Dear Mom and Family,
At first when I read this I missed
the part where you said Dad ended up staying home, I thought he was in Oklahoma
already haha. I hadn't heard anything about those tornadoes, but it sounds like
it was pretty awful, though that would have been cool for Dad to get to travel
there. Maybe he should get into the talks with AAA and try moving some branches
of the company out here to Ghana?
Last week I had talked about
how the power to our house had been out for the weekend and it should have been
getting fixed while we were emailing. Ends up it hadn't been and we spent two
more nights with no power, bringing the whole affair of light off to 6 days!
Not quite enough to beat my record back in LA, though it was very miserable for
those couple of nights. So that Tuesday we didn't really go out since everyone
was defeated by the power. With no power not only did we lose our sleep( no
fans) but also our water, which meant it was hard to shower and wash
clothes......yeah I'm sure the place smelled great.
Then on Wednesday when they electric company finally got around to fixing the meter box we hurry and ran the washer non-stop to finally get our clothes clean. We had also found out the lady who we rented the washing machine from had returned and needed the machine to return to her. So on Friday we departed with heavy hearts from that beautiful creation. The woman did tell us we can come over to her house and use it whenever we'd like, the problem is the house is far and I really just want to walk down the hall to wash my clothes. Though I'm sure we will be taking the journey to her place very soon. Thursday we did a lot of contacting in the far end of my area. It’s a richer area of Kasoa which means the people are usually a lot more stubborn and unwilling to listen. Getting gates closed on us makes me think of what it must be like to serve in anywhere else but Africa( maybe South America is good too.) You still get a few people who'll accept you and at least take a first lesson. I try to go out of my way and hit the larger and nicer home because when you can convert them they'll stay for a life time, as opposed to the "easier" baptisms of people who'll after finding the church want the church to give them money soon fall away. That night one of our ZLs(Elder Robertson) came over for splits. He is from the UK and is way cool. Friday we spent a good portion of the day returning that washing machine. Taught some good lessons and then that was the day of Friday. Oh and this whole day I was wearing Elder Bay's name tag.
Saturday we went to a big FM far out in Elder Bay's area. All six of us met at this family's super nice home and we got to know them a little better then enjoyed a massive feast, probably the biggest meal I have eaten in Ghana. Then had testimony meeting with the parents and kids, afterwards the father wanted us to play him in some table tennis since he never gets a chance to play in a home with small children. He kicked our butts and that's all there is to say about that. We caught a free ride home in the back of a truck - last time we went to this family's house we also had gotten a free ride home in the back of a truck. The ride took us back towards the apartment though we got out early and went to another Fm. This one with a Liberian woman named Sis. Helen who feeds us once a week. She is one of the kindest little old woman ever, who has a strange liking for big 90's action movies. By the time we finished eating and teaching her it was late and we headed home.
Then on Wednesday when they electric company finally got around to fixing the meter box we hurry and ran the washer non-stop to finally get our clothes clean. We had also found out the lady who we rented the washing machine from had returned and needed the machine to return to her. So on Friday we departed with heavy hearts from that beautiful creation. The woman did tell us we can come over to her house and use it whenever we'd like, the problem is the house is far and I really just want to walk down the hall to wash my clothes. Though I'm sure we will be taking the journey to her place very soon. Thursday we did a lot of contacting in the far end of my area. It’s a richer area of Kasoa which means the people are usually a lot more stubborn and unwilling to listen. Getting gates closed on us makes me think of what it must be like to serve in anywhere else but Africa( maybe South America is good too.) You still get a few people who'll accept you and at least take a first lesson. I try to go out of my way and hit the larger and nicer home because when you can convert them they'll stay for a life time, as opposed to the "easier" baptisms of people who'll after finding the church want the church to give them money soon fall away. That night one of our ZLs(Elder Robertson) came over for splits. He is from the UK and is way cool. Friday we spent a good portion of the day returning that washing machine. Taught some good lessons and then that was the day of Friday. Oh and this whole day I was wearing Elder Bay's name tag.
Saturday we went to a big FM far out in Elder Bay's area. All six of us met at this family's super nice home and we got to know them a little better then enjoyed a massive feast, probably the biggest meal I have eaten in Ghana. Then had testimony meeting with the parents and kids, afterwards the father wanted us to play him in some table tennis since he never gets a chance to play in a home with small children. He kicked our butts and that's all there is to say about that. We caught a free ride home in the back of a truck - last time we went to this family's house we also had gotten a free ride home in the back of a truck. The ride took us back towards the apartment though we got out early and went to another Fm. This one with a Liberian woman named Sis. Helen who feeds us once a week. She is one of the kindest little old woman ever, who has a strange liking for big 90's action movies. By the time we finished eating and teaching her it was late and we headed home.
Sunday was freckin' awesome! Got up to a normal
Sunday morning and got ready for church. When we went out to catch a taxi we
noticed that there were some pretty dark clouds above us. We got a taxi right
as the heavens opened up on us and started to really pound Kasoa. The driver
took us on some really weird back roads towards our chapel. One road that
climbed a hill had turned into a river, but the taxi driver still tried to
climb it. Half way up the car died and we were stuck for a few minutes( I told him
his battery was spoiled because the car acted a lot like my suburban did when
it had the battery problems, remember that? :) ) We got it started again and I
told the man not to take this one road because there is always a huge puddle in
the middle( usually I avoid it when I'm biking) and figured in the rain it
would be a lake. Well it was worse, it was two lakes and the taxi went right
into the first and promptly died again. Now we were really stuck, because water
was already seeping in and if we opened the doors more water just poured into
the car. We were in the middle of a pond with an intense rainstorm sitting in a
died car, not to mention we were late to church. After maybe 10 minutes a
couple of guys came and pushed us onto higher ground. Then we caught a working
taxi to get us the rest of the way, only about 40 minutes late. Turns out
everyone from the stake were at sacrament because surprise, they split the
ward. Now I'm Ash town ward and Elders Smith & Thomas Kasoa 2. Just because
we didn't have enough fun a crazy( literally crazy) man showed up and started
disturbing the peace, and guess who had the fun of taking care of him, yup this
guy. :) Everything turned out well and we had a good evening at the
apartment....just to get a call we were having apartment inspection today! That
means no sleeping and a whole lot of cleaning. I'm pretty confident that we won
though. :)
I'm not really sure what to say
about getting this award. I know that is really something special for him to
give to me and I kinda feel very unfit for this, like I didn't know I had such
an influence on him. Though I am still very, very honored to receive it( or at
least in 18 months.)
I'd like to hear from him or maybe
you can give me a contact for him. It’s made me a little bit emotional over
here right now.
Love you guys and hope all is well
Love,
Elder Steven T Ray
PS I got
Bree's graduation announcements, Some good looking pictures in there.
Just to clarify some of Elder Ray's comments: His dad was called up by his company (AAA Insurance) to go with the CAT (catastrophe team) Team to help with the tornado damage in OK. He later was put on "stand-by" which was a relief to us because we had a daughter that was graduating from HS that week too.
The award that he refers to is the Eagle "Mentor" pin - there was a young man in our old ward who received his Eagle and wanted to give his mentor pin to Elder Ray - he feels very honored but also a bit inadequate for the honor.
That's so great!
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