loaf wasn't exactly made of the ground beef that you all are thinking of it would be made out of because we do not have that here in this area. We made the meat loaf out of canned corned beef, and it was still nice. I guess you just gotta do what you gotta do!

Yesterday was transfer day and so it was a busy day for all of those people getting transferred but I will probably be here for a little while so it will be awhile before I leave this area which is good! I am learning a lot here and I am learning how to survive with little things and not a lot of light!! Anyways I hope all is going well!! Love you all!

~Elder Shirley

Questions and Answers:

Q. We are hearing that you are without power almost every other day. Is it really that often? If so, how do you cook with no power?
A. It really is that often but it is OK because we can still cook by using propane. In fact, that is like the only way we can cook anyways. We have a propane stove and a microwave, no oven which is super lame but there is an oven at the chapel.

Q. What is a typical day like for you as far as meals go?
A. Meals are usually, rice, eggs, bread and some type of sauce on the rice. We also bought a blender which is awesome because I make smoothies very often. They have yogurt that is a lot different from back home but it tastes good and we put that in the blender with pineapple and banana so it tastes super good. You can get 20 bananas for 1 dollar so everything is really cheap. 5 pineapples for 1 dollar as well, so money usually goes pretty far. I feel like I am eating enough, and I do not feel like I am losing that much weight so I still feel healthy, do not worry! I am actually happy if I am losing some weight! It is good for me!! haha.

Q. How do you get around when you go to neighboring towns?
A. So the way we get from town to town is by using something called a tro tro which is basically a van that they stuff full of people. They fit like 15 people in a typical van! haha Look up a picture of a tro tro and I bet you can find what it looks like. I use a bike sometimes but the roads we walk on would be impossible to ride a bike! In other areas they use a bike a lot so maybe later on in my mission I will use bike more.

Q. How is the attendance at your ward?
A. Our ward is not attending church well at all which is sad because they just do not want to come. This last week, we had 5 people that came to church on time so church started 20 minutes late and we still only had 10 people. We might talk with the stake president and ask him to combine the 2 wards here in our area because both wards have about 200 inactive members! It is ridiculous!

Q. How is the work progressing?
A. The work is progressing well, but we need to start finding more people in our area. I think we will have 1 or 2 baptisms this week if the mother will let her child be baptized, but he has come to church 5 weeks now and wants to be baptized.

Q. Do you exercise every day? If so, what do you do?
A. I do not exercise every day because we walk so much and walk many miles but some days I do push-ups and sit-ups and things like that in the apartment.

Q. About how many miles do you guys do of tracting every day?
A. I am not exactly sure how much we walk but it is quite a bit each day but it is nice so I can stay in shape!! haha.

Q. How is it going with your youth activities? What are some of the activities that you have done with them?
A. The activities are going pretty good, the last 2 weeks we had a baptism at our chapel so that has been our activity, but when that does not happen we just play games with them or show them Book of Mormon videos and they seem to enjoy it all.

Q. Tell us how the work is going in the new area where you are trying to establish a new unit.

A. We will continue to go there 2 times a week because it was not enough time to start a unit, but there are people progressing already and they are excited to hear about the gospel in that area.

** In our emails, we described to Dan how quiet things are around the house in the evenings with him gone and how we often are all reading books while sitting near the fireplace. Here is his response to that:
“I cannot even imagine how quiet the house is, I do not think I would enjoy such a quiet house, I would get bored!! I finished the Book of Mormon this week though and that was a big accomplishment for me to be able to finish the Book of Mormon in 1 month, I would have never thought that I could do that. Now my goal is to finish it one more time before the new year!”