Letter and Photos from July 26, 2016

Daniel Buchanan <daniel.buchanan@myldsmail.net>  Jul 26 at 2:27 PM

To       

Hi, all!!

So it's been a good week, albeit fairly uneventful.

-So we were supposed to have three baptisms on Sunday, but because we have so many problems with the font, the branch president told us to postpone it until next week. But the night before, we decided to make some food for one of our investigators because the next day was the baptism and apparently it was awful! We made our delicious fried rice with vegetables and chicken-flavored seasoning! Elder Kwofie said it was pretty much the best rice he's ever had, but apparently not for this investigator. Apparently I can't cook, haha. But I must say I disagree, however. I do make some pretty mean fried rice.

-We had an interesting zone conference yesterday! I got there and the AP came up to me and gave me a program and my name was on it to play piano! No prior notice or anything, but I didn't complain, I like playing piano! We had some instruction, then a lunch break where we had lots of rice and chicken and it was good! After lunch, every district that was there had to perform a skit. Ours as well as two others acted out King Noah and Abinadi from the Book of Mormon. It was alright. Some of them were pretty funny. There was one that was really accurate, but almost made me a little nervous. One thing that people here are a strong believer of is speaking in "tongues." And here, a tongue doesn't equate to a language. According to them, it means the holy spirit comes upon them and they suddenly start going crazy and convulsing and speaking random stuff that no one understands (including the one apparently under the influence of the spirit) but is known to God. One district acted this out, and it was pretty humorous, but it was really loud with the mic and I was afraid people passing by would think we actually worship that way xD But overall, it was pretty fun. I took some pictures with some of my buddies there.

-But as for the baptisms, that was disappointing because we were supposed to have three! But our font is basically a bunch of tarp wrapped around a metal frame holding it together. That's the best way I can describe it. It was dirty, it has a hole in it, and it's difficult. To fill it up, we have to fill it from the water tank. The water tank is like 20' above the ground upon a tower and there's no tap/faucet. The only way to get the water out is to put a hose in the top of the tank and then literally have someone suck on the opposite end to siphon the water from the tank into the font. That also wasn't working. So that was pretty disappointing, but if everything goes according to plan, we should be having six next week! But if not, we'll definitely get the three for sure. Pray that everything will work out properly!

I recently came across a scripture that I had marked previously, but I had forgotten about it for a while, and I love it so much! It's from The Book of Mormon. It's Alma 33:14, "Now behold, my brethren, I would ask if ye have read the scriptures? If ye have, how can ye disbelieve on the Son of God?" It's pretty self-explanatory. If we study the scriptures, how is it possible for us to disbelieve or doubt Jesus Christ? It comes as no surprise that since I've been here, I've studied the scriptures more than I ever have before, and I'm more convinced than I ever have been before that Jesus Christ truly does live and that He truly is our Savior. I know that He lives and that He loves us. By studying His words, we come to know Him more fully and more personally. I've never doubted the gospel, but recently, it's become so much more real to me. I know that Jesus Christ lives and that He atoned for all of us because He loves all of us. I know it.

I love you all so much! You're the best! I hope all is well with all of you and I hope life is treating you well! I hope to hear from you again soon!!

With love,

Elder Buchanan

 Me and Elder Harris, an elder who came here with Elder Saunders. This dude is a seriously legit vocal percussionist. 

Me and Elder Bell, my MTC companion

Me with Elders Takis, Schmanski, and Bodily from my previous zone!

Me with Elder Quarshie, my first zone leader, the current AP, and one of the elders leaving next week!

Me and the three Nigerians reunited!! 

One day a few girls after church decided to dress up Elder Tolzmann's head, so we couldn't pass up that opportunity xD

The crowd at zone conference

Letter and Photos from July 19, 2016

Daniel Buchanan <daniel.buchanan@myldsmail.net>  Jul 19 at 2:53 PM

To       

Hi, all!!

This has been another great week! We didn't have too much happen, but some good things went down.

-You know I've gotta start with food! This time it comes in two parts, haha:

1. As many of you know, I went to BYU for a summer term before I came to Ghana. At BYU, they have a place called J-Dawgs, which is essentially really good hot dogs with special "J-Dawgs Sauce" and they're ridiculously good. Elder Tolzmann said that we could get the recipe, so I had my mom email it to me, and we made J-Dawgs sauce and then we got a big loaf of sugar bread (basically slightly sweeter white bread), and Elder Tolzmann bought ten packs of ten franks/hot dogs eag for the equivalent of $12-13, and we ate five each for lunch twice this week. Oh man, you all have got to try J-Dawgs. You can get a little taste of the goodness of BYU from anywhere around the world :D

2. WE GOT PERMISSION TO GO TO ACCRA YESTERDAY. So we took the opportunity to go straight to the Accra Mall and anyone want to guess what the first thing we did when we got there was? We made a beeline right to Pizza Hut. They opened a Pizza Hut in the Accra Mall in May and I've been wanting to go ever since and I finally got the opportunity. So we got a large three-meat pizza with fries and coke. Oh man, I experienced pure joy there. All of you in America: you have no idea how much joy you're truly experiencing whenever you eat at Pizza Hut. Then we checked the mall out for a little bit. They have a grocery store that's like a typical American grocery store, and I think I got a little too excited over a grocery store, haha! Then, since I'm a guy and you know guys can eat a lot of food, I took the chance then to get a cheeseburger with fries and another coke. That was actually probably a better burger than I've had in most places in America. That was a pretty dang solid cheeseburger. And you know we couldn't leave without getting oreo milkshakes. Holy goodness, that was the most delicious road trip I've ever had before. Then we ran into President Heid while there, so that was neat! Haha but I never realized how much fun eating truly is!

-Sunday was a kind of cool day. We've been meeting with a less-active member here and last week she came to church, and then Sunday she came AND she brought both her non-member sister and her sister's friend to church! So that was super exciting.

-There's an investigator we have who, as I gather, came to church quite frequently in the past. Since I've been in Asutsuare, there was a sequence of three weeks in a row that she was coming, and then the past few weeks she hasn't been coming, so about six members of the branch decided to go pay her a visit and see how she's been doing. They didn't know where she lived, so they all stopped by our apartment and had us show them the way. We all got there and there and we sat down with her and I had no idea what was going on since it was in Dangbe, but it looked like this woman was really opening up to the members of the branch. I just felt a lot of love there even though I didn't really know what was going on. Afterwards, the branch president's wife told me what happened. This woman said she had decided to remain in the Pentecost church and she wasn't going to come back, but they told her that whether she continues to go to the Pentecost church or ours, we still care about her and if she ever needs anything, we are her friends and we're there for her. I love that she said that, because it truly reminds me of the Savior. No matter what we do, no matter what mistakes we make, no matter how badly we feel we've messed up, the Savior Jesus Christ is always right there by our side ready to help us out. There's nothing we can do that will ever change that. If we turn to Him and have faith in Him, He will help us. It's not just a 'maybe' or a 'might,' but He will always love us. I can't express my gratitude for that. I know more than anything else that our Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ are both real and they love us so much more than we can even imagine. I hope you all know that and I hope you all know that I know that. I love them and my words can't adequately express my gratitude for them.

I love you all. Thank you so much for your love, prayers, and support for me. You have no idea how much I appreciate it. I hope you're all doing well and I hope to hear from you all soon!!

With love,

Elder Buchanan :D

Pizza Hut!

Pizza Hut!

Elder Tolzmann and Pizza Hut!

This is from one evening this week when we were meeting with Sandra, a young woman who's going to be baptized this Sunday. She decided to wrap up my head with a cloth like many people here do. Do any of you think I could pull it off? ;)

Letter and Photos from July 11, 2016

Daniel Buchanan <daniel.buchanan@myldsmail.net>  Jul 11 at 1:15 PM

To       

Hi, all!!

This week has been so dang fantastic.

-Last P-Day we just barely got home from proselyting. We had bought some pineapple juice, and we enjoyed that, so we wanted to get more, but they didn't have any, so we got some mango juice to try out. We went to the apartment and I was taking my clothes down from the line and light went out. We both look up at the night sky and Elder Tolzmann just says, "Let's grab some chairs and mango juice." So we bring some chairs and a few glasses out and sit out looking up at the most incredible view of the night sky I had ever seen having a good heart-to-heart and enjoying mango juice. That was quite fun.

-We've reached a new level of stealth when it comes to banku. I felt really bad for this because these people are so generous in feeding us when they already have so little, but these people have been eating banku their whole lives and we've been eating it for a few months... So normally, people will give us food and have us sit down and they'll leave us to ourselves to enjoy our food. This time, we were visiting a kid who will be baptized in a few weeks, and we hadn't even said hi to him when two members were already sitting down eating banku and insisted that we join them. So we sit down and they put two balls of banku in front of us. Now, I've learned to eat banku, but that doesn't mean I've learned to enjoy it yet, haha. So I manage to down my whole ball, and Elder Tolzmann has eaten maybe 1/4 of a ball when one of the women sitting there gets up and tells us she has to go. So now it's just the two of us and one member sitting outside eating banku. Something grabs the woman still sitting down, so she turns her head, so I take the opportunity to cut the ball of banku in half and hide it under the table with one hand while I continue to eat with the other, and my companion gets out his plastic bag to hide it in. We managed to do this like three times until I actually finished eating the rest of his banku, and we managed to do this right in front of her without her even noticing... Again, I feel kind of bad because they're so kind to us, yet simultaneously I'm quite proud of us since we were able to be so stealthy with it, haha!

-The branch president here owns a school called Lohem, and we go there every week to teach a few students and a few teachers that have been coming to church. This past Wednesday was a Muslim holiday, so there was no school. We go there on Wednesdays, so we went, and Pres. Abotsi tells us he's going to prepare BBQ!! He cooks up some pork, spices it, and then makes some kebabs and then BBQs it. He makes some rice and dishes it all out to us on a plate with delicious BBQ'ed pork and rice. It was quite exciting and delicious. Then we were able to teach a teacher there who's been coming to church every week and has his own Book of Mormon that he's been reading and he understands what we teach really well and he's just awesome. He accepted our invitation to be baptized! Hopefully we'll be able to make that happen this month, but since he lives really far out in our area, it's a little difficult to meet with him regularly, but I have high hopes for him!

-Our past few P-Days have been a little bit boring, so we decided to do something fun today. We decide to hike to the top of a mountain. No big deal ;) Haha but it was tons of fun. It was the most breathtaking view I've ever seen. We were able to climb over different ridges and see God's creations for miles. We saw rivers and lakes and trees as far as the eye could see. It was a cloudy, windy day, which was glorious. It was just a fun experience, so I've attached a few pictures.

-We also had my first legit, organized service project since coming to Ghana with the whole Kpong Zone! It was really cool. We all got together and cleaned up the Odumase Library! Upon entering, it looked like it hadn't seen human eyes in about ten years because of the ridiculous amount of dust buildup. It was quite fun, though. That wasn't even the cool experience of the day. We were wearing P-Day clothes, so shorts and a t-shirt and whatever, and we had to take a taxi to Odumase from Asutsuare. So we get a taxi and we arrive and we get out of the taxi, it leaves, and Elder Tolzmann says to me, "Elder, my wallet..." and we realize it wasn't in his pocket anymore. We soon realize that he had dropped the wallet in the taxi. He was pretty upset because it had some important stuff in there, but I had a small ray of hope. I presented my plan to Elder Tolzmann, and he thought it would never happen. I said a prayer in my heart that we would be able to retrieve the wallet, because the Lord can do all things. So, sometimes theft is common in Ghana, but people here also behave like one big family. So I had the number of a different taxi driver that would often take us places. I give him a call like three times and no answer. We go to the service project, and then afterwards I call again and ask him if he knows the other taxi drivers. He says he does. I then ask if he knows the one who took who brofonos (white men) to Odumase this morning in a white-ish/gray taxi. He says he would look. A bit later, he calls back and says he found the man, and he gives the phone to him, and this man tells us that he still has Elder Tolzmann's wallet. He gives us his number and tells us to call him when we're back in Asutsuare. So, miraculously, the Lord answered my prayer in Elder Tolzmann's behalf and we were able to get his wallet back with everything inside. People sometimes underestimate the power of faith. The Lord has promised so many times in the scriptures that if we ask in faith, our righteous desires will be granted us. Trust in the Lord! He will never let us down. We may not always understand His ways, but He's always right there beside us ready to help us if we just reach out to Him. I know this is true because I've seen it so many times in my life and I've seen it so many times since coming here on my mission. The Lord truly is mindful of each of us. He loves us infinitely and He wants us to be happy. Just like a good, earthly father watches after his young children, so does our perfect, Heavenly Father. He's always there watching over us and helping us along the way.

I love you all so much. I can't tell you how much I appreciate all your love and support; it means so much to me. I hope you're all doing well, and I hope to hear from you all again soon!!

With love,

Elder Buchanan

Elder Buchanan from the mountain top!

Panorama view from the mountain top!

Elder Tolzmann from the mountain top!

Service project cleaning the local library

Service project cleaning the local library

Letter and Photos from July 4, 2016

Daniel Buchanan <daniel.buchanan@myldsmail.net>  Jul 4 at 11:28 AM

To       

Hello, all!

This week was a ridiculously awesome week. We had lots of good and interesting things happen:

-There's this one girl we often see running around Asutsuare who has autism. It's always an interesting encounter whenever we see her. This week we had a few encounters, haha. For one of them, we were riding our bikes when we saw an investigator and we stopped to talk to her. While we were talking to the investigator, this girl comes up to us, grabs Elder Tolzmann's planner from his shirt pocket, and starts to just walk away with it. This investigator we were talking to starts just yelling at this girl in Dangbe, so I didn't know exactly what was being said, but I knew she was trying to get my companion's planner back, haha. This girl steps over the gutter and picks up a stick as if she were in danger and needed to defend herself. Then she put in down and started walking away more. At this point, I turn and realize that like the entire town was watching what was going on (two white guys and a girl with autism that everyone recognized and some kind of uproar; you can imagine why it got everyone's attention, haha). The investigator then picks up a decent sized rock as if she's going to throw it at this girl (I don't think she intended to, but threats are a common way of disciplining people here), and finally retrieves our planner for us and the girl walks away. So that was definitely interesting.

-Tuesday was district council, so the district was all together at the Akuse apartment. When we were done, the other elders noticed that there was a bat just hanging out in the top of their kitchen. They grab a broom and are about to swat it to try to get it out of the apartment, so I step outside so I don't end up with a bat attacking me or something. I hear a little shuffling from inside and I ask, "Where is it?" Elder Tolzmann replies, "Right here." I step forward so I can see inside the apartment, and I realize Elder Tolzmann has it sitting on a piece of cardboard or something AND HE THROWS IT AT ME. Luckily because I'm so agile and I'm such a ninja, I was able to dodge it, haha. He says he knew it wouldn't attack me or anything since it was a fruit bat, but still xD Eventually it just flew away and no harm was done. But I decided to get him back for that little stunt. One evening after proselyting, he was taking a shower. So here, the power is very unstable, and we also have an electric water pump, so whenever the power goes out, water doesn't flow into our apartment. So while he was taking a shower, I shut off the lights in the bathroom and then I ran into the other room and turned off the water pump, so he totally thought the power was out. After about two minutes I turn the lights back on and turn the pump on again, but he had already gotten out and had dried off and didn't care to get back in and finish showering. When I finally told him the next day, he was like, "Wow, that was actually good, I'll give you that one, nice." So that was like the most devious thing I've ever done xD

-As always, I have to include a little mention of good food, haha! When Elder Tolzmann first came to Asutsuare, I told him I'd make sure that he'd enjoy his time here. So yesterday, I made him probably the best chocolate oreo milkshakes I've made since coming here and I reminded him that I said I'd make sure he'd enjoy and he said, "You're a man of your word." My family knows how much practice I've had making milkshakes, so that's a skill that's definitely come in handy here :D

-So this weekend was pretty intense. Saturday we had a funeral for a member of the branch who recently passed away. I was invited by the branch president to play keyboard. Now, if you've spent any time in Ghana, you know that funerals are a BIG deal here. You'll have people who aren't even related to the deceased show up because they like funerals and they're pretty much parties. So there were lots of people there and big speakers set up. I was all set to play, but the sound guy was being super unhelpful and wouldn't help us hook up the keyboard to have good sound, so I ended up not even playing at all, so we sat there on a particularly hot day and just sweated for a few hours. Afterwards, the church started handing out Plan of Salvation pamphlets and had us help, so we had about 75 contacts that day! Then the most exciting part was the next day, Sunday. That was the craziest church experience I've ever had. So we get to church and everything starts out like normal. In the middle of Sacrament Meeting, like 5 people walk in with red and black clothes and I remembered that in Ghana, when there's a funeral, people will go to the deceased's church the next day. Then, for the next 45 minutes, people just continued to trickle in and they just kept coming! I asked President Heid if we count them as "Investigators who attend sacrament meeting," and he said yes! So we had 62 investigators at church yesterday! That was pretty dang awesome... but only for about one hour. During Sunday school, the teacher was talking about ordinances/baptism. At one point, one of the visitors stands up and basically tells everyone his own personal view and essentially says that the teacher is wrong. Someone else stood up and gave his thoughts and then several people stood up and started talking and before I knew it, people had begun to raise their voices and argue and I was getting really nervous that we were going to have some massive uproar. Everyone in Ghana is very religious, and many of them are quite passionate about it, so I was quite worried. I just covered my face and said a prayer to myself that the Lord would silence the commotion and that the leaders of the church would be able to take control of the situation and invite the Spirit back into the meeting. Within about a minute, Pres. Abotsi, the branch president, a pretty large man, got up and just started talking over all the arguing. He said something to the effect of, "We're not teaching our own ideas and philosophies, we back what we teach with the scriptures. If you have disagreements, set that aside for now, and let's reason together. Remember, this is the House of the Lord we are in." He then changed the topic to Choosing Not to Be Offended. He started teaching and within a few minutes, the people were happy and liked what he was sharing again, and it was once again a peaceful atmosphere! This was just one more experience that showed to me that the Lord truly does hear and answer prayers. Then, right when we normally say a closing prayer to end church, a bunch of people start standing up and walking to the front. All the women who visited all went to the front and started dancing/chanting/singing, I assume as a cultural thing succeeding funerals. It was pretty cool, I must admit, but a little weird to me right in the middle of church, haha. But it was a crazy Sunday, but it was really good, too!

I love this gospel. I say it every week, but it's true! I couldn't be more happy to be here sharing what I know to be true with the people of Ghana. I love these people and I love the Savior, Jesus Christ, who I am serving. I know He lives and I know He loves each of us. He knows us personally and individually and He knows how to look after us. Christ has taught us so many times that if we have faith in Him and we ask, He will bless us with our righteous desires because He's always right there attending to our needs. I'm so thankful for a loving Father in Heaven and for His Son.

I love you all so much! You're the best. I thank all of you for the love and support you always give me. I pray for you all daily and I hope all is well with each of you and I hope to hear from all of you again soon!!

With love,

Elder Buchanan

There were some kids playing on a makeshift hurdle, so I went over and jumped a few hurdles with them, and I used the opportunity to get a picture with them.

Elder Tolzmann excited about pizza!

The Volta River

The Volta River