Letter from December 28, 2015

Daniel Buchanan <daniel.buchanan@myldsmail.net>  Dec 28 at 10:20 AM

To       

Hi, everyone!

This has been a pretty good week! On Tuesday we had a multi-zone Christmas Devotional up in the bush, so we had to get a tro tro and drive for a while to get there. I saw baboons on the side of the road on the way there!! That was pretty awesome :D Haha, but it was a fun activity. Our zone all sang Mary's Lullaby, and Elder Saunders and I sang the alternate descant part together which was pretty cool. They also fed us a ton there, and we had chocolate frosted chocolate cake! Ah, I miss cake, haha.

Christmas was awesome. We woke up and opened our various packages we received from our families, which was way awesome. Then we went out, taught a lesson to some investigators, and came back and got to call home! Ah, it was so good to hear my family's voices again. It was so much fun. It was hard to say bye, though. After I said bye, I was feeling a little homesick when we went out. Our plans fell through, so we weren't able to teach a lesson, and we didn't know what to do. We were going to head back to the apartment, but we realized the spirit was telling us we shouldn't go home yet. We didn't know what to do, so we kind of stopped and stood there with our bikes trying to figure out what to do when a recent convert came up to us! It wasn't at the place he normally stays at, so we were surprised to see him! We chatted for a bit, and I asked him if he had anyone he knew that we could teach. He said he knew someone across the road we should meet with, so he starts leading us there, and he says to me, "I was about to go home, but something told me I should wait small." This lady he led us to is awesome! That evening we gave her a Gospel of Jesus Christ pamphlet, and the very next day she called us and told us she read it and had some questions about it! She told me, "Elder Buchanan, I love Jesus," and that she didn't want to sin anymore and that she wants to be baptized! AND SHE WAS THE FIRST INVESTIGATOR I HAD THAT ACTUALLY CAME TO CHURCH. I was so pumped! Although she told the taxi driver where to go, but he dropped her off at the wrong junction, but even then, she walked all the way to our rented church building (which was a pretty lengthy walk, I must say), and it was so awesome! So that was a nice Christmas treat that cheered me up.

You know, I was thinking about the work in our area and why we haven't been having as much success as we've hoped for. I was reading in the Book of Mormon the other day, and I was reading the account of Ammon and Aaron and the other sons of Mosiah and their missionary experiences. Ammon had immense success and was able to convert King Lamoni and his people, but Aaron and his brothers weren't well-received at all. I came across Alma 20: 30 which says, "And, as it happened, it was their lot to have fallen into the hands of a more hardened and a more stiffnecked people; therefore they would not hearken unto their words, and they had cast them out, and had smitten them, and had driven them from house to house, and from place to place, even until they had arrived in the land of Middoni; and there they were taken and cast into prison, and bound with strong cords, and kept in prison for many days, and were delivered by Lamoni and Ammon." And that gave me a little perspective. That's not to say I'm just accepting that fact and thinking that no one here will ever change, but it helped me to realize that even the great missionaries in the Book of Mormon weren't always received so well. I'm comparing myself to them and I've only been out for three months! So I realized I need to be more patient with myself and realize that despite my best efforts, sometimes people won't listen and that it's their own choice. Regardless, I'll always do my best to press forward with faith in the power of Christ. With it, I know the Lord's work will come to pass, and miracles can and will occur for His children and lives can and will be changed for the better.

I appreciate all of the love and support you all give me. I want to hear about how Christmas was for all of you! I hope you had a fun and amazing time, but that you were also able to remember the Savior Jesus Christ and that He's the real reason we celebrate Christmas.

With love,

Elder Daniel Buchanan :)

P.S. Once again, I'm so sorry I couldn't send pictures this week. I have a bunch of pictures I've been wanting to send, but I haven't been able to, sadly.

The photos below are all from the multi-zone Christmas devotional that they had on Thursday, December 24, 2015.

Letter from December 21, 2015

Daniel Buchanan <daniel.buchanan@myldsmail.net>  12/21/15 at 11:54 AM

To       

Hi, everyone!!

This has been quite an eventful week! I have so many pictures I want to email home,  but the internet cafes are pretty rough here, sadly, so, again, I can't send any pictures today :(

Lots of interesting things have gone on lately! One day we were headed to a lesson with a few investigators and a lamb started chasing us on our bikes! Elder Saunders stopped, so I stopped, and then the lamb started following me even after I started riding again! Haha, there are goats, sheep, chickens, cows, and lizards all over the place here! It's kind of cool!

Also, the culture continues to be pretty interesting. It's very common for people to pray in their own native languages when we're teaching them. The most common language (at least in my area) is Twi, but there are so many (which I don't know how to spell) such as Twi, Ga, Awey, Krobuk, Fanti, etc. There are all kinds of different languages here. Elder Saunders made the joke that on our mission call letters, the only reason they said we're called to serve English-speaking is because they can't list all of the languages around here and that we'll just have to figure them out while we're here, haha :D

We had a district get-together which was AWESOME. I didn't think upon arriving in Ghana I'd ever eat to the point of being stuffed until going back home, but man, there was so much food there! There was colas and orange sodas, fried rice, rotisserie chicken, orange chicken, mashed potatoes, potato salad, bananas, pineapples, watermelons, and then I literally bought myself a pizza (it's not often you find pizza here, so whenever I get the chance, I take it, haha). It was so much fun. I was almost afraid I wouldn't be able to ride my bike for an hour back to the apartment, but somehow I managed! That was a good day.

Also, we had a cool experience this week. There's this one seamstress who owns a shop and she has several apprentices that we teach, but the owner herself never seemed too interested. There was one evening we had run out of people to teach, it was dark, so people were starting to go inside and to bed, so we didn't know what to do. We decided to head back to the apartment and update our area book and do other logistical things like that. As we were biking back, Elder Saunders stops me and says, "I feel like we need to pray and ask God where we should go." So we do, and we call a few people to see if they were free, but no go, so we decide to continue with our original plan. He stopped us at the bottom of the biggest hill in our area. When we get to the top, one of the apprentices came to my mind along with the thought, "What you're doing is good, but going to see her is better." So I stop Elder Saunders. We're both obviously tired from a long day of work, and we just biked up a big hill. Regardless, I tell him that I felt like we needed to go back and see her. We ride back down the hill and we go to the shop, but the apprentice I had thought of was busy and was leaving in a few minutes. The other apprentices were also unavailable, so we didn't know what to do. The shop owner says, "I thought you weren't coming today." (We typically alternate days we go places, so she wasn't expecting us that day) Elder Saunders just replies, "I don't know why I'm here, but God told us we need to be here, so here we are." So the shop owner just says, "Okay then, teach me!" As I said, she normally wasn't particularly interested in our message. She's a wonderful lady and a good friend, but she's a devout catholic and generally doesn't listen to us, but on this occasion, she invited us to sit down and teach her. It starts out a little slow, and she seems disinterested, but at one point while I'm sharing a thought, I mention the fact that Christ visited the Americas, and that caught her attention. We had a good discussion about that, and she accepted a Book of Mormon and committed to read in 3 Nephi where Christ comes and visits His children on the American continent. Later after we had left, Elder Saunders tells me that he had taught this lady about the Book of Mormon several different times before with his previous companion, and she would always decline and wouldn't want to listen. But this particular evening, she asked us to teach her, and she accepted the Book of Mormon when I offered it to her! The Lord truly can and does work miracles if we have faith. That event truly was a miracle.

Just as a final thought: I was reading in the Book of Mormon during personal study a bit ago, and I came across a verse that I really liked, and it was wonderful timing considering the upcoming Christmas holiday! I read Alma 7:7 which says, "For behold, I say unto you there be many things to come; and behold, there is one thing which is of more importance than they all—for behold, the time is not far distant that the Redeemer liveth and cometh among his people." I love that verse so much, particularly because it says that the most important thing that was to ever happen was nearing—the mortal life of the Savior Jesus Christ. He came to earth for each and every one of us. He came because He loves us. He not only died for us, but He rose again so that we, also, can rise again. I know that the Savior lives. I know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is real. I hope all of you know how much I love my Savior Jesus Christ. I also hope that each and every one of you has an amazing Christmas!! :)

With love,

Elder Buchanan :)

Elder Buchanan and his district at their district get-together dinner

Letter from December 14, 2015

Daniel Buchanan <daniel.buchanan@myldsmail.net>  Dec 14 at 11:33 AM

To       

Hi, all!!

This has been another crazy week. I love the work so much, but man, I'm exhausted! One night I was laying on my bed writing in my journal, and in the morning I realized I had fallen asleep while writing, and my pen drifted off the page and onto my sheets, haha! Elder Palmer inspired me this week, and I've been washing my clothes each day as I wear them, so today I only spent like one hour washing clothes instead of six! I finally found some time to relax and unwind, and it was beautiful! THIS WEEK I FOUND PIZZA. Ah, I wish you could have been there to see the excitement on my face, haha! It was 35 cedis, but I had no regrets whatsoever. It was kind of small, but it was good! I feel bad, I was a little selfish and my companion was irked with me for not sharing more, but I promised him I'd share more next time :D

One night this week we stopped at the shop by our apartment and we heard someone playing some American music! It's a song that I was never particularly a fan of, but I was excited to hear some American music in Africa, so I actually kind of tapped my foot along with the beat, it was fun!

Also, I saw another white guy in Africa! We were teaching a lesson in an investigator's shop and this guy just came up and handed us some fliers, and walked away. It was kind of weird but cool at the same time!

This week I found a scripture that I related to in a weird way! 2 Nephi 5:16. It talked about how the Nephites built a temple after the manner of Solomon's temple. It was structured in a similar fashion, but it wasn't as fine materially because they couldn't find those materials in the land. That seriously made me think of the San Antonio Temple and the Ghana Accra Temple, because they're the exact same floor plan, but the Accra temple isn't quite as fancy because the materials aren't as readily available! I just thought that was something kind of cool.

Thursday was a crazy intense day. We had a big multi-Zone Conference. It started at 9, but we had to meet in Ashaiman at 6 to take tro tros there, and it takes just over an hour to bike there, so we had to wake up at 4am to start getting ready! It was a hard morning. We made sandwiches of bread, chocolate spread and sweetened condensed milk to take for lunch and started biking. We were originally going to meet at the Stake Center (big church building) in Ashaiman, but we don't know how to get there, so we normally meet with the other Elders in our district to get there. Literally 5 minutes before we get to their apartment, they call us and tell us that they took a taxi and left without us and we should just somehow find our way. So we head in the general direction of the Stake Center, and we get to one road that just had some CRAZY traffic. It was so packed in some places that we couldn't even get through with our bikes! So at one point, we're sitting there stopped waiting for an opening, and a tro tro decides to try to move somewhere and literally runs right into my companion's bike, kind of pushing him along the road and bending his tire. Needless to say, he was not happy at all.

We find the Ashaiman Station where all the other Elders are gathered, and we discover that people changed the plans on us without telling us and we weren't supposed to meet at the stake center. So we bike over there, and the gate is locked, so Elder Palmer jumps the fence and Elder Saunders hands our bikes over and we start walking over to the tro tro station. We finally get there and head to the Zone Conference. That was really nice. I was invited to play piano for our own zone musical number and I sang with a few other missionaries, and that was lots of fun. It was a great experience and I learned a lot from it.

Also, I played piano again in church yesterday! I'm starting to enjoy being the unofficial ward pianist :D One of these days they're going to pick a ridiculously hard hymn that I really can't play, and that'll definitely be an adventure.

As always, I just want you all to know that I KNOW the Lord lives. He loves all of us so much. I love sharing with my investigators 3 Nephi 27:21, where Christ invites people, "that which ye have seen me do, that shall ye also do." All Christ ever did while He was on the earth was serve people. He did good to them. He loved them. It's important for us to also strive to follow Christ's example as the Good Shepherd. We need to serve people. We need to love them and do good to them. We need to do everything we can to bring people unto the Savior because he is REAL. He always has been and always will be. It's the truth, and that will never change. I know it.

I really appreciate all of the love and support even when I'm so far away. You all are amazing. Thanks so much for everything! I love hearing from you each week.

With love,

Elder Daniel Buchanan

P.S. I had some great pictures to share this week, but this internet cafe always has trouble registering my camera, sadly :( Hopefully next week we'll be able to go to the one closer to our apartment that actually works. I wish I could send pictures more frequently!

Photos from 9 December 2015

Elder Buchanan and Elder Saunders happened to run into a Senior Missionary Couple who snapped their photo and posted it on Facebook.

zone conference

Elder Buchanan playing the piano at zone conference

Snacks or lunch at zone conference

Letter and photos from 7 December 2015

Daniel Buchanan <daniel.buchanan@myldsmail.net>  Today at 11:52 AM

To       

Hi, all!!

This week has gone by really fast! I don't even know where the time has gone. I can hardly believe I've already been gone for more than two months! Honestly, I can barely remember what's even happened this week, ha. It's been really good, though! We've met a lot of new people, and the work is going really well. I'm really starting to love the people. Haha, it's so much fun to see their reaction when I can speak a little bit of Twi to them :D I've gotten to the point that I can understand most of what people say now.

Also, I did something lame this week. We had a frying pan, and I didn't realize it had some non-stick covering (sort of, it wasn't very non-stick anyway) on it, and I was going to make my companion breakfast, but it had junk stuck on it, so I used a spoon to scrape it away, and one of the elders in the apartment came in and threatened me with the spoon if I didn't put it down, haha, so basically I kind of ruined our non-stick pan and now making eggs and pancakes will be even harder from now on xD Haha, but we got water back this week, thankfully. Actually, last night our water tank started overflowing so we actually had to shut the water off!

But yesterday was a little rough, though, for several reasons. It was fast Sunday, and we forgot about that until late Saturday night, so we basically went until like 8 at night. It's also the beginning of Hamatan (I have no idea how to spell it), the dry season, so there's a ton of dust in the air, so I was pretty much dying, haha. Also, after Ward Council meeting at church they had refreshments of bread and HONEY. You don't find honey here frequently, and I was fasting! That really was a sacrifice for me, haha! But then we also had so much confidence that our investigators would come to church yesterday. Even the people who usually make excuses said that they would be there, so we were so excited, but they didn't show up, sadly :( But church itself was really good, though! I've basically unofficially been called as the ward pianist now! So I showed up not knowing the hymns I was going to be playing. When I got there, I had never learned two of them, but I knew the closing hymn — Silent Night. So that was nice. But then after the opening hymn, one of the bishopric leaned over and gave me a note saying we were going to sing a different closing hymn—also one that I had never learned! Then to top it all off, in Priesthood meeting, we were singing a hymn I had never even heard before. My companion was called on to lead the music, and then he offered up my services as pianist, so I literally had to sight-read a hymn I had never heard or played before. It wasn't dreadful, but I suppose I did okay. Haha it was an adventure, but thankfully, the Lord helped me through it all and I was able to play well. I'm grateful for the musical talent that He has blessed me with. :)

I just want to tell you all that I know the Lord lives. He loves each and every one of us. This week I've started studying Jesus the Christ a lot more, and I love learning about the Savior. I'm so grateful for Him. I know that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true. It's not just simply a story, it's REAL. We truly do have a loving Father in Heaven and a loving Savior. I know it's true.

I always look forward to hearing from you each and every week. I can't adequately express how much I appreciate all of your love and support and your messages each week.

With love,

Elder Daniel Buchanan

Elder Saunders made spaghetti and some pretty good spaghetti sauce, which I was super pumped for since I love spaghetti :D

A picture back from our district Thanksgiving get-together. Me and Elder Nielsen, the two Texan Elders :D (I think I'm stronger;) and I wore Dad's tie that day!

Me with my paper Christmas tree Mom made for me as well as the mini Christmas tree she sent! I love both so much :D