Elder Price in West Africa: Coal for Chalk

Dear Family,

Hello! Forgive me if this letter seems a little off; I'm sick right now so things are a little confusing in my head.

So, my week!

Tuesday: We had our district meeting, taught a lesson, and then had our branch training meeting! It was really cool. Our branch president here is awesome, and he's really come up with a great plan to strengthen the branch. It was a good evening, and the "lesson" or in our missionary terms: instruction, that we gave on conversion was successful. It was nice!

Wednesday: we taught a few more lessons! It was a pretty productive day, and we felt good, though several plans fell through.

Thursday: Weekly planning! And an FM from a wonderful member who is only in town until Tuesday. She's the older sister of Asante, the boy who works with us a ton, and it was great to start the day of proselyting like that. We went on and taught Gina, our investigator who is slowly progressing, and we met a couple guys while we were at her workplace who were very interested in the Book of Mormon. That was cool!

Friday: Plenty lessons! A funny start, though. Benjamin, you know, from Sekondi, called and said that he was driving to Kumasi so he would be passing through Praso on the way up. Well, he called us in the morning(ish) and said that he was there. So we went to the Praso station to meet him, because for some reason it wasn't working to direct him to a better place. We walked up to the station, and he wasn't around! So I called back, and that's when we all learned that there is someplace called Assin Praso. That is not Twifu Praso. Oops! Hopefully another day, though.

We had some nice lessons, and ended the evening visiting with Theresa, who finally came back for a few days from the holiday they were taking.

Saturday: we started the day off by going to the Youth Conference! They had invited the Praso missionaries, especially because they wanted me to do a short little lesson about music, specifically reading it. That was in Nyenasi, a branch that is under the other Praso elders' area. So, they invited me up in front of all the youth in the district! We got a chalkboard, but they couldn't find chalk for a while so they handed me some coal. So I used coal as black chalk. :D Elder Hannemann was on exchange with Elder Akudago that day, so he stood up there and helped me. We taught very simple basics of music! "if the dots go up, the sound is higher. [demonstration]" Many of the members feel ashamed at their lack of knowledge in regards to the hymns, so it helped show the youth that there's method to the madness! oh, and we got white chalk later on during the lesson.

The rest of the day was good; we had planned to go with the branch leaders, but many of them were busy, so we had the 1st counselor in the branch presidency accompany us to a couple lessons.

It was quite the day.

I was exhausted, so I went to bed a little bit early.

Sunday: turns out that exhaustion was sickness! I got a bad cold. It progressed steadily through the course of the day. Church was still good, though, and we had branch visits in the afternoon! Then we ended with the fufu.

Monday: Well, nothing much is planned. I'll go rest.

Oh yeah, random tidbit: this week I decided to go on my new diet plan! It basically involves eating very small portions. I've already lost a significant amount of weight! It's even noticeable to those around me, so it's working. I actually don't feel hungry or bad (besides the cold), so I don't think I'm doing it a bad way for my body. Woohoo for weight loss!

That was pretty much it for the week! I'm just hoping to get better from this cold. Mission is good. It's bizarre that I'm going into week five of the transfer; only one official week after this. It's turning into the length of a vacation, or a long business trip. There are more things to be done!

I love you all so much! I'm happy to see all the pictures of Adara! :D It's also nice to see photos from where Rikki and Zakk live. But anyway, have a great week. :)

Love,

Elder Price

Putting the juice stuff into small bags so that everyone can have theirs and drink out of it. Drink it in a similar fashion as a water sachet. For youth conference. It's like "paper cups."