Another "AWESOME" week!

Dear Family!!!

This week has been.......what do you think im gonna say??!!....It was Awesome!!! we have just been so busy we are having a hard time keeping up with everything but it is all going awesome!!

Tuesday we had district meeting in Agona, about an hours tro ride away, and it was really good. we talked about goals and heard some good instruction from our district leader, then afterwards we all went and got fufu and talked. when we were in getting a tro back to tarkwa we saw some younger white girls and it was really weird. seeing white people is not normal here so we didnt know what to think....hahaha but then we looked at our selves and said "oh yeah! haha i forgot!" i guess thats what everyone else thinks when they see us!

Wednesday was full of surprises. i woke up in the morning and just felt like i should go check on the chapel up stairs. when i got inside the entire place was flooded!! on of the toilets had been leaking since sunday and there was water all over the floor!! so we spent the next 3 hours mopping and cleaning up and we still managed to study and get out to teaching by 11. Its been raining a lot lately but we have just been truckin through it and we have been teaching a lot of lessons so the rest of the day was just work work work.

Thursday Rained almost the whole day. sometimes it does this cool thing where the rain is really misty and it actually falls almost exactly like snow! so we just walked through it all day, we still got pretty wet but it wasnt too bad. we have started getting a bunch of new investigators and they are all super awesome!!!! elder keetch and  i are working well together and we have been able to teach and teach with the spirit and it has been amazing!!!

Friday we went on splits because we had a baptism coming up and the candidate needed to be interviewed so elder keetch went to nkroful and our district leader elder beck came and we had a fun day and worked hard. the interview went well and the girl was ready for baptism. her name is Abigail Arthur and she is awesome!! that night we went to the hotel by our place and got pizza!!!! it was incredible!! i miss pizza so much!haha

Saturday we woke up early and went to nkroful. i picked up elder keetch and we came back to tarkwa. now that trip is about 2 hours one way so i was traveling for almost 5 hours saturday. so we worked hard for the rest of the day and that night i taught seminary for the youth.

Sunday was sweet!!! we Had a baptism and it went well. They have tried so many things to fix our font but its still leaking. but it was okay because we had enough water for sitting baptism. Abigail wanted elder keetch to baptize her so he was way excited and so was i! it was awesome!! then after church we went to a members and had lunch. After that we went and visited a guy that we had talked to on the street a week before and we had an Awesome lesson!!! the spirit was sooo strong and we will definitely be working very close with this guy. after the lesson we did some visits with members for the rest of the night and it was all awesome.

Today we are in takoradi and we played basketball today and had a blast!!! i got a letter from krissy today!! and i cant wait to read it tonight! I also got 2 letters from shar that ive been waiting for for a long time so i was pretty dang happy:)

I was sad when i read that Grandma Bradley passed away today but i am also happy. she really has gone to a better place and her and grandpa are very happy right now. and now im sure she is working hard sharing the gospel. i hope you are all doing that back home!!!  i love all of you!!! please send me pics of the reunion and the funeral this week:)

Love, Elder McGuire

Great Week!

Another GREAT week in Ghana! Here's the details.

Dear family!

So another week come and gone haha and what am i gonna say........it was awesome!!!! it sounds like you guys are having a great time at home!!! tell everyone hi at the reunion for me!!! and i will ask for the same thing. letters from everyone!!!! i want to hear how they are all doing!!!!

So heres the week. On tuesday we went in to takoradi for a combined district meeting again and president shulz came and instructed on repentance and it was soooo awesome!!!! it helped a lot for how we should be teaching our investigators. after the meeting was over we went and got this food called red red which i love! its fried plantain and beans with this stuff called Gari(basically the same stuff as farofa) and it was awesome. then we headed back for tarkwa. when we got back we taught some good lessons and the day was over all a success.

Wednesday was great and we were super busy!!!! we had a lesson for every hour that we were proselyting and only 1 of them fell through so we didnt even have time to breath! and all the lessons we had were great!!! we are finding a lot of new people and we are preparing a lot for baptism. august is going to be a big month for us and im excited!!!!

Thursday was a sweet day because President and Sister Bybee came out to tarkwa and they gave us haircuts and fed us lunch and it was Chicken salad Sandwiches and it was soooooo awesome!!! definitely the best meal ive had so far out here!! then we took them all over tarkwa!! tarkwa is huge and they didnt know just how huge so we showed them the entire town and showed them a few places that new groups will be starting soon. the work really is moving along at a fast pace here and i cant wait to keep working for it. so after a few hours the bybees had to head back to takoradi and so they dropped us off, and once again we were busy teaching lessons for the rest of the day.

Friday and saturday were also hard working days too. teaching lessons doing small acts of service and talking to everyone in sight!!!! we have gotten a ton of contacts and a bunch of potential new investigators that we are optimistic about and are excited to begin teaching.

Sunday was awesome! and a little interesting too.....so i woke up to the phone ringing at 5:30 in the morning and it was a guy that we had contacted the day before and he was drunk when we met him. He called and told me that he was at the gates of the church(also out apartment) and that he was ready for church and he was just soooo excited!!! I told him that church didnt start for almost 4 hours!!!! he said he didnt care he wanted to wait so we let him in to the chapel and suprisingly he was dressed in slacks and a white shirt. we decided to change really quick and take advantage of the time we had and go teach him. so we taught him the entire first lesson and committed him to baptism. I was worried at the start because i thought he might be drunk but he was wide awake and very serious about everything so we are cautiously optimistic about him. so he ended up being at the church for 7 hours yesterday!!! church went well and we got to teach some of our investigators in the third hour and also prepared a 14 year old girl for baptism. she will be baptized this coming sunday and i hope that everything goes well for her!! im excited! after church we went to a members house and had lunch then a few of the ysa came over and we had a lesson with them. then one of them showed up late and he brought a friend with him and we ended up talking with him for 2 hours about the church and about questions he had for us!! we will be meeting with him again on tuesday and hopefully we will be able to teach him. by the time that was all over it was time to head back to the apartment. when we were adding up numbers for the week we ended up teaching 23 lessons this week!!!!!! that is crazy considering the norm to be 15-17 lessons. we have been working hard and its starting to pay off!!! i cant wait to see where it all goes!!!

Mom i had to read the email a couple times when you said you rode 40 miles!!!!! holy cow thats awesome!!!!! you are going to have to help me get back in shape when i get home!!!!

i hope everyone is happy and doing good!!! keep it up and be safe!!! love you all!!!

Love, Elder McGuire

He's Training!

Sounds like he's had an awesome week, especially hanging out with his new comp! It's so cool that Elder Keetch knows our cousin Jennie!

Dear family!!!!

Okay so this week has been AWESOME!!!!!!! so ill start from monday

Monday night we had fhe with our branch president and then came home. elder moleme spent a long time packing up all of his stuff and getting ready to go.

Tuesday morning we woke up early and left with all of elder molemes bags and headed to takoradi for combined district meeting. we had district meeting and it went awesome! then afterwards we got food and shopped around takoradi for a while then. elder moleme and another elder from our district who was being transferred left and went and stayed with the Zone leaders so me and the companion to the other elder who was leaving went back to his apartment in Nkroful where elder cardon is. i spent the night there and we had fun talking and playing games. then wednesday morning came and. Elder ighama and i went and proselyted in his area for a little while and then around 3 we had to head back to takoradi to pick up our new companions!!

when i got there my trainee was waiting for me. His name is Elder Tyler Keetch! he is from highland utah and actually knows Jennie!!! his father is also Elder Keetch who is the area authority in northern utah so Dad might know him!!!! oh yeah he is also 6' 5". the whole time i was with elder moleme i was the giant one but now ive become the shrimp hahaha. so anyway i met up with elder keetch then President and Sister Bybee drove us back to tarkwa. we made it back around 7:30, just in time for something we call midweek.(its like mutual for the whole ward but only about 10 people ever come). So elder keetch got to meet some of the members that night and start learning the language out here. that night i also made Hamburgers!!!! they were super good and it was the first time we had anything like it here! elder keetch was super happy

So the last few days have just been work work work and i am training so it has been pretty fun!! but i do have a lot more responsibility now and its a lot of work. but elder keetch has been awesome and we are already super good friends. we get along really well and we are teaching a lot. we have this couple that we have been preparing for baptism for a while now and we found out that they arent married. we thought the whole time that they were because they act like it but they actually arent so we had to push their baptismal date back. Marraige here is a big problem here because they have to perform all of these traditional rights and its a super long process and it is really really expensive! but hopefully they will work it out soon.

So something incredible is happening. i can speak the language and i am actually doing really well! when elder moleme was here things were hard and i couldnt say very much but all of the sudden in the last 2 weeks i have been able to say a ton and i can understand almost everything people say so i am super happy about that! it makes things a lot easier and the people are way more willing to talk with us when we speak.

This week has been awesome and i hope you guys are doing good! i was sitting studying saturday morning when i realized that the westfork opener was this weekend and i freaked out!!!!! i hope you took some pictures!!! kait sent me one but you guys should send some more!!! hahahaha I hope dan caught something this year! hahahaha jk bro!!! anyway have an awesome week!!!! i love you all!!!

Love, Elder McGuire

He's TRAINING!

Hey guys! Sorry it's taken me so long this week! I've been out of town! Here's the good stories for the week!

P.S. He didn't send any pictures this week.... That boy.....
 

 

Dear family!!!!!

Well it seems like youve already heard my big news for this week....IM TRAINING!!!!!!! hahaha this is gonna be crazy!!!!

So tuesday was a good normal working day. we had a few good lessons and were just having fun in the work. we were picking up some pictures that we had printed at a shop a while ago and while we were waiting for them we got a call from president Shulz. he talked to my comp for a second and then handed the phone to me. he said "elder mcguire!! i have a new assignment for you!" i said "...okay president(hesitantly)" he said " we have 16 new elders coming this transfer and i want you to train one of them, do you think you can do that??" i said" i think so president!!" he chuckled and said " i sure hope you paid attention during your training!!!" i said "haha i hope so to president!!!!" and then he hung up. HOLY COW IM TRAINING!!!!!! this is awesome!!!!! so for the rest of that night we taught a couple lessons and then went home. that night elder moleme was excited because he has been in this area for 8 months and is ready to move on. he was so excited that he did a preliminary pack of his bags that night! it was so funny!

So wednesday was also another good working day and we taught some great lessons and we are really progressing with our investigators. i am excited because my new companion will come and we will have a few people to baptize in just a couple weeks!

Thursday we had about half of the day to work and then that night we started traveling. friday i was recieving training on how to train and it was at the mission home in cape coast. 1 other elder in my district is training so we first went to his area...about 2 hours away. then me and that elder left from his area while my comp stayed there. we traveled another 2 hours to takoradi and spent the night with some elders there. then friday morning we woke up and headed for cape coast. there were 5 people from my zone training this transfer. 3 elders and 2 sisters. out of everyone who came with me to the mission only 1 other elder is training and its elder larsen! one of the 2 guys i became super good freinds with. so we traveled another 2 hours to cape coast and finally made it to the mission home around 10:15. president shulz gave us some awesome training and it really gave me a new appreciation for the role of trainer!! i am nervous but soooo excited!!!! so we were trained for a couple hours and then sis shulz had brownies and ice cream for us!!!!!!! it was sooo good!! i havent had anything close to a brownie since i was home!!! haha so then we started the long trip back to our areas. 2 hours back to takoradi. 2 hours to the elders area. then i met up with my comp and 2 hours back to our area. we made it home around 8:30 and i was dead from the travel but it was and awesome day!

Saturday we got back to work and we were also waiting to find out where elder moleme would be going. finally the call came at 7:30 and he is going to an area kinda close by but its on the beach! he is gonna be with one of the guys who came with me. to be honest he was way bumbed but i talked him into bein happy about it and to celebrate that night we went to a resturant next door and got pizza!! it was awesome!! im gonna miss elder moleme but im also ready to move on.

Sunday was crazy for us! it was fast and testimony meeting at church and we announced that moleme was leaving so alot of people were bearing testimonies and it was sweet. then after church everybody wanted us to come over and eat food since moleme was leaving!! so we began the long afternoon of food. We had 4 meals!!!! and they were all huge!!!!!! we were both dying and both almost threw up but luckily we held it all in and made it through the day. we still managed to teach a lesson or 2 and walk home, but only just. hahahaha.

Today has been great!!! we had the mission contractor come and he actually worked on the font today!!! we found the problem. underneath the tile there was a big hole in the corner of the foundation so they filled it with concrete today and are coming back thursday to finish it up so we will finally have a font that works!!!! hahaha just in time for the new elder!!!

Anyway it sounds like you guys have been having a blast at home!!!!! the reunion sounds like it was awesome!!!!! thanks for getting everyone to write me on the poster!!!! the only thing i request is a scripture bag. i dont have one and my scriptures are taking a beating i made a cardboard case for them but it stinks. so if you could do that, it would be awesome! i hope you guys have an awesome week and you all are happy!!!

I love you!!!

Love, Elder McGuire

p.s. mom you look so skinny!!!!!!

Pictures of a great week!..... Almost....

He sent a few pictures.. But once again, they just aren't working right now! I'm so sorry family! I promise I will keep working on them!

He ATE ALLIGATOR!!!!

Here's our new stories for the week! They're crazy!

Dear Family!!

This week just like all the rest has been awesome!!!! its been full of ups and downs and just all over the place!!!!!

So tuesday was a good working day and we had some good lessons. then around 5 pm the 1st counselor in the mission presidency, president Bybee and his wife came to our house. they brought us a kitchen table!!! hahaha we dont have to eat at our desks anymore!!! they also restocked us for propane for our stove. we then went with them to Takoradi about 2 hours away because wednesday was mission conference in cape coast and since its 5 hours from my apartment we decided to break the trip so we didnt have to wake up at 3 in the morning to be there on time. so we went to takoradi and stayed with our whole district in one apartment and had a blast!!! we ate alligator for dinner!!!! it was interesting kinda like really chewy fish but it was good because one of the elders had gotten a package with some sweet baby rays bbq sauce in it that he used with it.

Wednesday was mission conference. we made it to cape coast around 9:30 and it started at 10. It was way awesome because i got to see all of my friends from the mtc!! elder quasie my old comp is doing awesome!! we had instruction for the first 4 hours and it was way sweet!! president Shulz spoke on nothing but the atonement and repentance, it was incredible!!!!! i loved every second of it and it only felt like 10 minutes and then it was over! after instruction we had lunch and just sat and talked with everyone. then finally at 4 we had to leave and me and my comp were going all the way back to our area that night. so we started the long trip home and made it back around 10pm.

Thursday was nice because it was a normal good working day and we taught a lot of awesome lessons. we also did our final lessons with sister paulina and sister maame efua before they would be interviewed for baptism on friday they were both doing great and were totally ready for everything.

Friday was a lot of fun. we were having interviews for a baptismal candidates so we went on splits again. i got to go to nkroful with Elder Cardon again and we had a blast!! we went to the part of their area by the beach again and we taught some good lessons and prepared all of their baptismal candidates for their baptisms the next day and it was awesome. that night we talked and just had fun.

Saturday my comp and our district leader came to nkroful and then me and elder moleme turned around and left back to our area. both of our baptismal candidates passed their interviews with flying colors and were totally ready. now we had a bit of a dilema this week because our font still leaks and we have no way to fill it full and we were going to be baptizing sister paulina the large 60 year old woman so we neeeded a full font!!!! so we decided that we should pay for water to be trucked in to us. other elders had done it before so we thought it was a good idea. the only problem was they only had one days notice and it was on a sunday. so we spent the rest of the day looking for someone that could bring us water. we finally found somebody but they were going to charge us an outrageous price!!! so we ended the night

Sunday we woke up and had church as usual. everything went well and i taught sunday school again. then the second church ended me my companion and our baptismal candidates left with a few members and went to takoradi where our stake center is. (about 2 hours away) and we did the baptism there. it took a while but in the end the baptism was great and everything went great!!!! we then came home and made it around 5. then my companion worked his magic again and had 2 meals lined up for us. luckily now i like all of the food here so eating was not a problem, the problem for me now its to make sure i dont get fat!!! hahaha so after the meals we taught 1 lesson and did some contacting and finished out the week./

this week was awesome!!!

Since its the reunion this week i was hoping you could get everyone to write me a letter and send them that would be awesome!!!! getting letters out here is like christmas!! also send me pics of everthing you do!!!!

Mom tell brad that elder pinneger of the quorum of the 70 also gave a talk on that subject and its awesome!!!!! just a thought:)

Hahaha the rain actually hasnt been to bad its been about 2 weeks since it rained but yesterday and today its been going strong. the weather here has gotten a little cooler so its been nice!!! i actually got cold the other day!!!! and im pretty sure it never gets below 75 here. thats crazy that its so hot back home!!! keep going to 7 peaks and eating ice cream!!!!

I love you all have an awesome week at the family reunion!!!!

Love, Elder Bradley McGuire