Alive in Ghana!

Hello everyone!  First off, sorry for not emailing last week, but first my companion was sick and then we got online and and the power went off before I had the chance to email everyone... SORRY!

But these last two weeks have been pretty good.  Last two weeks ago we had Elder Curtis of the seventy come and speak to us.  He is the President of the West Africa Area so he had a lot to tell us... for like the first 40 minutes he just talked about ebola and the Sierra Lieonian and Liberian missionaries that joined us a little bit back.  He just wanted to warn us and reassure us that we are safe here in Ghana.  Then we discussed Alma 5, which is a very powerful chapter.  He had everyone share their favorite verses and we talked about the chapter in whole.  For me I like verse 26 very much because it reminds me of the Hill Cumorah and what we did.  But it is true that we can experience that change in our hearts due to our Savior.  But I also like verse 33 a lot because it says that his arms of mercy are extended to all.  Christ loves each and everyone of us.  He is there for us and his arms are open to each of us.  It was a very cool meeting.  Then last weekend my companion was sick all of Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.... so those days were very boring but I was blessed to be able to get a lot of Studying done.  This week I had to go to Takoradi on Thursday to get my non-citizen card renewed here.  They made a law a year ago that we must have them as we are here in Ghana.  Then on Friday I was able to go on splits with Elder Shinasi and I was blessed to get to do two baptismal interviews as well.  It is a cool experience to get to see the desires of people wanting to be baptized.  Then this Sunday our mission president asked us to have a special fast because on of the missionaries in our mission lost family due to the ebola in Liberia.  But yeah... yesterday we had a combined Zone activity in Sofokrom where we roasted three pigs and ate it with cassava and while that was going on we played some football (soccer).  My body is beat... sun burnt and my feet hurt because I played barefoot, which wasn't the smartest idea.  But it was a lot of fun.  And as I have been actually excersizing every morning it was so much easier to actually play football and not get completely exhausted.  But yeah... sorry I didn't email yesterday or last week... power here in Ghana has been really rather below standards this last month or so and that is below Ghanaian standards... which isn't very high to begin with.  I think half of the days this week we haven't had power when we come back for proselyting until the next morning.  But it is all fun.  Today we had a very nice District Meeting and then we went and had some very good fufu.  But yeah... all is well in Ghana.

Well, this morning as I was studying, I was studying about Patience.  It is such an important heavenly virtue that I know we all can improve upon.  If we can develop patience we will be so more effective in every aspect of our lives.  There is a talk that I read that is really good by President Uchtdorf, Continuing in Patience.  Patience is such an important Christlike attribute that we can all develop and that we should all develop.  In Chapter 6 it talks about Christ-like attributes.  These are what we should work on improving so that we will simply be better individuals throughout all of our lives.

Well I love you all and I hope that you all have a wonderful week!!

Elder Walston