Super fun little boy we see a lot. I feel so bad for him. He falls a lot when he walks because he is so cross-eyed. Great kid.

Dear Family, friends, and whoever else: 

This has been another great week here in Teshie. The normal missionary life is sinking in along with the culture, so I'm feeling pretty good right now. 

I smacked the side of a truck thing the other day on my bike! 

The work is going good. We are finding many wonderful investigators that are totally loving the gospel message we share. Finding people to teach here is like the easiest thing to do. Tracting doesn't exist here! I am always amazed at how easy it is to find those to teach. People just come up to us all the time. The only problem with lessons is their lack of english, or our lack of Ga. Many people speak "small small" english, and some know very little. Even those who are "fluent" still struggle. I honestly feel like I am communicating to a 4 or 5 year old sometimes. It's a challenge!  We are working on getting more members in our lessons to help with translation though. 

I had no idea conference is this weekend. I guess that means I'm not watching it! I will have to wait until it is online and go print it out or something. 

Our second issue is still getting people to come to church. For the first few weeks when we invited them to come, they said they would and never showed up. It always bugs the heck out of me when we say "So will you come to church with us this Sunday?" and they respond "By God's Grace" or "Yes, God willing I will". What do you mean?! God wants you to come to church with us, I promise!!! So after a few weeks of people lying to us, they are finally seeing that we aren't joking about them coming to church, so they have began to come now. I flat-out told an older man yesterday after church that he needs to stop lying to us and the Lord and come to churhc, or just say no and don't come. He appreciated the advice. One method that I think we will use more on Sunday mornings is to leave church an hour or so early and go pick up investigators or less actives and walk with them to church! It works!! 

Many lessons, many investigators, many kids, much fun. We walk a ton out here. Lots and lots of walking. 

This ones for you Ro!

There's also been a few cultural practices I've seen this week that if you didn't know better, you'd think they were mentally handicapped. Saw some prayer ritual with old ladies dancing the other day. 

We got our subsistance money Tuesday! It feels so good to get money. Only problem is budgeting. 

I teach the youth sunday school class in our branch each week. It's fun, but the girls will ask you alllllll week long if you are going to be teaching them Sunday.  Yeah the young women like me. They run and hug you, but you just don't feed it and carry on. Some girls want my phone number. Good grief.

These puppies are 3 weeks old. I asked how much they were, and the guy said 20 cedis. Which is like 5 bucks.

To answer a few of Dad's Questions: 

1. My companion is doing great. We work well together. Both of us love sweets and playing with the kids. 

2. I haven't taken a warm shower since I left home. Usually it's nice because it's so darn hot here, but 6:30am is a hard one to dive into cold water.

3. Yeah our apartment of 4 is fun. If somebody else is cooking it usually means you can eat free food. They have a lot of fun music I wish I had. I heard some Boyz II Men the other day and just about died! I miss the music. 

4. Members and people are great. They all flip when you say something in Ga. There's about 4 kind of people from what I have seen: Kids, women (nearly all are overweight, it's gotta be genetic, because they all work hard), men (all skinny and never home in the daytime) and what I call the Ghanaian gangsters. Guys love Michael Jordan here too. See Bulls shirts and fake jordan logos printed all over shirts. People call me chinese sometimes, and it really annoys me. Like really? Not even close. I love the people though. They just are fun to be around. 

5. As far as finances go, everyone lives the same pretty much. We stay a bit away from those we teach, so we are in a nicer gated community. I thought our apartment was really poor the first few days, but it's much nicer than I thought! Thought you might like to know that eggs aren't refrigerated here. Cooks the same, tastes the same. Never have been sick!

Wednesday night we ran out of water. Our poly-tank that holds it was empty. We had no water for drinking, showering, cooking, washing, or brushing teeth! We didn't know when it would come back on either. There's a part in the white handbook that says "Wash daily, if possible." I know why that's there now! Instantly made me appreciate running water. Suddenly everything I wanted to do stopped because it required water, which we didn't have. Luckily we got water the next morning though, so no big deal. Just a great way for me to have gratitude for running water. I could care less about electricity, water is way more important. Appreciate your sink, dishwasher, and heated shower!   The Bread is amazing here. Cheap too. Costs 3-5 cedis for a loaf. We eat a ton of bread! Go through a loaf in about 4 days. Washing clothes is getting more "fun". My knuckles have cuts on them now from the rubbing. It will bleed next time.  The people have very little here.  Kids don't have shoes that fit them. I want to buy them some, but for several reasons I just can't.   Well, you see they pretty much live life hard every day, so there used to it? It is still sad of course, but it's their life, all of them. You just give service when you can and wipe kids' tears away and make them feel appreciated.

Just walking a little girl home.  I love the kids!!!

Transfers are next week. This is week 5 in the field. I wish to stay here until Christmas.  I hope you are all doing well and working hard. Jacob, keep it up with Storm.  Yeah I've heard about BYU and the Ducks a little, so that's too bad they are not any good. At least Joe's team wins. 

I got the package today! So awesome receiving those things. I can't wait to dive into that beef jerky! Don't have that here! Thank you for that. 

We ride our bikes to the chapel and walk all day. It's getting hotter and hotter out here. After our little 6 minute bike ride, we are soaked in sweat.

Love and miss you all. Rock on!

Elder Nissinen