Lessons and Things

Here's another week's report!!! 

Dear Family,

Another great week has come and gone. im glad to hear how good all of you are doing even though byu lost....hahaha its all good.....everything happens for a reason right??? hahaha

so tuesday last week was fun. we went to takoradi again for combined district meeting and we all got new immigration cards. these ones last for a year which will be nice because then the area office wont have to renew our visas as often. We also had a sweet instruction on just getting out and talking to people in our areas. then to finish off we all got to watch the world wide training from june about working with members for teaching. it was sweet!!!! then we went and did some small shopping and by the time we made it back to tarkwa it was 8:30 and the day was over.

Wednesday was a nice working day and we had some good lessons. one in particular was with an investigator named shadrack. he is a cool guy and is ready to be baptized but his mom is a leader in another church and is against it. he is 26 though and just wants her to be okay with it. so we had a lesson with him about not being ashamed of the gospel. i liked it a lot cuz it reminded me of highschool when a lot of the time the cool thing to do was to be disobedient and to rebel and when people would stand up for the church a lot of them would get mocked. And its sad but true, a lot of the time when we stand up for the church we get mocked. but its the right thing to do. standing strong in the church and our beliefs is so important. Satan wants us to just give up and follow the crowd, but the right thing to do is to stand up for what you believe in!!!

Thursday was also a good day of working and teaching and we found some cool new people. hopefully something will come from them. i also was sad thursday. we were in a lesson and i wanted to pull out my camera to show someone a picture and when i got it out. the screen was broken!!!! i was sad! i hadnt used it in a couple days so i think when it was in my backpack, my backpack fell or something and it broke my screen. there is a guy here who claims he can fix it but it think its a long shot, so is it okay if i pull some money to get a new one? i know a place where i can get one in takoradi i just want to make sure its okay:)

Friday was a sweet day!!! while we were studying in the morning we had like 4 people call us and told us they wanted to meet with us. then a member called us and told us that she wanted to spend the day going with us. she is going on a mission and wants some experience. She also gave us 2 referrals and helped a lot in our lessons. so friday we got a lot of work done! we also committed a guy to a baptismal date so that was exciting too.

Saturday we met with a new guy for the first time and it was an interesting lesson. the guy is a tattoo artist and has some interesting views. he asked us about tattoos and we tried to explain how our body is a temple and we should treat it as such. he told us he believed it didnt matter what you did to your body as long as your heart is in the right place. I was surprised!  its sad just how much satan and the world can screw up peoples views on things. it actually ended up turning into a good lesson and we'll see how things go with him.

Sunday was great. i love church. we get to hear from members. they bear very simple but powerful testimony about the gospel and have a lot to offer, its great! we taught the young men and had a good time helping each of the young men in the branch pick a friend that they would bring to church next week and i think theyre gonna do it:) everyone wanted to feed us too so we ended up going to 3 members houses for meals. hahaha lets just say im getting good at sneaking food into bags and hiding them in my backpack. its great cuz then we have precooked meals for later hahahaha!

yesterday was an interesting day. we went to takoradi to play american football with the zone. we played for a little bit then some church members came and wanted to play football(soccer) so we had to leave the field. so we played basketball for a while too. we were going to email but the cafe in takoradi was closed cuz it was a holiday yesterday. and when we came back to tarkwa the power was out and it was raining like crazy!!!!!!!! its been raining a ton here and rainy season was supposed to be over like a month ago! im about to say im ready for dry season, but it is gonna be hot!!! lately its been averaging about 80 so its been nice.

So thats the week!!!! as far as sharing the gospel goes i want to add something. in one of elder hollands talks in a priesthood session a few years ago he talked about joseph smiths first vision. he talked about how the adversary did his best to "bind josephs tongue so he couldnt speak" but joseph was strong and the first vision occurred. he then talked about how all satan has to do is bind our tongues. tell us that we should keep quiet. Elder Holland then called for all those who would be strong, he begged that we "unbind our tongues" so that we can share the gospel. ive noticed out here that great things happen as long as we are able to open our mouths. if we keep em shut we go nowhere. so dont be afraid to share the gospel!!!

I hope you are all happy and have another great week!!! i love you all!!!

Love, Elder Bradley McGuire