The Glorious Gospel Grind

This week was fantastic and also hard. We had some frustrating moments but also lots of miracles. 

The first miracle is that Sister Gifty wants to get baptized! We taught her on Tuesday and she said she wants to get baptized and be a full member of the Church. It was awesome. She was very disappointed that we don't do all night church services on New Year's Eve though so she attended the one at her old church. However, she still came to church at 9 despite being up till 2 at her old church. God is powerful. 

We've also seen God open our eyes a lot this week. One issue we have in Elubo is that most our progressing people don't speak English so we have to teach them using a member to translate. Our members are really busy a lot of the time though, so it's hard. However, this week we asked Sister Patience, a very recent convert to help us and she did so well! We went to pick her up to help us and she was washing, but she put everything aside to come help us. She's a single mom with a cute baby and she brought Aseda (the baby) to the lesson and it was so great. She also helped us on Sunday after church to teach Emmanuel, a boy we're hopefully going to baptize this week and John, a powerful recent convert who we haven't been able to teach because he's always busy. It was so cool. We've also had help from Philip, another recent convert youth who was baptised the same day as Patience. 

God prepares a way for His work to be done. The language barrier is hard here, but that hasn't been an issue because before I came, the Elders were Ghanaian and could speak the language. However, in preparation for me and Elder Momoh coming here, God prepared Philip and Patience to be baptized just a few weeks before I came. Now God's work is able to continue despite everything. It's awesome. 

We also had some cool but random experiences that will break up the flow of this email, but I want to write them down anyway. We are teaching a really nice shoe repair guy named Kofi. Earlier in the week we passed by to say hi and he was busy, but he stopped what he was doing and polished both of our shoes for free! It touched my heart.

We also had a fantastic day after church on Sunday and taught like 5 people which enabled us to meet our finding goal for the week. 

This week I've felt very grateful. Missionary work isn't easy, but there's so many good parts to it. Last night I was talking with Elder Momoh about the many great parts about missionary work. You meet so many awesome people. You experience so many different things you'd never experience any other way. You get to see lives change. Your own conversion is deepened as you help others. It's so incredible! 

This week there have been moments where I've been like WOW this is really hard. But then there have also been so many moments where what we need comes at just the right time. I've felt so many moments of gratitude. I have food to eat. I have a roof over my head that even has a fan attached to it. My comp is incredible. So are the members. Looking for the good leads to happiness. I invite you to do that this week. Love you all!

Love,

Elder Johnson

1. Elder Momoh and I with Sister Patience and Aseda, her cute baby, after a lesson she helped us translate for.