Sup!!

My first area is...... SANGONAA! It is at or near Teshie, which is like an hour away from Accra. There are so many things I want to tell you guys about, but I obviously can't, so I am just going to say what comes to my mind, meaning it's gonna be all over the place haha. 

Yeah so my companion is Elder Liongitau  (Lee-on-gee-tau) from Tonga! Super cool guy, I think he's been out for 5 months now. He's a lot of fun, and a great trainer. We get along pretty well. 

I don't want to make it sound bad, but I am in a pretty poor area. It's still in the city, so I'm not out in the bush or nothing, but it's definitely humble! I totally love it though. Already I feel like this is where I should be. It's certainly a 3rd-world country by all means. 

Our area!

The kids: 

The kids here blow my mind. I love the kids so much! They are young, intellegent, poor, and very hard-working. They are amazing. Wash clothes, sell food, make their own meals, etc. Take no offense, but these kids are WAY cooler than kids at home. My hearts go out to the kids. It's funny being basically the only white guy. Kids constantly say "obruni obruni!" which means white man. I get plenty of stares from people as you can imagine. Kids will pet my arms a lot or shake my hands. As soon as you pull out a camera a million kids come out of nowhere. When I'm teaching a lesson, kids will group up and watch us from 20 or 30 feet. Women take their babies up to me and have me hold them or look at them. As soon as the baby sees me they start crying and get really scared, which always cracks me up!

All you gotta do is pull out a camera and kids'll come runnin! Then they want to see the pic on your camera.

Here's for all the girls at home.....

The food:

To be honest, I haven't really eaten much food here. They call it "runny tummy" and yep I've had that for a while. The food is fine, but people don't know how to keep things clean. Germs and diseases are all over the place. But your body adapts quickly. They love spicy food. It kind of drives me nuts. Every stinkin' thing here is got spicy stuff in it called pepe. Can't take the spicy stuff man!! 

Trying goat for the first time. Just takes like chicken, but all my pieces were fat. Goats and chicken are everywhere too. We walk by dozens of them every day. 

Me and Elder Liongitau. Coke is cheaper and more common in bottles here. You buy it and return the bottle. Coca cola refills it (and every other glass bottle beverage company). Some bottles look really vintage! 

My area:

Sangonaa is great. Our area is one long street that branches out to all the homes. Smells like smoke from fires and open sewage. It stinks! I told my companion the other night that I wish I could have grown up here. It's flippin' awesome! We ride bikes to the church building, then walk everywhere else. Lots and lots of walking!!

Open sewage. Basically no such thing as a garbage service. Garbage is literally everywhere. Kind of sad, but I like being able to throw garbage away anywhere I want. People go to the bathroom all over the place too. I only like that when it's my turn haha.

Our shower!

This is our bedroom. We share the apartment with two other elders as well. I like sleeping in mosquito nets. They feel like I'm in a tent. Fans are important here

So Saturday was a crazy day. There is a festival in our exact proselyting street once a year, and people come from all over the country to be a part of it. My guess is there was 200,000 people there that day.SO MANY PEOPLE! So what they do is group together in groups and run down the street or alley really fast and chant songs! It's sooo nuts. And almost every guy dresses like a girl, so you see some really interesting outfits haha. There was no way we could proselyte, so we just watched it and avoided getting ran over, grabbed to run in the street, and staying away from the guys that shoved weed in our faces! It's hilarious!! We did get one lesson in though. They also have HUGE speakers stacked up allllllll over the place. Sometimes like every 50 feet. They just blast music and kids dance and whatever. Great music actually. It was just nuts!! 

Funniest guy i've met. He stood around at the festival in the middle of the street and danced... really good too! Yeah he was probably mentally handicapped. My companion threw a piece of garbage on the ground and he picked it up and ate it! so funny! 

These speakers were all over the place! I really felt like Ghana is my 'home' because they love speakers and great music.

Guys like this everywhere during the festival. I really like how people are poor and never bother to worry about what they wear. It's such a problem at home (like people worry about it and get judged all the time) but here everyone is on the same level, so all their clothes are dirty. So are mine!!! 

The second one is people from the festival that run around and don't stop for nothing! Absolute madness, I love it.

Because of that, church attendance was pretty love. Our branch only had like 50 Sunday. Fast Sunday is indeed hard here. We tried teaching a few lessons after church, but it was really hot and we were getting drained, so we just went back and napped till dinner. The sun is so fierce here. It doens't even have to break through the clouds. I love sunscreen! First day I didn't put some on and my nose was blistered like you wouldn't believe! People don't know what sunburn is here, so they thought it was a vitamin c deficieny. I was like "no it's an overdose of vitamin d "haha. 

Ghanaian sun + my nose = this

Our little district, which doesn't even have a name. I'm working on it though...

That's about it here! Totally loving the area. I committed a lady to baptism, and we are working hard at finding investigators. There's so many people in Sangonaa, finding people to talk to isn't much of an issue. 

Took me an hour and half to do laundry this morning, and I did some Thursday too. You have to appreciate the Whirlpools! Don't have none of that stuff here.

 I stink sooo bad at handwashing!

OH! forgot to tell you, we don't have electricity about 1/3 of the time. So it's just fun! Happy birthday Papa and hope everyone has a fun time at school. Sorry Joe about your knee. Get some crutches and it'll look tougher. Cool story on the bikes! Jeez that would be really fun. Jacob keep up the dating. Sounds like you are having a flippin blast. I talked to some Elders this morning that are leaving soon, and they said "I'm so excited to get home and just smooch some white girls!". So I guess I see where you're coming from. Love you all! Love life like the Ghanaians! Tell Ro thanks for the email and pictures. I love getting pictures! Oh and Bro. Nelson too. 

       We have a Casio keyboard that I am learning to play the piano on. Only works when we have                  electricity of course.... so when I was bored yesterday I had fun with my favorite tie.