Hello

Dear Fam,

Happy Birthday to Bryan and Shalissa last week, I hope you both had a great one!  This past week has been a pretty good, on Saturday we had the baptism of Eunice, she is a very good girl and her Uncle Derrick has been a great help all along the way, she is very bright and I am confident that as her Uncle Continues to help her and with the desire she already has she will continue to grow in the gospel and become a great member as an adult. Aurel the other young man we were hoping to baptize was getting some pressure from his family not to be baptized. They are all Catholics and they don't know a lot about the family. Aurel is living with one of his best friends away from his family, if it were not like that we would love to also teach his family and help them understand the importance of the things we have been teaching him. In our lesson with him we read with him Mathew 10 which teaches that anyone that loves his family more than the savior is not worthy of the Kingdom. Then we committed him to pray about it and we told him that we would be praying for him. I know the Lord with give him the strength to do the right thing. This week we met a man named Eric, Eric is half Ghanaian and half British. We were contacting in an apartment building and he was on the top floor, the lights were off and it felt a little strange, when we contacted him he invited us in without saying a word and that was even more strange. But as we started talking to him he opened right up and told us what he knew about the church and how he has done a little bit of work for the church in Dansuman. He an elect man and i am glad we found him and that we didn't just decide not to contact because their was no light. Kelly and Pat came to church again after not being able to come for like two weeks because kelly has been sick, but he is still preparing and working towards his baptism. Gabriel, has been been taught by missionaries for a long time and even elder wicho has been working with him for several months but he has had a hard time keeping the commandments and coming to church on a regular basis. But he has been keeping his commitments and has been coming a few weeks in a row so we feel that he is really serious about it now and so we are hoping he can be ready for this month. As we were teaching David and Norah this past week, we found that they have a concern that needs to be resolved and it may take some time, which was very sad, but they are willing to overcome it because they recognize this is something they need to have in their lives. Despite knowing they will have to wait a little bit they still came to church with their family yesterday and they still have that excitement about the gospel and the church so that is a very good sign.    

One of my spiritual experiences was in the temple this week. Sadly we were not able to go do baptism with the ward and that will take place when the temple opens again after the cleaning. But on Thursday night it started to pour right after a lesson and we pretty close to the temple so we rushed there to seek protection from the rain. As we waited for the rain to stop I was amazed at the detail and the designs in the temple and that was just in small room between the entrance and the desk. Even in that small room I could feel the power in the temple. This week I read a quote from President Hinkley that says nothing ensures proper living more than regular temple attendance. I could feel that in the temple. Also as I was there the temple worker at the desk was a dear friend of Joseph William Billy Johnson who was first Pioneer to help the gospel come to Ghana. I cannot remember the mans name but I wrote it down, but this man was converted even before the church came to Ghana and it was wonderful to talk to him for just a few moments about what things were like at those times and how far the church has come since then. As I talked to this wonderful man, I thought of some of my recent converts and hoped that they would be as faithful as this great man has been.
        
Love, Elder L.