So week 4 has nothing that's really crazy but it was a busy, busy week. We are up to about 25 potential investigators on our board right now cause we have been able to meet so many people, get referrals, and go proselyting with members. We are trying to take a step back and figure out who is the most serious, and who is the most ready to progress so we can focus on them. We are always busy, and if plans fall through there's always someone else to see. Its awesome how many people we have interested at this time, but it's hard to figure out who to focus on first. 

Anyway, the zone leaders live with us so it's annoying when other elders come on exchange and absolutely yeet our kitchen. We went on exchange to Mpreaso this last week and when we got back our kitchen was absolutely blown up cause other people were on exchange here and didn't clean up after themselves. Us 4 elders in our apartment tagged teamed it though so it's okay hahah. On our exchange I was with Elder Bonnett from Orem. We had a good time going around his area visiting with people we didn't teach any lessons though. We just visited, served, and answered any questions they had. On our way back to the apartment that night we saw these kids fetching water, so we decided to help out for about an hour. Fetching water is pretty hard, and your mad tired after. Plus we are on a Mountain. so I basically got a full blown workout in hahah. 

We baptized Joseph last week, and now he has already set us up to teach two of his friends, Maives and Vera. They are both super interested and Maives was able to make it to Church yesterday. Vera couldn't make it because she traveled. Joseph helped us teach them on Thursday and we taught the first lesson, the Restoration. Joseph made some amazing comments. He also shared his testimony of the Book of Mormon with them. Man, Joseph is a stud! 

We were able to teach our guy Asante Solomon the Restoration lesson we have been waiting to teach and it was awesome. We had a member with us named Richmond and he made great comments. It was at Asante's work so we had a few interruptions, but it was smooth. He said he had questions at the end but he will ask them next time, cause his boss pulled up near the end of our lesson, and he doesn't like us teaching him at work.

We also got to teach Jordan from the hospital this week. He had tons of questions at the beginning so we had to slow him down and tell him we can answer all these questions over time. He wants us to meet with him again and continue teaching. 

Asante and Jordan are both hard to meet with because of their work schedule, but hopefully we can continue to make it work.

Lessons in Ghana almost always are crazy and have interruptions. They are outside most of the time and there's always kids running around, a ton of noise, and people trying to have conversations with us, or who we are teaching. 

Nelson and Ephraim missed church for some reason this last Sunday. Nelson has been twice so I'm not too worried, we will ask him why he missed this week. As for Ephraim, I am a little disappointed. He keeps telling us he will come to church but he hasn't yet. He is a powerful man, and has a testimony of the Book of Mormon, but he won't come to church. I just want what's best for him, so hopefully he figures it out. Me and Elder Gilbert are going to get on his case this week. Hopefully he will wake up and come to church cause he is a powerful man and understands all the lessons and tells us he knows thus church is true. 

Other than that we keep praying for Clemintinas husband to soften his heart and like us. Lydia ended up traveling for a month to Accra so we won't see her until mid September. We have started teaching a bunch of new people, and have a lot of inactive members to see and answer questions they have. If I talked about all of it, I would write the large plates over again; so I'm going to leave that out. 

One thing I love about this place is all the ghetto bridges here. I'll add some pictures, but they are super fun to cross because every step you are praying that it doesn't break or that you won't fall. 

Elder Gilbert is back to %100 too, just so you all know. I love this mission, we are always busy and the people here are good people and want to know the Gospel!

Oh yeah and one more cool thing. A man named Nicolas called us on Monday last week and wanted to be taught and said he wanted to join us. We had no idea who this guy was, but we pulled up to his place on Tuesday and he had an old pamphlet with our number on it. It was hard to teach him cause he understands little English and speaks mostly Twi. This is funny because he can read English better than he can read Twi, but he can't really read anyway. This is why I love Ghana haha. But anyways we prayed for the gift of tongues and not destroy most of the lesson that day. We invited him to midweek with us... basically institute at the end of the lesson. The next day he came to midweek which is surprising because most people say they will come to midweek and church but they don't. Midweek is in mostly Twi so he understood everything and loved it. We went to teach him on Saturday with member Richmond to translate. He had so many questions we were able to answer. He asked a lot about tithes and we came to find out that his last church was charging him 600 Cedis a year to be a member which is wayyyy to much money for any Ghanian to afford. Anyways he was unable to pay the membership fee and he left that church which is why he asked about tithing. We taught him about it and  he loved the way we do it and he knows it's how it should be. A lot of churches will make members here pay collections and membership fees that are way too much and then the pastor gets all that money and goes and buys a Mercedes. It's just messed up how some of these churches do things, but some people believe that's how it should be. Anyway Nicolas understood everything and came to Church the next day and paid his tithes! Another cool thing is that Nicolas has been praying to find out what church to join and then he found that old pamphlet missionaries had gave him awhile ago and felt like he needed to call us. I added a video of us teaching him at a bar, with the word of wisdom pamphlet that we were teaching. He doesn't drink, just works at a bar part time. Hopefully none of the members get too upset that he sells alcohol. I think it's way cool that he has been working at a bar, but doesn't drink or smoke. I also thought it was sketchy he sold alcohol part time, but if you think about it if he quits, he loses money, and the people are going to find alcohol somewhere else. He also uses that money he makes and pays his tithes on it, so that money gets tithed so I think that's pretty cool.

-Elder Willden