Budgeting

Dear Family,

Hello! Greetings from Ghana! I'm emailing without a mouse! It sounds great, right? I'm glad I used to challenge myself for fun back home by seeing if I could use the computer without a mouse. ;)

[I asked him if there were no other computers. He said they were all taken, and Elder Allen was in line for one to open up, so he went ahead and used the one with a broken mouse]

This week was good! ​We worked!

We started off with an inspirational district meeting from Elder Allen! That was fun. :) It was really funny to be sitting there in the Sekondi chapel with just us six. The rest of the day was good, too! We had visit #1 with Ekua for the week! We visited her twice. That was definitely a highlight for me, 'cause she always makes the days good. After her we ended up seeing a great person: An.! He's progressing great, and it's awesome to see 'cause he was a normal street contact. It's rare for normal contacting to bring forth many results, so it's a great thing to have him. :)

We've also been teaching other people this week, one being Al. Al. is preparing for her baptism on Saturday! She's so excited, and she was so happy when we gave her a copy of the Book of Mormon. That makes two to be baptized on Saturday: An. and Al. We were hoping for a couple more, but it doesn't look like that will happen. It's still amazing to have these two, and the next two will still come on, eventually. :) Most of the week was really spent teaching and doing the stuff that seems so normal for me now.

Oh yeah! Something slightly kinda somehow interesting. I was really low on subsistence money, so this past week I've been working SO hard to save my money (I only had enough for basically a week. And we had two weeks until subsistence). The miracle that happened.. We just finished the week, and I even have MORE than I need to get through for a normal, solid week! I'm glad, because it means that I can budget. I was starting to lose hope for myself. ;) I can eat something now! Or maybe I'll just keep my habits of not eating as much, for skinniness sake..

On Sunday we had something incredible: all you can eat fufu. :D :D :D (okay, I just realized how that looks, seeing as it's right after I talked about being skinny..) Sister Akim, Lancelot's mother, cooked us groundnut soup with all you can eat fufu. It was so wonderful. She did it for all of the missionaries (us four); something that the former missionaries in this area were trying so hard to get to happen. We were given bowls full of fufu and soup, and then five minutes in they came and said that we could ask for more fufu as we wanted. So Elder Johnson and I both ate more. YUMMY! :D Such a great meal. Meat was normal stuff like goat and fish.

This morning we played basketball with An. (the same one preparing for baptism). He plays basketball seriously, and we went to a local court (one that we go to pretty often) and played with him and a ton of great basketball players. It happens to be some African holiday today, so they all were off work and other things and came to play. It wasn't easy to play with them, but it was fun! My legs are dead today.. Again..

The week was good. I'm doing good, and I got my desk all organized this week; it also feels really good to have a cleaner apartment. Mission is short, and I'm trying to milk every moment I have left. The closer the end of this adventure gets, the more I'm realizing how much more I want to learn while I am out here. I am so far from being who I can be, and I have so many weaknesses still. The time for improvement is short; and I'm so grateful for this bit that I have.

I think that view could be applied to life, too.

Have a great week. :) Love you all!

Love,

Elder Price

Bonus photos:

"a random looking waterfall thingy that was interesting.​"

Apartment photos. Desks are in the bedroom:

Bathroom photos may seem odd, but I asked for them. I was trying to picture what his trash can full of water looked like and how they were equipped. This request came out of a conversation we had at Mother's Day:

Water storage: Another missionary in the apartment said (in the background) that he was going to wash his face in preparation for bedtime. I asked Rain about the water situation. He said they had a very large trash can in their bathroom that they'd cleaned out and turned into their water storage. They fill up the trash can when water is available and power is on. They have a few buckets in their bathroom that they use to dip into the trash can to pull water as they need it.