Two Years in Ghana: Letter and Photos from November 7, 2016

Daniel Buchanan <daniel.buchanan@myldsmail.net>11/07/16 at 11:28 AM

Hi, everyone!

This week was good. We had some interesting things happen.

-Oh man, food. I'll have to admit that I've definitely regained some of the pounds I lost before I came. So the beginning of this week, I decided to start eating a little better. When I make a resolution, typically I'm pretty good at keeping it... unless members feed you... every single day. As soon as I made the decision to work on losing weight, then everyone decides to feed us. Just so you all know, just one ball of banku is roughly 1400 calories... so that's kind of detrimental to any weight loss goal of mine. Yesterday I thought I was about to die. Here in Ghana it's kind of a big deal to finish the food presented to you. First we saw someone who gave us jollof (I enjoy jollof, it's basically rice mixed with some tomato stew type stuff) and fried plantains. That was nice. We had a whole plate filled. THEN, we went to our bishop's home, and he gave us a plate of some fruit bread type thing (it was like banana bread, but I could taste something else in there as well, so I'm not quite sure what it was), and a soda, so that was nice. I was perfectly satisfied there. But lo and behold, he comes out with plates for both of us heaping with fried plantain, fried yams, fish, and vegetable stew. It was very good, but man, I was physically incapable of finishing. My companion, too. We were both about to explode. Luckily, our bishop is an amazing man and he totally understood (he served his mission in Ghana, so I'm pretty sure he knows how we felt, haha), so he packed it up for us and gave it to us to take home. I went home, collapsed on my bed, and passed out at like 8 and was out.

-It's been fun working with Elder Hanberg. So a few days ago we were out proselyting and we were riding our bikes and the rain decides to come down in buckets. So think about it. We're on bikes riding on red dirt roads and the rain comes pouring down. You can imagine what would happen to our shirts. Let's just say We were no longer proselyting in plain white shirts, we decided to proselyte in polka-dotted clothing. It was quite humorous. I'll be sure to include a picture.

-I was emailing a friend today and we just were talking about college classes, work, religion, etc. It helped me to see the value of goals. Sometimes it's hard working in college classes because they're tiring, you just want to sleep, you don't want to do homework; or it's hard dieting because you enjoy food (especially if you're like me) and it's not always easy going to the gym or going running or whatever it is. Sometimes it's hard in the moment, but if you have a goal you're working towards, it makes all the hard experiences worth it. That's exactly how it is with the gospel. It's not necessarily easy following the gospel of Jesus Christ, but it will absolutely be worth it in the end. Keep the end goal in mind. When dieting, think about how awesome you'll look when you're 30lbs lighter, or when taking hard college classes, think about how it'll lead you to your dream job. But there's just one difference between those and the gospel: the gospel doesn't have to be something super sucky right now and our reward is some distant intangible impossibility. The gospel is designed to bless our lives right now. It's designed to make us happy and to bless us right now. Our Father in Heaven, who loves us so much, does not want us to be miserable for all of this life. He wants us to be happy, so that is exactly why He has given us the gospel. This gospel will make us happy in this life, but the eternal reward is also right within our grasp. I've come to see it's always important to keep the end goal in mind.

I love all of you so much. I love hearing from you, and I hope life is treating all of you really well. I appreciate all that all of you do for me. I hope to hear from all of you again soon!!

With love,

Elder Buchanan