Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Letters from Garrett

From Garrett’s letter on June 6:

“Yesterday was a pretty stressful day, as every Sunday is in Sunyani.  We are supposed to start our church meetings at nine thirty now. At nine thirty, only 2 people were at church. But by the time church finished at about 12:15, we had 6 members, 4 missionaries (us and the Bennetts), 10 children, and 10 investigators. WE HAD 10 INVESTIGATORS AT CHURCH!!!!!!!! AND 30 PEOPLE TOTAL!!!!!!!!!!!! That’s’ a new record in Penkwase!”

From Garrett’s letter on May 30:

“This last week we faced a little more persecution: A guy almost hit us when we were in the truck, and before he said anything about us being in the way..... he yelled, "are you Latter Day Saints?" Then when we responded, he freaked out and got all upset.  As we were leaving one of our investigators houses this week, a woman started talking to us in Twi, she was saying that we don't ever need to come back to that house. But we're teaching a very receptive lady, so we will continue to go. We have been contacting a lot this week, because we're trying to find more families.  We met a woman at her house who stood there for 3 minutes or so just staring at us, because she knows who we are. She wouldn't say a word to us, and wouldn't answer any of our questions or anything. So finally I just invited her to church, and as we turned to walk away, she yelled, "No! I'm CATHOLIC!!!!!"   People really don't like us much here in Penkwase.

Some funny things happened this week as well. First, we found a snake in our apartment... but don't worry, it was dead.  A few nights before when someone shut the door, they caught a foot long snake, in the door without realizing it. And we never noticed it because it was smashed in to door frame and drooped over the bottom hinge... but we noticed something stinking in our apartment, and that’s when we started looking. This was on Friday that we found it...crazy. That was a lucky catch to get it in between the door. It totally almost got into our house! Close one.

Another thing: There are some little kids in our area who always yell to me "broni, give me coins,” so recently I have started responding to them. "No, you give ME coins". The other day this exchange of requests happened, just as normal, and one of the little kids knew what I would say so he had prepared a few small stones in his hand, and he told me "collect, collect" as I was riding past. I put my hand out and took them, when I saw the rocks I just started laughing, and the little kid was laughing pretty hard too. About 100 feet later, another kid asked me for coins, so I told him "collect, collect", and I put the rocks in his hand.

We have had 2 guys from the US staying with us for the last few days. One is from Cali and one from Oregon. They were following Elder Russell for like 4 days and video taping almost everything he did. Apparently the missionary department had hired them to do it, and it is going to be used for movies in the future.”

From Garrett’s letter on May 23:

“On Tuesday we traveled to Kumasi for zone conference.  Zone conference was awesome! President Sabey instructed on the doctrine of "oneness" for over 2 hours, it was powerful. I'm really going be sad when they leave. I love the Sabeys!   When we got back to Sunyani on Tuesday late at night, we were getting into a taxi, when the taxi driver all of a sudden started yelling things at me in Twi and motioning for me to move. So I walked away a little bit, and he pulled forward and backed up about 6 or 7 times right on the spot where I had been standing. I had no idea what was going on... but then I saw, he was running back and forth over a snake that was in the road about 2 feet from where I had been standing.”

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