Daniel Buchanan <daniel.buchanan@myldsmail.net> Nov 2 at 11:33 AM
To
Hello!!
This week has been a pretty crazy week. I think all of my
weeks have been pretty crazy, haha.
But BYU football inspired me even in Africa! You know, after
Taysom (I don't know how to spell his name, haha) got injured and was out and
the backup just came home from a mission and became a BYU legend that same
game! I've been worried about my musical abilites diminishing, but then I
thought of BYU football! Haha I believe if I continue to do my best, at least
when I get home, the Lord will bless me for my service and will restore any
talent that I don't get to use while I'm here. There's not really pianos here,
and apparently people make fun of American accents here, so I'm still trying to
figure out how to use my music here.
But the water supply has been totally fluctuating this week.
One day, we ran out of water. We could not pump water into the house, we
couldn't take a shower, we had nothing. Eventually we looked in the tank, and
it was almost empty, so we lowered a bucket and pulled what water was left
until it filled back up. Then when it started to fill, it was "Light
out," so we couldn't get any water anyway! But it came back, so we didn't
die, thankfully, haha. Then a few days later, I finally experienced
"African rain." We were at a shop teaching, and during our lesson,
the lights went out, then a little bit later, it started to rain. It wasn't bad
at first, but then it started to POUR. Man, it was torrential rainfall,
lightning, thunder, everything. It started to get late and we had to head back
to the apartment, but it was raining too hard. So Elder Saunders and I went
outside under the overhang by ourselves and we said a prayer. We then went out
to get our bikes. The owner of the shop, a good friend, told us not to ride out
in that rain in the dark, but we did. We realized we needed to have faith, so
after we started riding, the rain started to subside! It didn't cease, but it
definitely backed off so we were able to get home, despite having to bike
through mud and streams and craziness. Haha that was the first night I actually
used my blanket here. You wouldn't expect it—I was cold, wet, muddy, and
exhausted, but I was the happiest I had been since getting to my area, because
I could see the hand of the Lord working in our lives. The Lord is real, and He
lives! Don't ever forget it.
I seriously need to work on contacting. We decided to go
contacting for a bit, and some lady waved to us, so I decided to go over and
talk to her. All my contacting experiences just aren't ideal, haha. This time,
it turned out I decided to talk to a group of Muslim ladies about Jesus Christ.
Haha so that was definitely an interesting experience.
I'm also learning more words in Twi! I've mostly just
learned basic words and phrases. I don't have all the proper characters to type
it out properly, so I'll just type them as close as I can with English
phonetics, haha. "Etuh zane" is "How are you doing?"
"Ayeh" is "Fine," and "Namiado" is "By His
grace." That's a common response when people ask how you're doing. It's
totally normal to just walk by and have someone say, "Good
afternoon," to you. Haha, the little kids keep getting excited by us
Brunies. They always say, "Oh, Brunie kor kor!!" Which in Twi means,
"White man, red red!" Actually, the first night in my area, Michel
Camp, we were biking and there was a big group of kids who all just ran up to me
excitedly calling out, "Brunie brunie!" People commonly don't mean it
as an insult, they just don't know what to call us. It's usually the younger
ones that try to bug us by calling us that, haha.
But this week we had 13 progressing investigators! We had to
move back our baptismal dates we had scheduled for the 25th of Oct. to this
month, but maybe 6 baptisms on the 15th will be a nice birthday treat :D The
big problem we're having is transportation, though. Our church building is not
in our proselyting area, it's a bit far from it. Most people here don't have
cars, and many don't even have enough money to use a tro tro (public van/bus)
to get there, and it's only about 1 Cedi to ride (which is pretty close to
about $0.30). The people we teach are very interested, we're just trying to
figure out how to get them to church, though. I pray we'll figure out a way to
resolve the problem.
I think that's about all I have for this week. I seriously
look forward to hearing from all of you and how life is treating you. I hope
all is well. I'm doing well, and the work is great! I'm mostly pretty
comfortable teaching lessons. But this week I'm going to do my best to work on
my contacting skills and get over the fear of talking to strangers. I don't
think I have any reason to be worried, though, because everyone talks to
everyone here!
Just remember that the Savior lives, and He loves us. He's
always looking over us, and if we pay attention, we can see His hand in our
lives every single day.
With love,
Elder Daniel Buchanan
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| Elder Buchanan with his companion, Elder Saunders and the other two missionaries with whom they live |
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| Elder Buchanan hits the jackpot in mail! |
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