Enjoying

 

Good evening my friends! Thanks for being here today. It's been a wonderful week and a wonderful p-day and I hope you all have also had a good week or day or hour. 

I've learned on the mission so far that English is a lot bigger of pool than I thought. The English we speak in America is more different from Ghanaian English than I expected. And accents matter! When I first got here, no one could understand what I was saying, even though we were both speaking English. And words and phrases that are common here might not be used very much in America, even though it's all English. 

It's really fun though. I feel like I've been learning a language within a language. Some of the new phrases and meanings I really like. For example, enjoying. We use that word a lot here. For example, if you saw someone relaxing, you might say, "Aye! You are enjoying." Or if someone is eating something good you might say, "Oh, you are enjoying." Or even if someone says that they're not busy that day, you might say, "Oh, so today you are just enjoying."

And I feel like that mentality of just "enjoying" describes the culture here pretty well. Here, we enjoy! Someone could just be sitting watching the cars and bikes and goats and buses and missionaries pass and you know that they're enjoying. Simply being alive is "enjoying." It's kind of awesome. 

I've realized that I want to be better at enjoying. We sometimes get pretty dang focused on the end result, whatever it may be. I think it'd be better to just enjoy sometimes. To try and progress and become better each day but to enjoy the process. To enjoy the days that lead up to an end result. 

I've realized that my mission is a long time, but I'm going to enjoy it. I want to take advantage of opportunities to enjoy every little thing about every day and not focus on the end result. I want to enjoy watching people progress and not be so hyper focused on numbers. I want to diligently "enjoy" each day. 

Anyways, I love you all and the gospel is true. Go tell your mother that you love her. 

Love, 

Elder Johnson

 

Pictures:

1. Pretty city

2. Yours truly slamming some fufu at a member's home

3. Me smiling because Cape Coast is the coolest place ever

4. Me and Elder Komiha smiling for the above reason

5. Elder Komiha asking the sun why it is so hot (a question we have yet to answer)

6 and 7. From left: Elders Juliasse, Johnson, Komiha, and Kearsley 

8. Pretty city part 2 

 

Also, I forgot to mention that all three of the Elders who are not me in these pictures got their covid shots on Friday and they were all mega sick the next day. I felt really bad because I already got mine so I was fine but they were all suffering a lot. They made it through, so luckily we are still four in the apartment. No casualties yet. Love you all!