An Elder by Any Other Name

Family!

Yes mom I will definitely eat omelletes with you when I get home! One thing I look forward to when I get home is eating real meat! Here the only meat they have is fish, goat, "beef", and "chicken".....I use quotes because their chickens are....well....not nutritious and neither are the cows. Which means the eggs are pretty much not nutritious either. So it's REALLY hard to get protein here.

Haha no no I'm GLAD you didn't wrap the things in the packages! Most packages take about 3-4 weeks to get here so I should have them in time. We are not opening the packages at all until christmas morning. So the whollllleeeeee box/envelope will just sit under the tree until then :) Wow The Blanchards sent a package too?!?!?! Tell them I said thank you thank you thank you! I'll have to share because everyone is going to be jealous hahaha. 5 packages is going to be a very large duty fee, but that's okay I'd rather get delicious food than not get it. So once I get my credit card will I be allowed to take money out to buy "extra" stuff that I couldn't/ shouldn't buy with subsistence? Since we are only supposed to use it for missionary related things like food and haircuts and trotro's and stuff. Also, I don't have an oven. Only a really really dirty stove that only 2 burners work hahaha.

And yeah don't worry letters take 2 weeks to get from here to you, and I sent 4 letters today (5 freakin cedis!!!!) one to Grandma/grandpa, one to Aaron, one to Jacob, and one to some girl who follows me on Tumblr and was interested in learning about the Church. I'll send more soon to Sister Blanchard, Mike (I think I actually need his address or I would have written him already haha), and you guys. Hopefully Jacob gets my letter before he leaves!!!! Mail takes about a month to get from US to here though, so be patient. Packages are faster however, so if you ever want to send a letter, you can just put them all together in one of the packages! :D

Don't worry, it's impossible to catch the stupid lizards anyway. They're fast as lightning!

In a way I suppose all the churches makes it easy to explain how only 1 can be true, but most people here think all the churches are good because God wants people to learn different ways to get to Heaven.

There's a Ghanian that's is a really funny guy! We ended up running into him and we talked for like an hour about just random things building a friendship and he is such a funny guy. He said my companion looked like Hiro from Heroes, but my companion isn't even Asian at ALL. It was pretty funny. I just make fun of my companion for that now heh heh. People aren't scared away, but the reality is that the culture here is a culture where no matter how old you are you need to obey your elders. So like for example right now we are teaching someone who knows for a fact that the church is true, but she can't gain the courage to stand up to her family and join. We have faith that she will because she knows for a fact it's what she needs to do, but it's just a matter of her having the faith to overcome it. I consoled her by telling her that by being baptized yes it will be rough, and her family may get upset at first, but God will bless her and her family with understanding, and then we told her that she could even teach her family with us and show them how much it means to her. And also that her family wants her to be happy, so if she shows them how happy the gospel makes them they might understand. We are trying. She's our number 1 investigator right now so we are praying for her.

Yay glad to hear Tango is okay! I miss puppy! Please send a picture of him! :)

Yes I will be calling on Christmas day. I'll tell you more next week, but I'll be able to call anytime. We just go out and buy a phone card for the credits and talk for about an hour each at the apartment. If you want you could gather the whole family together so we could talk! :D

Here's the interesting things for this week:

-I finally had fufu, with groundnut stew. I loved it! It was still kinda hard to just swallow without chewing but I did it! And the stew also had a couple WHOLE fishes in it (heads and all) so we just "chopped" them. (Chop means to eat here by the way)

-I don't know if I mentioned before but there are just hundreds of goats, dogs, and chickens that roam the streets

-There is a rooster that lives outside our window that starts crowing at 3 AM. We are all making plans on how to efficiently kill it without getting in trouble.(haha, not really)

-Pouch mail is terrible here because of the process it goes through before even getting mailed out. First our district leader hands it off to the zone leaders, the zone leaders hand it off the the assistants, the assistants bring it to the mission home, the mission home sends it to Accra, and THEN it goes to the US.....yeah. And noone has cars here, so it takes a month just to get to Accra....

-On wednesday we had Zone Leader splits and my companion and I hooked up with an Elder (funniest missionary in existence). I found out he is going into film as well and we spent the whole day discussing making a Book or Mormon movie called "Title of Liberty" that revolves around a soldier in Captain Moroni's army who happens to witness all the important events starting from Alma 43. It'll be PG-13 for having ultra uber epic battles. As you read those chapters you can just picture it. Like Lord of the Rings but even BIGGER!!!!! He was a really awesome and experienced missionary in general it was sweet working with him. I learned a lot.

-Please send syrup. Totally random, but I would love syrup.

-I took your advice and scratched the accent into my name. When I show them my name they always say, "Elda Ganielle?" (I wrote that like the way they say it) so I scratched it in and now they say, "Elda Ganyeh!" So it's better, but still not perfect haha. They don't understand our accents.

Also I will definitely come home with "Ghana brofo" (Ghana english). In other words. I'll be speaking slang ALLLLL in twi, and my english will have an accent. Every elder has it after a year or so. It's hilarious.

-That reminds me. I have a list of words you guys should learn because I'll be saying them A LOT when I get back home:

Yo=okay
(like if you told me something and I just say, okay, or, alright)

EyE (eh-yeh)=
(it's okay (like if a baby was crying and you say it's okay, or if
someone is selling you something and you don't want it)

Me daci may-dah-see)= thank you

Somehow = kinda (kind of/sort of doesn't make sense to them. Instead they say "somehow" and it means the same thing)

ye koom (yay-koom)=shut up

Ah!(but like really short as if you just cut yourself really quick or something)=what?!

I'll also make a noise with my throat that just means no no no no no. Like a bunch of tsk tsk tsk tsks....somehow.....

Also I really like reading from Aaron's writing. Sounds like he is learning quite a bit! I sent him a letter so hopefully he will get it soon! Same with Jake!

I have so many other stories ah! No time though unfortunately. Feel better Jen! Love you guys! Bye!

-Elder Gagne