Two Years in Ghana: Letter from October 7, 2015

Hey all!

This has been a super crazy five days, and probably the slowest five days of my life, haha. It's been pretty tough, honestly. One of the Elders in my room is a punk, I'm already sick with something like strep, it's so dang humid here so I can't sleep, I keep waking up in the night. The food here at the MTC isn't bad, but it's not too great, either.

We were able to go to the temple today, and it was a great experience. When I was going back to the locker room to get changed, there was a worker sitting in my stall studying an ordinance card, so I said, "Hey, can I change?" He just smiled at me and said yes and pointed to the lockers and went back to studying! So that was kind of bizarre. I suppose it's culturally acceptable to do that here? Beats me. But there's this one elder in my district named Elder Cook, I love him so much, haha. He's kind of a dork, but he's so enthusiastic! We relate really well, and he's just fun. So, here in Ghana, people literally walk down the middle of the street on the highway trying to sell you things, so Elder Cook opened the window in the van on the way to the temple and was handing out pass-along cards of a picture of Jesus, and for this one guy, he was about to take it, but the van started pulling away, but the man starting running to grab it, and luckily he did. So that was a lot of fun. We were able to get some Ghanaian currency, and I bought a Book of Mormon written in Twi! It was only 1.30 Cedis, and 50 cedis is the equivalent of $18, so it was hardly anything! We went to the store, too, and I saw they had cheese and ice cream there!! The cheese was crazy expensive, though. I was told we'd get like 100-120 cedis a month, and the most expensive cheese I saw was 30 cedis, so I don't know how much of that I'll be getting. There's a pizza place pretty close to the MTC! Hopefully I'll get the chance to eat there a few times while here. I don't think I have too much more to say for now. It's been pretty tough here, honestly, but I'm looking forward to getting out of the MTC and actually getting to serve and to teach.

I had an interesting idea come to me that seems so simple, but I hadn't really thought of before. When you hear the word "convert," what do you think of? Some people think, "Oh, they just want me to get baptized, blah blah blah." But the word convert means to change. If people say we want to convert people, they're right. We want to change people. We want to make them better. We want to bless their lives by letting them know that we have a Savior, Jesus Christ, who lives and loves us more than we can ever understand in this lifetime. I love Him, and that's why I'm here.

I really wish I had more time to email back individually, but I'm so dang busy, but I seriously look forward to hearing from all of you soon! I can't tell you how much I loved reading your messages, please keep them coming! :)

With love,

Elder Daniel Buchanan