Judging by now I'm almost sure it was the spirit.

by dad

Alex starts all of his emails with the same phrase... "ok, wow i have so much to say!" I think he looks forward to purging his thoughts each week, almost as much as I enjoy soaking them up.

first off i had my first trip to the hospital! Not for me but Elder Bahme, and he is okay. long story short he had to get an x-ray.

Well when i was at the 1st hospital i stepped on a scale. i didn’t believe it. i figured it was broken. so the next hospital we went to, the next scale said the exact same thing.??? hmmm... the odds of 2 scales being broken to the exact same number. ya... weird... :). so i guess the Ghana diet works. down 38lbs in under 6 weeks. shah dang! eat that jenny craig.

There are 4 senior couples serving in the Ghana, Cape Coast mission. The Saunders (Wellsville, Utah), the Turners (Thousand Oaks, Ca.), the Kiffers (Ketchichan, AK) and the Lambs (Bountiful, Ut.). These couples provide office and member support through-out the mission and are very loved by the missionaries that serve there.

(Bro & Sis Lamb)

well i got the chance to have another meal at the Lamb’s house. It was glorious. They are awesome! Wow. We got spaghetti and garlic bread. topped off with brownies and ice-cream. So unreal. it is super rare that we got to go there and too long to explain why it worked out. (just so you know how rare and lucky i was, the ground beef that was in the sauce, the Lambs bought when they first landed in Accra and have been waiting for that meal to use It. they have been here for close to 5 months.) wow im lucky. it was amazing.

i also wanted to tell you how safe it is here. really it is. our apartment is safe and we are always safe around town. they all love us. NOTHING like what i thought it was going to be like. im sure if you were doing stupid things at stupid times it would be bad but all is well. so don’t you worry momma.

oh, i saw a white man in town today. BOO YA! so weird. really. i am one of the few here and its crazy to see another who doesn’t have a tie on. well as for me im getting along quite well with Elder Bahme. he is a super nice guy. so that’s fine. don’t you worry.

(Elder Bret Bahme)

i had my first exchange with Elder Moiwo. we went to his area Kweikuma (kway-ku-mah) a neighboring town. i was really nervous about it all but things went smoothly. Made me very grateful to have Elder Bahme. we did well though.

well we ended the exchange a bit early so we could start our mission fast. that was cool. started at 6 pm sat and ended 6 pm sun. cool to think that 131 missionaries were down on their knees praying at the exact same time! all asking for help with the goal that we are so far behind on. that was super hard to go that long but its not like i couldn’t go without another meal.

President Sabey has challenged the mission. The goal is is for every companionship to baptize a family. Either a new husband and wife or a spouse of a member. They started it before Elder Darrow arrived and it ends July 4th. They are almost 50% of the way thru the goal and have 36 of the 131 missionaries who have completed it. They are behind as a mission, but Alex is very excited about their future.

we have a couple who is ready for baptism. they have been ready for 5 months but we are waiting for them to be married. its really weird how that all works here. we go and see them twice a week and they know the gospel doctrine so well. its kind of hard to go and teach them cuz its just review. So... last time we were about to teach them Elder Bahme said to me ‘i have taught them everything, so how about you take the lead and put your own spin on it. i don’t know what else to teach.’ so i said 'okay. we will talk about the apostasy and the restoration and focus on the book of Mormon.' i figured i could do that.

He said he was going to open then let me teach most of it and he would just bare testimony at the end. well during the prayer i just got a feeling that the topic i picked wasn’t exactly what they needed to hear. so when it got to me i went from teaching about the apostasy, restoration, and the BOM to saying, ‘well today i want to talk about what exactly happened with Joseph smith and when he went to pray.’ i had a weird feeling (judging by now I'm almost sure it was the spirit) that said they haven’t heard in depth what actually happened. so we turned to JSH and read like 15-19 or whatever the verses are. we really talked about how hard the devil was trying to stop JS from praying and all that stuff. the spirit was really the one doing the teaching. its weird cuz i have such a strong testimony of him and that already, but the power i felt made my testimony grow even more. Joseph Smith is a stud! after baring testimony with tears falling and seeing both of them get touched by the spirit with tears all well, we wrapped it up and ended. it was amazing.

after we got out we were walking away in silence just thinking about the lesson. after about 2 min my comp broke the silence with the words. "powerful" and that’s exactly what it was. things like that i will never forget and can’t wait to have more experiences like that one. it was crazy.

well fast forward a few days that couple agreed to do a civil marriage (the traditional one takes forever to finish and is expensive but all they need to do is the civil one to be baptized and do the traditional one later.) it’s just not common for people to do that. they like to drag their feet so i hope we can hurry this along and get them baptized. pray for them and for the mission to find families to teach

i love you all so so so much and i can’t wait to hear from you again.

elder darrow