I Am Doing Great and Couldn't Be Stronger

A temple sealing for a family that just started coming back to church

My translating friend from Asuom - Moses

Gloria from Asuom

Traffic in Ghana. Also, the woman in the pic is a good example of how Ghanaians go around selling things 

The 11 missionaries transferred from the closed Liberia mission with companions and with the AP's in front

February 17, 2020 

Hey!! 

This week was super super busy with a lot of things happening, but it was also a really good week with some good things happening!! It really does amaze me how fast P-day comes around each week! I don’t know if it feels the same way to you but to me, each week just flies by and I'm talking to you again!! Life is great here! You have nothing to worry about with me; I am doing great and couldn't be stronger. 

Tuesday was our only full day of proselyting this week so of course that day was a good day. Some cool things that happened that day are first, we met this girl who is the friend of a returned sister missionary who I am hoping will be able to progress. The promising part of her is that she has good support and she is pretty smart and likes to read. So if she puts her time to good use and just reads the Book of Mormon, then by all means she will be converted. The thing is she just might not have the intention of changing right now but we are hoping and praying. Her name is Abigail. 

The other really cool thing that happened that day is we are teaching this guy named Okasha. He is a Muslim that we started teaching last week. He is like 22 years old and has a pretty strong Muslim background but he is really open and a really cool guy. We started out by teaching him about the Plan of Salvation and he has had some good questions. When we met him on Tuesday, he was pretty busy with some things. He owns some cows and he was out feeding them but he still really wanted to learn. So he asked us if we could follow him to the field where his cows were going to feed and we said of course we could. We walked a little ways to where the field was and then while the cows were feeding we just stood and talked for about 30-45 minutes about the Plan of Salvation and the Book of Mormon. I have not had many lessons where we just stand on the side of the road for that long amount of time but the Spirit was still there and at the end of the lesson we asked him to pray. He looked at us and said, “I don’t know how to pray.” I told him not to worry and that we would teach him right then how to pray. We taught him and then right before he started his prayer he was just like, well here it goes. Haha. Anyways he prayed and it was a very heartfelt prayer. In his prayer he asked God to show him if he was on the right path by being a Muslim and if he was not then he wanted to change. When he said this it made me so happy. It is a really big thing for that to happen but Okasha is a really cool guy that I could see changing into a great member one day. 

Wednesday was a blessing!! I got to visit my second area!! We had to drop something off in that zone so we stopped at Asuom for district meeting. I got to meet two of my recent converts, Gloria and Samuel and then two of my favorite members, Joel and Moses. Those were some happy times. It was really cool to see the happiness on all of their faces when I met them but I know the happiness on my face was even more. It is really cool to see how you can see their joy that you have truly helped them completely change their life. It has been 11 months since I last started teaching them and wow I was just so happy. 

We also got a random emergency call when the Liberian mission closed down and 11 of the missionaries were reassigned to our mission. It is really sad for their mission and having to change. Some of these missionaries were even zone leaders, one was an AP and now they are just new into a completely different lifestyle. Some have been on their missions for like 20 months. I can’t imagine only having 4 month left and then being reassigned to a new mission, it would be kind of hard. They are all super cool though! With that happening we had some more meetings come up and a lot of driving!! I got to drive all over the mission which was super cool!! 

Another cool thing this week is that I got to attend a family sealing that was reactivated and that love us as missionaries. I give the success to the previous missioniares on that one but I was just able to help them prepare to go into the temple before they went and they were so happy in the temple. 

All in all the week was great and we had a good Sunday yesterday!! I hope all is well back home!! Love you and hope everyone had a great Valentines day!! 

-Elder Shirley