Quinton's sister, Melinda, is on a mission too!!!

Texas McAllen Spanish speaking - See her blog at www.melindasmission.blogspot.com

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

5 months

Note:  We normally receive Quinton's emails anywhere from 1:00AM to 2:30AM Monday mornings (8AM to 9:30AM Ghana time) - today's email was received at 11AM (6PM Ghana time)

Email sent 25 Jan 2010

Wow so first of all i would like to say sorry that i didn't get to write you guys until now, but we have had a really sweet day and weren't able to go to the cafe until now. So i might as well start off telling todays story first. Today our zone had planned to all go to the Elmina Castle just outside of Cape Coast! so this morning we got up and were getting ready to go. all of our zone took a trotro there, and since we are in a 3some we actually got to go with the Senior couple down here. There name is Elder and Sister Lamb. So we got to ride with them in there nice air conditioned car all the way to Elmina. We took a tour of the Castle and that was way cool. It was different from the Cape Coast Castle, but alot of the things were the same. We took alot of sweet pictures there that you guys will see sometime i am sure, but for now you will have to wait :) so after we went to the Castle everyone in the trotro went home but since we were with the Senior couple we went with them to the Mission home (i had never been there before) so that was a cool thing. The house was so so so nice! it seriously looked like a house out of America or something. So we talked to President and Sister Sabey for a little while, and we also talked to the office couple. After we were done there we went with the Lambs to another Senior couple that lived close by we got to sit in their house and they actually made us sandwhiches! ha we had peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches and also tuna! it felt like we were just back home and our parents were making us sandwhiches so that was cool! we kinda got spoiled today but i guess that is what you get for being in a 3some at the right time. lol then after that we just headed back to town, which leads us to what i am doing right now.. writing my family a letter!

Last week as we were shopping at this little supermarket we heard something interesting on the radio... do you remember that band Ryan shupe and the rubber band? well their song Dream Big was playing on the radio...in Ghana. ha it was so weird to hear that here because it wasn't even big song in America, but it has made its way into Ghana somehow!

Me and Elder Hill also had a little cooking escapade this week. we have always wanted to try to make the Ground nut soup. It is something Ghanaians make all of the time, and we use it for fufu and rice and stuff like that but we had never known how to make it. So we went out on a limb and tried to make it by ourselves. This was quite a big risk because we have heard that if you make it wrong it will give you diahreeah BAD! ha so we tried. And guess what we suceeded! it tastes really good and is almost just like how the Ghanaians make it. i was proud of our cooking skills and i will try by the end of my mission to be able to cook alot of Ghana foods so i can make them for you when i get home!

We have a cool new family that we are teaching in Kojokrom. The lady just showed up at church two weeks ago so we figured we might go and teach her. and as we taught her this week we actually found out that her kids have been coming to church for quite some time! wow! crazy, we are also teaching the husband, and the second time that we taught him he said that he had read the restoration pamphlet we gave to his wife and he already believed that joseph smith was a true prophet! Its so cool how well prepared some of these people are here. sometimes i feel like we don't even have to teach them, we are more like the people pointing to the gate, and they have already decided that they are gonna go through it! ha so we are hoping that everything will go well with this family, it would be a way cool thing to be able to baptise a husband and wife and their kids! a whole, family cuz that is what the church is all about folks!!! ha sorry this letter might be weird but thats ok!

Being in a 3some is fine in the fact of teaching, it is kind of harder because everyone will want to say something in a lesson so sometimes the lessons can get long, but thats ok. The only really annoying part is that we now are covering two areas. so we don't get to spend as much time on our investigators and we kinda have to share the load. Sundays are exhausting for us now. We have to go to three churches. I play the piano now for the Mpinstin ward, then we go to Kojokrom's sacrament and then we hurry and hop on a taxi to go to Sekondi so we can go to all of Sofokroms church service so by the time that is over we are totally pooped! if i had ever missed church back home now would be the time that i am making up for it lol. and yes we are always together

We don't pay rent for our apartments, i don't know how it is in other missions, but the apartment and electricity and water is all payed for here by the mission so that is nice!

I don't know what blog you were reading all of that crazy stuff on, but we definitely don't do all of that. of course we wash our food, but we don't boil it in Clorox and all of that stuff, we don't have the means nor do we have the time to do that stuff. And also it really isn't necessary.

We are still playing alot of football, but the one thing i am most excited for now is our zone just got a basketball! a legit basketball, so we will be playing next monday. There is a full court at the stake center, but we have never been able to use it due to the fact of no ball. but that problem is fixed so i will be balling it up next week. Takoradi Zone has never lost a football match.. and when i say never i mean never! ha or at least for about 16 months, i don't know past then. but we will be playing the Assin foso zone in a couple of weeks and might lose, they have like 10 of the best football players in our mission all in that zone, so it will be tough! one of them is named elder Harrison (he went to Alta) and also played on BYU's team and he is incredible, i wish i could play like him lol.

My fante is coming along, i can understand alot of what the people say, and can say alot of things back, but i am very far from being really good. I actually just bought a book today that will help me with everything, so im actually gonna start studying now! maybe in like 6 months time ill be good!

Now that we are in a 3some and we have to all sleep in the same room we have 3 beds smashed into a small room and also 3 desks, i feel like we are at an orphanage or something its funny.

So it has been a good week. this transfer is flying by so fast, its already 1/3 done! i hit my 5 month mark this last week, thats sweet! and by the end of this transfer itll be 6 crazy!

i love ya

keep doing what your doing :)

Quinton

Email from Elder Joseph

Am ok now

hello i am so grateful to write you this wonderful day for now i am strong i have been to my duties

Our area is somehow big of about half an hour drive from both area and it is nice to work more and also teaching more people and we will probably be together for the next 4 week me too i have really enjoy his companiopnship but with all we are doing great here

Hope to hear from you again

Good bye

ELDER JOSEPH

Monday, January 18, 2010

idk my bff jill

Email sent 18 Jan 2010

(Note:  for those who don't know, the title stands for 'I don't know my best friend forever jill' which is from a commercial for a cell phone company.)

Ha sorry i was just thinking about that phone commercial were that girl says it so i decided to put that as the subject line! ha so ya We are not quite sure what Elder Joseph has had, it is actually getting worse right now. it seems alot like alergies or a cold so hopefully it gets better soon. He has been sneezing and sniffing all week!

All right now onto the big news... what happened on Transfers. not much, but alot at the same time. We got the call right after we got home from the beach last monday and the first thing they tell us is that Jackson will be transfered to Kumasi. That was sad because we had gotten to be really good friends because we have been together for our entire mission. So then after they told us that we then wondered what was gonna happen to us. Well now Me, Elder Joseph, and Elder Hill are in a threesome! It's really weird, we are not quite sure why President decided to do this, but so now we are all companions, and there is only us three living in our apartment. So we are covering both of our old areas, and we decided that we will switch off days. So i am still in Kojokrom, but half of the week we are also in Sofokrom and Inchaban. Its really weird because really nothing changed but alot did at the same time!

Thats funny that you are reading books about running, now you are learning all of the things that i already now :) lol that whole running barefoot is called minimalistic or something like that running. and that is why i actually got the Nike Free's. because they are supposed to simulate barefoot running and make your feet stronger. ha so im glad you guys are learning cool things! youll have to refresh my memory when i get home because ill probably have forgotten alot of it!

We heard about the earthquake in Haiti and that sounded really bad. Just this morning at 4 AM we recieved a call from our zone leaders that we needed to leave our house because there had been an earthquake warning for all of Ghana. So we went outside and sat around for a while. we thought it was kinda weird because everyone was outside. Somehow someone had said that their was gonna be an earthquake. We later found out that it was fake and somehow every single person in Ghana had been notified to something that was fake! haha so its ok there aren't any earthquakes here. But you are right if there was we would be in trouble because all of the buildings are made from cement so there would definitely be some problems!

I saw a goat get killed this week.... haha we were just walking out of our apartment and were passing by this chop bar (resteraunt) right by our house and there was our neighbor holding a knife to the goats neck. he was killing it for the resteraunt. and so we just watched as he killed it. It was kinda gross, but it was one of those things were your disgusted but can't look away. sorry if that grosses you out :)

We had a sweet lesson this week with one lady we have been teaching for a while. Her name is Beatrice. and we had a whole lesson plan of the things that we were going to teach her and everything, and for some reason going into the lesson i just changed it. I know that it was the spirit helping me to say what she needed to hear! the lesson went really well, but we need to get her to start coming to church again! we'll work on that next week!

The Africa cup of NAtions has just started so once again Ghana shuts down whenever there is a football match. It was funny actually Ghana was playing Ivory Coast and they lost by alot so everyone in Ghana was way sad.

Well so ya thats it for this week, right now i have two companions, we are having a baptism this week with 3 of Elder Hills investigators so that should be sweet!

Olive juice

Quinton

my riding a way small bike at our bishops house.. all these little kids were chasing me and screaming, it was way funny :)

Email from Elder Joseph

we are still together as a missionary in the same apartment and the work is going forward greatly just that i am sick this past day but i am getting better gradually

Monday, January 11, 2010

Transfers are this week not last week

Email sent 11 Jan 2010

So we still don't know what will be happening with anything to do with that stuff. We will probably be getting a call later today about that stuff and we will figure that all out! So you will just have to wait till next week to hear what is happening to me. There are i think only 4 or 6 missionaries coming to the mission this transfer so it is a lot smaller of a group then the last couple have been. Elder Joseph and i's proselyting area is Kojokrom and we are the only ones that proselyte there. but the other elders proselyte in ares that are really close by. There is a place called Nketziakrom, and Mpinstin that are the other two wards that worship at our chapel. And those are covered by the elders in the other Apartment nearby. Elder JAckson and Hill's area is called Sofokrom and they have to take a trotro every day to get there because it is pretty far away. and they have there own chapel. That chapel is cool because it is the oldest chapel in Ghana and was built right when the church started coming to Ghana by the members! Our zone has 14 missionaries in it including the two zone leaders, and there are two districts within each zone. My zone leaders right now are Elder Halling from California and Elder Adamson from Ghana.

Sounds like Tyler Dean has his work cut out for him! playing the piano all of the time. ha i was always so nervous when i would have to play the piano at things like that.. i don't know why, and i would always make alot of mistakes and i felt like people were judging me lol. Since i have been here though it has been sweet. I feel like i have been given the gift of keys... i just made that up. But i haven't had any problem playing any of the hymns which is sweet so i can just play any hymn that they ask to in Sacrament or whether it is for the ward choir! I feel blessed that it has actually been that easy to do that, and it really does help the ward sing not quite as bad as they usually do.

I don't usually print out the emails, that would cost too much. It costs 20 Peswas to print one page, and usually costs 90 Peswas for the time we spend at the cafe. but all of that stuff is covered by the subsistence that we have been given.. i have become pretty good at managing my money which i think is a really cool new skill! i am able to manage my sub really well so i can have plenty for the 4 weeks sub is given!

So do you like the Boney M? ha its kinda funny.. but ya i would say that the most misused piece of equipment in Ghana is the Speakers. on any given street corner there is someone blasting music and if you are close by you can't even hear yourself talk. its actually pretty annoying, and that is were we hear all the Boney M. its funny while we have been at the cafe we sometimes hear someone blasting Mormom Tabernacle choir outside, and so we think that is really cool.

So this week was a struggle. The water in our apartment was out for three days straight! so we were having to buy a huge bag of pure water bags and bring them to our apartment. we had to use them to cook to clean and even to shower! Have you ever tried Showering with 1 liter of water, well its weird i will tell you! ha but the water is back now and we are showering like normal human beings again it is sweet!

Elder Joseph has been getting somehow sick this last few days. Apparently 8 missionaries in our mission right now have the swine flu! and thats what it might be with elder joseph. so we have been taking it kinda easy the last couple days. We had a big training with all of the ward missionaries in our wards, and kind of taught them more about missionary work and about preach my gospel. The ward missionaries in my ward are so freaking sweet. They help us out so much and im so greatful for them! It will be way weird if i am transferedd because i don't want to leave my ward because i really like them and they are really helpful in doing all of the proseltying and everything. but i guess thats part of being a missionary!

I'll write you next week with more stories about investigators and things! i love ya'll

Quinton

PS the picture that i am sending is me standing by a car that looks exactly like ours back home! and i almost got arrested for taking this picture! lol it was funny as Elder Joseph was taking the picture this guy came up to us and started yelling and said we need to ask permission first and all of this crazy stuff, so we told him he could take us to the police if he wanted too. He would have looked so dumb if he had taken us there and said i want these people arrested for taking a picture.. so obviously he didn't do anything and we still have this picture! ha so our car is in Ghana too!


Click on the picture which will make it bigger and take a close look at the store names as well as the people.  Note the lady in back by the building has a cushion on her head that the people use when they carry things on their heads.  There is a lady behind the table to Quinton's left.  Notice the items on the tables out in front of the stores.  Really interesting seeing how the people do things in Ghana.
Email from Elder Joseph

We are still together as companion and today will be transfer news so we will know if we are still together but we have a wonderful time together in kojokrom ward.

For fante i am trying best to learn but not all that good. here we help people to pound fufu for the investigator and members and is a wonderful experience and that is one of my service i can do well.

for cooking i am not all that good but i can prepare some of my local meals.

For africa the weather is always warm or hot and a few time cold and we do not experience inversion

for the numbers of children there alot of them in our ward and i do not teach any class

thank for all you done i hope of having more time with elder Petersen on the mission field

hope to hear from you again

Monday, January 4, 2010

Another semi good week

Email sent 3 Jan 2010

so this week was kinda cool because we still had that whole christmas spirit thing going which is cool, but it is also sad because we are leaving Christmas time. the past few weeks have been going by pretty slowly and that is annoying because i like it when the time goes by fast!!!

There were a couple of things that made it so that the time really did go by slowly this week. On tuesday the power in our apartment went out, and that is usually a normal thing, but then we went to look at the meter and there was still power to it so we really didn't know what was going on. We talked to the power company and found out that it was of no fault of theres so we found out that there is some sort of problem with the electricity in out house itself :( It took quite a while to figure this out actually so we had no power in our room until Saturday night! when we had an electrician come and they found out that our whole breaker box had blown a huge fuze and melted and stuff so we had to get that thing fixed... but its all better and working now and that is really all that matter!

So while this was going on i had a little bout of sickness as well... On Wednesday night i wasnt feeling to good so i went to bed and was still not feeling good. i woke up in the night at about 1 i think and had to take a trip to the bathroom, and i through up, and that is when the floodgates opened! so i was throwing up all night, and then about halfway through the night i started to have diareha as well :( so i was literally flowing from both ends at the same time. Eventually it somehow calmed down and i went back to bed. So when i woke up in the morning i knew that i had some sort of Malaria because i was throwing up, pooping rivers, had a fever of 101.7, and was super achy everywhere so i called sister Sabey and she told me what i already knew.. i have Malaria again :( so i called the zone leaders and had them bring over the malaria medicine. so i basically just slept and rested all day cuz i felt like total crap. Malaria isn't all that fun, but luckily i still haven't had a bad case of it yet, because when you have a bad case it puts you down for a couple days. by friday i was feeling mostly better so that was good! and now on monday i would say that im about 94% back to normal health! Oh but i went to bed at 10 on New Years eve, but luckily i woke up right before twelve and kinda just celebrated half awake.. its a new decade! wow

So that was the week in a nutshell not much proselyting activity because of all of the crazy things that happened :(

I got the package that you guys sent! it was really sweet, i got it on Saturday and once again it was totally packed full! the cookies are way good that you sent, and i thought it was way funny that you sent running articles and a picture of Usain Bolt! lol much appreciated :) The best part again was the pictures! it was really cool and the funniest ones were you and dad trying to be Ghanain with the basket on your heads, that gave us a good laugh!

Things are going really well over here, and im glad to see that you guys are doing well too! This will be the last week of this transfer, so i could be moving or staying we really have no idea, but its always a kind of anticipation waiting for the transfers to see what happens. Me and Elder Jackson have been together for our whole mission now, right from the plane flight! and it would be weird if we got seperated but i could see something like that happening this transfer, but all we can do is wait and see!

Tell cookie hi for me :)

I love ya parentals and siblings!

Quinton

Email from Elder Joseph

Thank you - I am so grateful for remembering me all the time. and most of all is this wonderful past Christmas for us as missionaries we were ask by our mission president to do serve and it make this Christmas one of my best ever.

for tennis we play some few times and Petersen is also trying i hope you also enjoy the Christmas and greet your family for me