Tsito

Dear family and friends, 

Hope you're having a happy Halloween. 

Well it was my first full week in Tsito. It's a challenging area with a lot of obstacles, but I'm very determined to get things done and get this place moving again. 

Elder Horne is a super cool guy. I have a lot of respect for him already. He's only been in Tsito for 6 weeks, so it feels like we're whitewashed. We're pretty unified on what we want to accomplish and how to do it. Elder Horne is very humble. I think we're meant to be together. 

We were blessed to have an investigator come to sacrament meeting Sunday. His name is Redeemer. Elder Horne and I plan on extending a baptismal date to him this week. Hopefully that all goes well! 

Here in small little Tsito the missionaries do quite a bit. There's a nice member who lets us use part of his house for Seminary. Missionaries teach seminary here, which I'm happy about. I love teaching the youth! Well I was thinking about ways to expand our teaching pool and noticed in our planners that it mentions offering scripture classes. Long story short, Elder Horne and I made posters with the little supplies we could find to advertise this class. This week we'll be putting them up. Hopefully this will be a way for the public to be introduced to the gospel. We'll see how it goes! 

That's about it for us. I'm very optimistic about finding success out here in Tsito. It'll take time to adjust and learn the area, but with our skills ( and the Lord's help) we can do some great things.

Enjoy your trip!

Love Elder Nissinen

Goodbye Ho Zone, Hello Ho Zone!

Dear family and friends, 

Hey! You all seem anxious to know the transfer news. 

President Heid called me Friday morning and gave me the news: I am getting transferred to Tsito! All I could say was "WOW". Let me explain: Tsito is where Elder Scott is serving, a very small branch close to Ho. This transfer is equivalent to transferring from Forest Grove to Hillsboro. After seven months in Ho, I have been able to get pretty acquainted with the members in Tsito branch. I know the area decently and have spent the night in their apartment several times. Most of their members know me as well. Hardly anybody can believe that I'm replacing Elder Scott and going to Tsito. It's quite the talk, as you might imagine. I'm still the District Leader here too. I'll be companions with Elder Horne, who I already know well. There's a lot of work to be done in Tsito, but I'm happy I'm still in Ho. In his email to me he said "Good luck in Tsito. This assignment comes from the Lord because I sure did not think of it". We'll see what happens.

Going to a lesson

Most of this week was spent saying goodbye to families and investigators. It's amazing how attached missionaries get to their people. It's hard to say goodbye, but I'm just a HOP, SKIP and a JUMP away, so it's not too bad. I bore my testimony Sunday in Ewe and that got a good laugh out of everyone. 

Florence, our eternal investigator. Very sweet and nice. I've grown close to her over the past 7 months. She's a seamstress.

2 of my favorite guys! Brother Jasper and Justice.
Super great guys!

Francisca, my recent convert!

Great less-active family. I pay the girls to wash my clothes every Saturday morning. I'll miss them!

Another big part of our week was contacting new people. I wanted to build the area up before I was transferred, so we did several hours of pure finding. I think that'll bring about some good results, hopefully. Elder Effiom isn't too happy about getting another companion so soon into his mission, but he's a natural leader and will do just fine.

We buy from irene all the time.
Her daughters are fun too. Great friends!

I will miss Elder Scott and Elder Helm though. They're really good guys, and some of my best friends. 

Sounds like you guys are all busy and happy. Enjoy your week and Halloween parties! Thanks as always for the pictures. 

Love always, 

Elder Ho

Leaving Ho after 7 months :(

Dear family and friends, 

Well, this week was a bit better than last, but basically the same. It's been a lot of contacting and finding. It seems as though every person we contacted is either a pastor or prophet in their church, or their spouse is! So that kind of ends it there....

Francisca was baptized yesterday! It was a hectic day trying to throw a baptism together, but we pulled it off, all the members stuck around, and Francisca was happy and bore a very very short (but great) testimony at the end. I think she'll be a great convert in the Church. Visiting with her is always a lot of fun - she has a bubbly personality and can get really chatty haha.

We don't have any upcoming baptismal dates yet, so we're going to work extra hard and find ways to bring more people into the gospel. In our weekly planning last night, we discussed some "new" ways to contact people that we haven't tried before. Good things ahead. 

The most interesting news of the week is that now all missionaries not from North America can now send one text message to any person every Sunday evening. Elder Effiom was really excited about that! It's a test-trial for now, so it's not a permanent thing. Hopefully it works out: some of these Elders don't get much communication from home via email.

I just received news from our zone leaders that I'm leaving.... I don't know when but probably by next week. Not too happy about that one.....I'm a little anxious to go somewhere else (7 months in Ho) but I love the people here and the perks of Ho. Wherever I go I'm going to have to start all over again. Transfers are hard for me!  Sunday marks 15 convert baptisms in Ho for the year, I've been blessed that 13 have been with me and my awesome companions!

Well, that's it! Have a great week everyone. As you are freezing your faces off, you can dream of me getting fried. 

Love, Elder Nissinen

Carry it!

Dear family and friends, 

Elder Effiom and I had a tough week. I think it was also one of the hardest weeks I've worked on a mission. We had great plans to see a lot of people, but nobody answered their phones, and just a lot of appointments fell through. Also, the weather was absolutely scorching, so that didn't help much! Wednesday was especially memorable. Everything quickly fell apart, so I was determined to find some new people to start teaching. We walked all around in the heat and contacted for hours. It seemed as though we had walked 20 miles or so! Elder Effiom got wore out. It was the closest I've seen to a missionary collapsing on the roadside haha. I was very proud he endured and didn't give up on such a hard day. 

The rest of the week was similar. Fortunately though, the Lord answered our pleas and blessed us with 6 new investigators. We'll just continue to move on quickly from person to person until someone clicks. The hardest part of all the week was not seeing any investigators at sacrament, after all the commitments and work. Something I think I learned the other day is that maybe the Lord is showing us unprepared people so that we can quickly distinguish them and move on to those He's prepared for us. 

The whole week I decided to carry a copy of the Book of Mormon in my hand, so that if we're talking to someone, it's visible. Well, that turned out to be a really good teaching strategy. So many people came up to us and asked about "our Bible" and thousands of gospel-related questions opened up because of it. I love doing it, and it works beautifully. After all, it's the keystone of our religion! I think I will try my best to do that everyday if possible. 

Elder Effiom's training is going good. He led in a lot of lessons, and I'll have him do that more often until he's confident. 

The good news is is that we have a baptism on Sunday! Sister Francisca is ready to rock. She's a really nice lady and is totally prepared for membership in the Church and her baptismal covenant. 

Service Project for an investigator. We helped her make "chips" for like 5 hours haha. It was fun and a lot of work.
We rarely get opportunities to serve,
so I was really happy to do it for a change.

This is the investigator, Gispa. Really nice.

They just tastes like bland chips. It's mostly made of flour. 

We're still getting a lot of rainfall. It looks like we'll be close to the Harmattan season, where sands from the Sahara blow over. Today was a super hot day. 

Snake at the chapel.

Well, that's about it for our week. Thanks for all your unending love and support. 

Elder Nissinen

Conference

Dear family and friends, 

We're doing great out here. We picked up four new investigators and contacted 16 others. Hopefully that'll open the doors to baptismal dates. We are working with a lady named Francisca. She will be baptized on the 16th October. Francisca is progressing really well. She attended about half the conference Sunday. 

Speaking of conference.... it was great! We did have the ability to view it live at our chapel. We watched the morning sessions live and the afternoon sessions were recorded. Saturday night we watched one session, and Sunday morning we watched 3 sessions. I think next Saturday we'll watch the Sunday afternoon session. We're really lucky to have the tools to watch it. Only the two branches in Ho were given the privilege to come and watch it. I loved it! I think Saturday morning was my favorite so far. I love the emphasis on the Book of Mormon and prayer. I can't wait to re-listen and download them on my pen-drive. You know that 5 of the people that spoke at conference I've shaken their hand? 

7 year old girl came to conference by herself! She'll turn 8 in December, and we'll baptize her on her birthday! I had her sit by me. She's pretty cool huh?

I especially loved Elder Curtis' talk - not just cause he talked about the Book of Mormon, but about Ghana! He was recently released as the Africa West Area President, so that was somehow expected. He's very nice.

Half the zone. My district and another district at my apartment for District Council Meeting. They joined us. 

Our zone leaders are the ones in glasses. Very good leaders. We wanted to look like the apostles haha

Things continue to roll on around here. We've got a tremendous amount of rainfall this past week. Some places have flooded.  The rain makes things cooler a bit, but the humidity goes way up. 

My companion was eating rice with bananas... 

I had to take a picture of that! 

Something I was taught this past week was that everyone has problems. As missionaries, we basically teach the gospel to help them with their problems. I've just been noticing that a lot lately. Everyone you meet - friend, neighbor, co-worker - has some trial they're going through. Be mindful of that, because their issues may not be as noticeable as others. Lift someone up this week!

Love you all. 

Elder Nissinen 

Saviour

Dear family and friends, 

Our week has been interesting. We've set out on finding new investigators, and we found 5 new investigators that have some good potential! I would say the work is picking up.

For some reason or another, this week has been a little faith-trying for me. Several of these new investigators have deep concerns and have even tried to argue different points of doctrine. One of these is a man named Saviour. 

Saviour is a middle-aged guy that was a referral from other missionaries. We met with him Tuesday and quickly realized he knew the Bible extremely well, better than anyone I've ever met in my life. He also knew a bit about the Church and wanted to know more about the Book of Mormon. As we taught him, he gave several scriptures as a defense against our beliefs. However, he really liked our visit and invited us to come back Wednesday. It turns out we visited him for 4 straight days! Each time we came, he prepared a long list of questions and dozens of Bible quotations for us to go over. It's hard not to turn it into a scholarly debate and maintain the Spirit. I leave feeling like I just took the ACT. He's very interested in our message, but has a hard time believing what we've said. Each time we went back, I felt a little scared for what he might throw at us. It's made me ponder what I personally believe and preach. Hopefully he softens his heart, prays for the truth, and gets an answer. We'll see!

A cool moth I saw this week.

Lessons with Saviour are similar to other lessons we had too. Most of the time, our lessons with people are very simple, because they're humble and usually don't know deep doctrine. So when really smart people come along, it's a challenge! It reminds me of Corihor and Zeezrom trying to trip-up Alma and Aaron. 

Anyways, we didn't have any investigators at sacrament meeting. This Sunday we're inviting all we can to attend the LIVE session of General Conference. Somehow or another we're watching Saturday session and Sunday morning session. It's really exciting. 

Elder Effiom's training is going great. We have great companionship study in the morning. We like doing "role-plays", acting out difference situations. 

We spent the night in the other missionaries' area so I could conduct some interviews for two of their candidates. The interviews were translated, so that was a new experience. 

Things are going good. I'm happy to be doing what I'm doing!  This week marks 6 months in Ho. 

Love all of you, 

Elder Nissinen

Workin'!

Dear family and friends, 

As you've all heard by now, I'm training again. I have the opportunity to train Elder Effiom, a 26 year-old from Nigeria. He has an interesting background, and its fun getting to know him better. He's very smart, mature, and totally converted to dedicating 2 years to the Lord. He told me last night that he's on a mission just to say "thank you" to Heavenly Father for all that He's done for him. I thought that was really cool of him to say. He comes from a very old family. Both of his parents have passed on, and his oldest sibling is over 50 years old. He has the desire to learn as much as he can, and I'm happy that I get the opportunity to serve with him. 

We've found several new people with some good potential. This week will be full of "following up" with them and begin teaching. 

Yesterday we only had 1 investigator attend sacrament meeting, but my companion extended a baptismal date to her after church, and she accepted! Best part of Sunday was that nearly every recent convert in the past year came, which is so nice to see. We pray and pray that our converts will stay converted and that we can rely on the members to nourish them more than us, so seeing them come to church on their own without a reminder or visit is nice to see. 

This afternoon our zone went to a monkey sanctuary. It was pretty fun having monkeys climb on us and feeding them bananas. Not every day you get to do that!  

I was reflecting a little bit on how fortunate I am to receive great, detailed letters from each of you every single week. I realize sometimes you're busy with work and school and it may be a bit of a burden to email me sometimes, but I really REALLY appreciate it when I read your letters every week. Jacob would know how nice it is for a missionary to hear from his family and friends on Mondays. It would probably be easier to write me if you were to get a response on each letter, and I'm sorry I cannot write back personally to you much, but I do read and reread your letters and really enjoy them. The pictures are super great too. So I just wanted to say thanks for what you're doing and it doesn't go unnoticed or for granted. 

Love ya fam! Thanks for all your love and support. 

Have a great week! 

Love Elder Nissinen

My Three Sons

Dear friends and family, 

Transfer news has come in. I'm training.... again! I won't figure out who I'm training until the very last minute, so I'm excited to get the news. I'm happy I get to train again. Most of my mission has been training in some sort, so it's a great opportunity to have a fresh start and get the greenie fired up about the work. Plus, it means I'm staying in Ho for a bit longer, which is perfectly fine by me. I'll never know if I'll get the opportunity to train ever again after this, so I'm looking to make sure I do it this time with no regrets, leaving my "son" well equipped with the skills, knowledge, and habits he'll need to start a successful mission. With the Lord's aid, I feel confident in my abilities this time around to do it right.

With Elder Omokoh leaving and everything, our area's suffered a bit. I'll be looking to hit it hard with the new Elder this week. Our teaching pool has dramatically shrunk and shifted, so it looks like we'll be doing a lot of finding. Elder Omokoh will be missed and loved. He's a great teacher, and I'm emulating some of his teaching strategies already. 

Last sunday with Elder Omokoh. 

I guess the highlight of my week was the Kente Festival. I have no idea what it's all about or what it means, but basically there's just a ton of people and a lot of kente! Kings and village chiefs come in from all around the country to be honored. Lots of Senior couples came. Elder Marcus B. Nash and his wife were there! Photographers and visitors from all around the world came too. It was a cool thing to see. I got myself some sweet kente! 

Annual Kente Festival in a nearby village. Pretty big deal. People come from all over to watch/celebrate it. Lots of kente too! Lots of chiefs and kings come too. This is some king that is a member?
 I don't really know, but he was important.

Lots of cheap and nice kente there. I bought some sweet ones. 

This upcoming week will be very busy and exciting for our mission. Tomorrow and Wednesday the new missionaries from Ghana and Provo MTC come in. Wednesday Elder Gary E. Stevenson and Elder Ulisses S. Soares from the Seventy will be coming to speak to us and the West Mission. Big days ahead! 

Elder Gary E. Stevenson 

Elder Ulisses Soares

Congrats on the new job Joe. Maybe you'll be a better burger-flipper than I was. Enjoy school! Have a great week. 

Love always, 

Daddy (Elder) Nissinen

Ho District Conference

Dear family and friends, 

It's great to hear from you all. I'm doing well!

For one reason or another, we didn't get much proselyting time in. After such a fantastic month, we're at a point where we're building our investigator list up again. Missionary work is a lot of up's and down's when it comes to teaching. Things build up, then they slow down. It's alright though. 

Saturday and Sunday was our District Conference. We were blessed to have an Area Seventy - who is from Ghana - come and speak, as well as President and Sister Heid. The Saturday session was held at our meetinghouse, and the Sunday session was at a nearby hotel. It was anticipated that there would be around 250 people in attendance, and we got over 420! It was amazing because most of the District lives quite far away, and had to travel in buses all morning to make it. Most of our recent converts came, so that made me really happy. Several great talks were given, and it was just nice being around so many Mormons. It's common at home to congregate in large groups like that (Stake activities and such), but in areas like ours it's a much harder and uncommon event, so you can imagine how special it was for all these Mormons to be around Mormons!

Anyways, the highlight of my week came from yesterday actually. We went and visited Sarah's family (the one we just baptized last week). I decided to teach them about temples and families. During the lesson, the mother opened up about her firstborn son who died as a teen some years back. I've only heard her daughter mention him briefly previous to this. As we taught her about proxy baptisms and the blessing we have in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to baptize our relatives who have not had that chance, she wept and repeatedly said "I'll go and do it for him, I'll go and do it for him". 

That was touching for us. I won't say I took baptisms for the dead for granted, but a profound gratitude came in me for the knowledge of the gospel that WE as member's of the Church have, and the blessing that we can unite families beyond the grave. Proxy baptisms mean so much more to me now that I understand how happy Sarah was to hear that message for the first time. The gospel really is the good news, isn't it!

Well, Elder Omokoh has one week left. I'll do all I can to help him finish strong! 

 I did get Ninnie's  and your packages! Can you believe your package only took 11 days to get here? Amazing! The packages are way nice. I almost forgot to mention it. Yeah, there's a ton of good stuff in them. Way nice.

Hope Rosie and Joe have a great first week of school. One, two, three, SCHOOL! 

Love always, 

Elder Nissinen

A late Hello

Hey Mom. 

Sorry I didn't cafe today. We are actually at the mission home renewing our non-citizen cards (they last a year). I'm here for the night and will renew the card tomorrow then go home that evening. We might be able to get into a temple session, if we are lucky. The mission home is super nice! I just ate a PBJ, and had my first hot shower in 8 months! They even have washing machines and a dryer here.

Yesterday was pretty fantastic. We baptized Felicia, and Sarah and her two kids. It was super great. It took a bit of work to make it happen, but man it was a great day. I baptized the kids and Omokoh baptized the women (cause they are big ladies!). 

I was pondering a bit about the month of August, and how much has really happened for all of us: 

Jacob got married, Joe had a birthday and got his license, I hit my year-mark, and celebrated 8 convert baptisms! Not bad huh?

Anyways, just wanted to say hi and let ya know I'm not dead or anything. 

I don't have my camera now, so I'll send over pictures tomorrow morning probably. 

Love, Elder Nissinen

6 Baptisms

Dear family and friends, 

Things are still going well up here in Ho! 

It was a busy week for us for a few reasons. We've got a lot of people who are recent converts, so the teaching load is just the same as before. Actually, the recent converts need more time and teaching from not only the missionaries, but the members as well. For those who aren't familiar with it, missionaries are suppose to teach all the lessons taught before baptism, as well as a new lesson. One thing we stress on out here is retention. It's hardly a benefit to just baptize someone and leave them to do the rest on their own. Because we're getting more and more recent converts, we're having to really step up our game to make sure they are loved, needed, and are growing spiritually in the gospel. President Hinckley taught that a convert needs 3 things: a friend, a responsibility, and to be nurtured by the good word of God. I'm happy to hear our ward at home is having baptisms! Go out now and help be a friend to them. They need it.

Speaking of baptisms, we have (hopefully) 4 more next Sunday! That great family we've been teaching for a while is ready to go. I'm so excited for them, they'll be my first family baptized. The other is a sweet old lady who's like a child. She is absolutely hilarious. We tease her like I would a friend! 

The "Mormon Helping Hands" service project was fun. We joined with the other branch and helped clean up a nurse's training center. Basically just sweeping, weeding, etc. 

I also burned my shirt last night. It's crazy to think I'm halfway! 

One year!

Well, that's about it for our week. Busy as always, but having a lot of fun in between it all. 

Hope you all have a great week. Enjoy your last few weeks of summer! 

Love Elder Nissinen

Halfway

Dear family and friends, 

Well, I really have no clue how to start this letter. I'll just a big CONGRATS to everyone for everything they did. Congrats on the marriage, congrats on the reception, congrats on the license.... congrats! 

If I was to say missing the wedding was easy for me, I'd be lying. Thursday especially wasn't very easy. I cried a few tears ha ha. 

Actually, the week overall was pretty great! We got a lot of proselyting time in. Elder Omokoh and I are doing some great things together. On Thursday, Elder Bednar came to Accra to give a devotional to the young single adults. It was broadcasted all throughout West Africa. The cool thing about it is that instead of giving talks, he just answered questions from the audience. Not only the audience, but people could text questions directly to him and it could be answered! It was super cool, and he and some of the other general authorities said some great stuff. He did the same thing Sunday evening for the youth. One of the youth sitting near me texted Elder Bednar a question, and he answered the question! I thought that was sweet. 

I guess the highlight of our week was the four convert baptisms! Man, it took a bit of work (not as much as a wedding) but getting so many people ready to go isn't the easiest thing, especially when you're working on MGST (Mormon Ghanaian Standard Time). Our converts all bore their testimonies at the end, and we feel confident they'll remain active in the church. Our big challenge now is making sure they stay active, included, and needed in the church. That takes a bit of work too. At the end of this month we're shooting for 2 or 3 baptisms as well. "I guess you can say things are getting pretty serious right now".

As you know, I hit one year on my mission Saturday. I don't know what to say about that. I love my mission. It's certainly exactly what I needed. Time goes by so fast. I absolutely love what I get to do each day. As I help other people change their lives, my own life is being changed. I feel like such a different person than when I first came, and I am so thankful to Heavenly Father for placing me here. I am a white Ghanaian. 

All of us a year ago!

Have a fantastic week. The summer is winding down, so soak it up! I love and miss you all. 

Love Elder Nissinen