Witness Comes After Trial of Faith

January 7, 2019

I cannot believe that 2019 has come around!! 2018 flew by!! Everything with my senior year and to end the year with the beginning of my mission! Crazy year and now an even crazier year to come!!

This week was a big struggle week but it is ok, because no witness comes until after the trial of our faith. We had 3 days in a row without a translator. He left for work in Accra and then all the other ones have school and different things. It was lots of walking around and contacting but no way to go back and teach people. It is definitely frustrating because we are trying but it ends up with just a lot of walking when we do not have a translator which gets really tiring.

We did have one baptism this week though, the 11-year-old boy named Ransford. That was probably one of the few positives of the week. I did not baptize him, we let Elder Bahiru (his new Ethiopian companion) do it on his first week. This week will be better for sure, we got 5 referrals this last week that we can teach. Also, we are planning to give all the 11-year-olds the priesthood which is cool because I have baptized 3 11-year-olds in this area. Our bishop didn’t know about that change until I told him last week haha.

This last week we had a really good ward council meeting after church for the first time since I have been in this area and they gave us missionaries some time to talk so I was the mouth for us and I think it will help a lot! 2 hour church is probably a little different for you since you are not a missionary but it feels the same around here!! haha

Love you all so much! Thanks for all of your prayers!
~Elder Shirley

Question and Answers:

Q: What did you do for New Year's?
A: New Year's we did not do anything different than normal and I was actually asleep by 10 so nothing exciting for me at all haha

Q: How's the contacting and discussions going for your investigators?
A: This week was a little rough but the contacting was good and we actually found a less active member that has a daughter that is not a member and both of them came to church as well as the daughters little girl who is 11, so I have high hopes for these 2 and I hope they will progress. The cool thing is that they came without even being taught.

Q: When will you get to go to the temple next?
A: I think we will go January 19th so I am excited.

Q: What did you do for P-day today?
A: We are in Winneba today which is a close by area and we played basketball this morning and then ate french fries and fried chicken which was nice, kind of an american meal!! We also ate ice cream so it has been a good day today.

Q: What are 2-3 of your goals for 2019? We always set goals as a family, but it would be fun to see what some of your goals are in the mission field. We are probably making our lists tonight or tomorrow for FHE.
A: Still working on that one.

Q: Tell us a bit more about your new companion.
A: His name is Elder Bahiru and he is from Ethiopia. I get along with him really well he is super funny. He does not speak super good English because he is brand new into the mission field so we are helping him. He is the only Ethiopian in this mission.