Transferred to Bantama

Hey everyone!

Well it's been a crazy week this week. A good week, but crazy week. It started off with going to the mission home Tuesday and spending most of the day there for my training. I said the rest of my goodbyes in kwamo and it was all good. We had transfers on Wednesday. At this time I didn't know where I was going or who my new companion would be yet. We got to transfer grounds and I soon found out that I would be going to a place called Bantama. My new companions name is Elder John. Elder John is from Nigeria and he is a stud. We get along very well and like to have fun. He loves to sing and has a very good voice. He actually won a couple singing competitions back home. He is making music while on the mission so be ready for us to drop an album.

Bantama is almost the heart of Kumasi which means it is the city. No more dirt roads, and a lot more people. Let's just say I will miss my old area. This area is definitely one of the harder ones due to it being so busy. Around here people are very busy and don't have time to talk with us which is unfortunate. In kwamo it was a lot quieter and relaxed. People were able to talk and weren't always on the go. Bantama is a different story haha. We have a couple people we are teaching but the work will be a lot different then my other area as the members here don't like to help us. We will be thinking of new ways to push the work forward. It's a new challenge that I am ready for!

We live in a compound with about 4 other families. We live on the second floor. I am going miss my cockroach invested apartment in Kwamo haha. The apartment I am now in is a two man apartment, so it's just my companion and I living here. It is very small and half of it is outside. It is somehow hotter here then it was in Kwamo. We face new challenges here, they like to cut the water and power often. We will go without power for a couple days, which means no fans. Let me tell you, staying in Ghana with the weather being an average of 95° and humidity at 60+ plus no fans. Man it is no fun and it is very hard to sleep haha. My first night I got to the apartment we didn't have water nor power and so that first night trying to sleep I knew I was gonna have a fun transfer here in Bantama haha. But hey its all part of the work and the challenges you face make you stronger. So I'm just going into it with a good attitude and making the best of the situation haha.

With all of the exciting things in the area and the apartment Elder John and I have to look after 8 other missionaries in our zone. About half Sisters and half Elders. We are in charge of everything. When they run out of gas or power they call us and we will go and fill it for them. Really if they need anything they call us. We also deal with problems with missionaries and companionships so that's fun. My first week we had all of the above so like I said it's been crazy haha. I am somehow busier then I was in Kwamo but not in the sense of teaching. But I love the work, although it isn't easy at times I am grateful for the things I am learning.

I hope all yall are doing wonderful. Thank you all for the love and support it means a lot. I love you all and hope you have a great week this week! 

Love Elder Morgan

And the Children Came

Hello everyone!

Well this was the last week of the transfer and Elder Majdoub and I ended it on a good note. We were able to meet with all of our friends and had great lessons with all of them. It was nice to finally have a week where we were able to proselyte with both of us healthy and full of energy. 

On Saturday we had a stake primary activity, in which all of the missionaries were invited in our zone. The goal of the activity was to get the primary kids to go out with the missionaries and to go tracting with them. We got to the stake center and there were so many kids running around. At first I was thinking of how it was going to work with only 10 sets of missionaries. It was crazy but we split all of the kids up into groups. It ended up being that we had groups of 25-30 little primary kids with two missionaries. I was not looking forward to taking them all out into the busy streets of Ghana and being responsible for all of them. The Africans out here think differently then us Americans. In America we would have a lot more precautions and adult leadership to help us be safe. We would have to sign permission forms and just have more structure. But out here there is none of that. I just couldn't picture back home 2 missionaries going with 30 little primary kids on a road like Kenneth Avenue and telling the kids to do missionary work. But that's what we did, it was definitely stressful with all of the kids and no adults to help but soon I realized that it was okay out here in Africa. We gave each kid a restoration pamphlet and told them to talk to everyone and that everyone needed to give out at least one pamphlet. As soon as we left the church building the kids just started to run down the street, I needed to tell myself multiple times that it was okay haha just because I was not use to that. But the kids did great! They stopped everyone, literally everyone. They would go into the street and stop cars and talk to them about the plan of salvation. It was actually a really neat experience after all of the stress haha. But It turned out to be a great activity 

Nothing out of the ordinary happened apart from that but I did get a call Friday night from President..... He told me that he is calling me as a Zone Leader. It is neat to see how the lord prepares us for things in our life's. While Elder Flomo had Covid I went out with elder Sandoval and had to do "Zone leader" things. And while Elder Sandoval had malaria I went out with elder Flomo so the past three weeks I have had experiences to prepare me for this calling. Looking back I am grateful and have seen how the lord has prepared me. I don't know where I will be going yet, I think they will tell me on Wednesday. I will have to go to the mission office tomorrow morning early for my training so exciting things ahead!

I said all my good byes yesterday, all of my friends will be missed. I taught the primary one last time and bore my testimony in Sacrament meeting. It's sad leaving so many great people but I'm looking forward to the new experiences that I will have.

Thank you for all of the love and support, it means more then you know. I love all y'all so much and I hope you are all doing great back home. Keep safe and have a great week this week!

Love Elder Morgan 

The Reason(s) You Should Change Your Water Filter

Hello everyone!

We had another great week this week, although it didn't turn out quite like we planned. The plan was to get out of quarantine and to proselyte but on Tuesday we all started to get sick. We all had stomach issues and Elder Sandoval told us it was the same thing he had in Mexico. He found out that it was because of the water in Mexico, so we checked our water filter and let's just say it was not clean. It was a nice greenish brown. I'll attach a picture of it so you guys can see. We assumed that that was the problem and replaced the filter and went on our way. Some of us got better but Elder Sandoval and I had to go to the hospital to get tested to be safe. Keep in mind I hate the hospitals out here. It was another day of waiting and when I was finally able to see the doctor they tried to get me to take a bunch of tests including a chest xray and I knew they were just trying to get the white guy to pay money haha. So I said I didn't need any of that and that I would just do the labs. They finally said okay to me just getting the labs done so it was time for me to get my blood drawn. I had a bad experience when I first got to Ghana getting my blood taken so I wasn't looking forward to it. I got into the lab and again knew that this was not going to be a pleasant experience based off of what I saw. The woman tried to draw my blood and missed my vein 3 times, she was going to try a 4th time but I told her to stop haha. I asked if they could just get it from somewhere else and she said she was able to take it from my hand so she painfully took it from my hand. I waited for another hour to get my results and it came back to tell me that there was nothing wrong with me. It didnt really make sense because Elder Sandoval went through the same process and they told him that he had malaria of all things. They admitted him and he had to stay at the hospital all week. I just went home and went back to missionary life. We proselyted a bit, and just kinda chilled while I recovered. I am doing good now and am looking forward to this week as it is the last week of the transfer

We combined with Kwamo 1 for Church on Sunday because the chief of the area wanted to have a meeting with some church leaders so we had to be done with church by 12. Church was good, we had 12 investigators there and 7 of which just showed up and we met for the first time. One of them was a girl named Priscilla. She is 20 years old and she just finished school. Her siblings have been baptized but she has not as she was at school. We will meet her this week and start to prepare her for baptism. 

Kendra was sick so we had to push her and her siblings baptism till this coming Sunday. We will try to add Maa Mary and Priscilla to that service as well. It will be a nice way to end the transfer.

Overall it was a good week! We are still pushing along in the work with whatever comes our way. We will see this Saturday what happens with transfer news but I'll let you guys know what happens in my next email. Thank you all for the love and support it means a lot. I love you all and hope you have a great week this week!

Love Elder Morgan. 

Quarantine

Hello everyone!

Well this past week we have just been in quarantine. Nothing too exciting happened but I'll fill you guys in on what happened. 

Elder Flomo (one of the Elders we live with) took a covid test 3 weeks ago now because he wasn't feeling well. He got a call last Sunday and they told him that he tested positive for covid 2 weeks after he took the test. We talked with president and he said that we needed to go to the hospital to get tested just to be safe. On Tuesday we went to the hospital and waited for 4 hours for them to tell us that we aren't able to get tested because we aren't traveling and we don't have symptoms of covid. They aren't doing walk in testing anymore but they said that we could go through the system and meet with a doctor but that we would have to pay 300 Cedis. We call president and he said that he had just brought 3 missionaries to this same hospital the week prior and they had no problem getting tested. He told us that they were just trying to get the white man to pay money, it also didn't help that we were missionaries. We then talk with one of our bishops and he told us to come back the next day and he would meet us at the hospital to help us try and get tested.

We get to the hospital early and met the bishop. After another couple of hours of waiting the hospital staff remember us from the day before and still won't let us get tested unless we pay the money. The bishop has a long argument with them and then tells us that we won't be able to get tested and tells us to go home. I hate the hospitals out here, they are no good haha. We told President that we weren't able to get tested and he said for us to quarantine ourselves for the week just to be safe. So that's how we got quarantined. President just called us this morning and said that we are able to go proselyting finally. I definitely hate being in quarantine and cant wait to go out tomorrow.

I hope you all had a great conference weekend and a fun Easter. We were able to listen to conference for a bit, but the network was not good so it kept cutting out. I will have to re-watch it when it gets put on the gospel library. But the parts we were able to hear were very good, I enjoyed it. Our power was out all Saturday and Sunday and so it was a very very hot weekend as our fans didn't work. Even though the network was bad and it was very sweaty it was a good weekend. We were able to hear that Kumasi Ghana is going to be getting a temple! Everyone out here is very excited to get a temple close to them. 

Ghanaians don't celebrate Easter like Americans. If they do anything to celebrate they will just have a dinner with their family and that's about it. So the Easter weekend wasn't like back home haha, but we made the best of it.

I am excited to be able to proselyte this week, we will be preparing Jozi, Jozial, Kendra and Maa Mary for baptism hopefully for the 11th which is this Saturday. We have to go for a lot of baptismal interviews in Effiduasi and Ejisu so we will have a busy week this week. 

Overall it was a good week! Little slow and couldn't do much but we made the best of the situation. Conference was good and I'll be looking forward to rereading the talks. I hope you all had a great week this week and a great conference weekend! Thank you for the love and support, I love all y'all

Love Elder Morgan