No More Bats - Farmers Instead

Well, hello everyone. I hope all is well. Things are fine here in Ghana. We have lots of interested people, lots of walking required, my sheets did not contain a bat today, and two branches in Cape Coast got put into the Stake yesterday so that is awesome. I still have a horrible internet connection and the power is possibly going to go off at any moment. Some things never change.  I like my companions - one of them really saved me this last week while I suffered with "runny tummy" - that's our lovable name for being totally stomach sick in Ghana (YUCK).  And, then again, sometimes my companions are just always there!  Wow - this week I felt like I could have used some alone time and those of you who have served missions will know exactly what I mean. But, we take the good with the bad and keep on walking.  Now I better get to the meat of my letter before the switch gets flipped.

This week I was reading in a talk (love others as he has loved you) it was a talk in the last conference. And there was a line that stood out to me it read: "love without service is like faith without works; it is dead". As I read this line one of my favorite lines from a hymn came into my head: "and I stand all amazed at the love Jesus offers me". Now I wish to put those ideas together in the best way I know how. Christ never sat down and showed his love through texts but he did show His love through work. We have to do the same. Stand up tall and show someone you love them, this is a life that we have to show others our love for them, it's a commandment to love everyone. So start serving! For me this has been very difficult in my life. I have never been good at giving up time or energy. Mission has changed that and I hope it will continue to be different throughout my life. But I am still not working hard enough, so I am coming to all of you for help....Please help me by standing up tall, yourselves and serving those around you. And, then, when you do, I want to hear stories about all of you at home loving one another. That way I can get ideas and motivation to do the same.

To be honest, it will never be easy but the way I look at it is Christ has asked you to be a part of His army, He has come to you one at a time giving you the sword of truth, He offers His protection and power to all who can lift that sword up high. Now He turns to you and I. "Will you take my sword into battle against the evil and hate of the world?" he asks. His hands are outstretched with a sword, a sword you know will be your only defence and offence against the evil things of this life. "Please take it" he says "I want you to be safe, I made sure you could get this power, this sword, this gospel. Now please use it". He suffered so we could all be saved. The sword of truth has power because through him we can be kept safe. Take it with strength and never back down. Take the hits you must, but deal out as many as you can, through your actions and your love, you can defeat all your opponents!!!

I love you all and I ask you to hold the sword high and decide to stand tall.

Now onto another story: a farmer plants two trees both of the same type of seed. The farmer tells them to bear fruit. Many months later the farmer comes back and sees that one tree has borne fruit and the other has not. To the one that gave fruit, the farmer cuts the fruit off. As he left, the tree that had made the fruit looked at the other and said "why would the farmer hurt me, why am i in pain for doing what is right"? The other tree laughed and said, I didn't make fruit and I didn't have anything taken from me." The farmer turned and said, I will return again to collect soon, be ready." The trees stood confused. They talked and the one who had lost its fruit decided to grow more again for that is what it was asked to do, the other laughed again saying" how are you so stupid? "If you just stop working so hard, you don't get hurt just stop growing." The farmer came back and saw the the tree that had borne fruit had done so again, but the other had yet again neglected its purpose. He harvested the fruit from the plentiful tree and then faced the bare tree. "You are no longer doing what is asked, you are not serving or helping anyone. Now I must use you for the fire."

This is a story I had to come up with in the middle of a lesson last week. I used it to show that the servants of God do not have it easy and we cannot expect to skate by without working hard for our Savior and our God. When we serve, we have to sacrifice. But it means we will be saved from the fire in the end.

I love you all so much. This week has been pretty normal, except my companion taught me a far better way to wash my clothes so now they will be even cleaner. I cannot wait to have a washing machine when i am finally home!!!

Love to everyone -

Elder Edison

A BAT IN THE HOUSE!!

Well hello everyone. I couldn't write yesterday because we had no power anywhere - it worked for a minute and I almost got to say hello but then nothing.  So, we waited for today and prayed that things would work better.  Here I am!

Today I want to start out with numbers for my mission: First, I have four mice kills already!  The number I am even more happy about is "1" because I have now killed one bat in my life!!! That doesn't happen all too often. 

Earlier in the week me and my companion saw a tornado of birds, or so we thought. When we got closer we realized it was hundreds of bats flying in a big circle!!! It was so weird. They have been haunting our village this entire month.

When I got home yesturday, from doing my laundry, I went to put my newly cleaned sheets back on my bed but as I moved one of the sheets, a bat happily fell on the floor....That was unexpected and totally gross. He was flying all over the apartment and seemed excited to have a new home. No way! So now I have killed a bat with a sword and am not sleeping with sheets until I can clean them again. My companions have labeled me the small nocturnal animal slayer!  I'll take that.

Now onto more important issues. Just this morning I studied the talk, Yearning For Home, by Dieter F. Uchtdorf. I would invite and challange all who have time and those who don't have time to read it. But I also wish to say that you need to read it with Mathew 10:14 going in your mind at the same time. The promises made and the connections you find really show what we must be willing to do to earn our way home and what God promises to do to help us along the way. 

But as a few insights I just wish to add that we have to be trying to keep our eyes and ears open to the direction form the Savior. Always be on watch. If you are one that the signs and mysteries have not been shown to (like me), we have to find a way to keep oourselves willing to follow the call home. We must understand that as we are studying and looking for answers we can recieve them if we are truly willing to follow. Those who would only store up the pearls for themsleves will never have them bestowed on them. Instead, it is given to those who are willing to share and help others. That idea gives me hope and courage to keep trying to share the gospel in the strange circumstances that I find myself in.  We are busy teaching and walking (miles and miles) to share the gospel but the things we teach are not always understood the way we hope and we don't have as much success getting people to really understand the gospel in its fullness.  We keep trying. The gospel is true!

I am worried about power being cut again as it has gone out all day and may companion needs a turn on the computer, so I will just end it here but I do want all of you to know that God lets you have those mysteries if you are willing to use them to help others. Be the examples that we have all been called to be just as our Redeemer was for us.

Love you all so much!  Keep those letters coming - I depend on them.

Elder Edison

Feb 12 Letter from Edison

Hello From Ghana:

So I have had a request to talk more about where I am and what I do each day. Here it comes!. 

Most mornings when I wake up, my companion and I go out to perform service for a man in our area. He is a long time investigator and is recovering from a stroke.  I have been put in charge of his care.  I must massage his leg and arm muscles for a long time each morning in an effort to bring the nerves back to life.  He has a lot of faith and asked me to give him a blessing last week.  That was a great experience.  We help him as long as he needs, once we are done we head back to the apartment and go through a normal missionary routine with studies and planning. 

Once we go out, we pray that people will not cancel their meetings with us which happens often in this new part of Dunkwa.  People are not very reliable and that makes lots and lots of things difficult. When they do cancel,  we go and talk with everyone we can find. 

I have become far better at Tw! The Gift of Tongues is real. If anyone knows me, you know I can hardly speak English let alone a whole new language. After our day we head back home and cook dinner, we may play cards, talk, and exercise. But after all that we head to bed and repeat. Hopefully that is a good enough summary. If anyone wants me to study something for them of you want me to talk about something in particular, just make sure to ask. My time is limited at the computer and we are always trying to hit "send" before the whole system crashes so I try to focus on gospel thoughts but I will do better at daily living things too.  It is not easy to be here and everything in my entire life has changed - I am grateful for your prayers and your letters, your emails, the packages (it doesn't even matter what is inside), everything helps! Thank you!

So today I am going to focus on enduring again, (I am sorry that this is a common theme but I must be missing something in my studies because I keep feeling inspired to forge on in my study of this topic). 

SO I realized this week something new about enduring: Satan himself has a limited amount of time to hurt us or cause us to fall, so in a way he can only throw so many punches. Yet as we go and make promises with God, such as baptism, we have a good works and covenant score that cannot be beaten. This is a fight that cannot be finished until it is over, it will go to the final judge's scoring. If we can stick with our promises our score cannot be topped no matter how hard we are hit by Satan. I guess you can see that I am relating this to my martial arts training but it really is a fight we have to win!  The only way we can lose is if we "tap out" - God will never let us down as long as we stick by Him.

If we are willing to take those hits and not move from our covenants, then we have already won the one fight that matters the most. I also wish to apply this to what I said last week about enduring for others. The more we draw closer to God the more satan tries to hurt us (the more punches he throws). Yet this is not a bad thing, if we are already commited with our full heart to the promises we have made, we won't lose. In a way, we are making Satan concentrate on hitting a brick wall rather then someone who may not be as strong. We also make sure that when others need our help we understand the punches that they are having to take and we can in turn help them.

I am not sure how accurate any of this is, all of this is just my thoughts and ideas and some discussion we have in our apartment before bed at night. I love you all!! Keep up the good work. You are doing amazing.

Elder Edison

Brownie Mix and A New Companion

Transfer and Trainer training day at the Mission Home.  That means good food, new friends and lots of smiles.

Elder Stephens and Elder Butters both get "sons" today - Elder Kotawabe on the far right is Edison's new companion whom he will be training.

Joanne's brownie mix arrived and the guys made brownies for their new sons!

Study time in the apartment - Great smiles on great young men!

Edison and the two new arrivals - those smiles!

I am guessing the boys ate these in one giant bite!

ENDURING

Well the computer that I am on is dying and has no good connection, so I will see how much I can actually type without killing this machine.

So, this past week I have been really concentrating on studying the topic of Enduring. I am not sure why, to be honest, but it is a big part of one of the lessons we teach and I wanted to understand it more. This is just going to be my ideas that I have had while studying.

I started looking at the difference between overcoming and enduring, to over come is to surpass, to rise above a challenge, or an issue; enduring is pushing through it. This made me question really how they were supposed to link or which one we should strive to do first or better. The conclusion that I came to is that endurance leads to overcoming a problem or an issue. I know it sounds simple and obvious but I want to go a liitle deeper.  I came to a few lines in the sriptures that talk about enduring and people enduring for others. That is when I realized that this entire process is not for us but for our brothers and sisters. I came to the conclusion that when we endure for others we can always handle more whether it is pain, harship, suffering, annoyances, or other difficulties. When we go though difficult times for others the strength we need is suddenly there!  I rely on this strength every single day - if I wasn't out here to benefit others, it would be much harder to be here.  There are lots of days when I don't really see the benefit for myself so I work extra hard to make sure I do something to benefit someone else.

Enduring challenges only allows you to help others get to the overcoming part at a faster rate then you did. Not even some of your challenges are for you, a lot of them are so you can turn around and help others.

I have been trying to look at the challebnges that I face but spin them to teach me how I can go and help others. I have already come accross instances that this has applied and I want you all to try it. Even in pain, turn outward.

I love you all and miss you all so much. I am so sorry that all my emails are so short but the computers here are difficult to use.

Love you

Elder Edison

Photos from Transfer Day

At the mission home getting ready to take the new companions to Dunkwa for the first time!

After training meetings to become new trainers and better missionaries all the way around.

Listening carefully to all the instructions - these days can be long ones.

Edison meets his new companion during the name calling portion of the training meeting.  Elder Stephens receives a new companion also but they both remain in Dunkwa together!