In Africa, we live by the grace of God

This week has been such a blessing! we definitely experienced some miracles throughout this week! one miracle was rain! haha the weather was so great this week! everyday was pretty windy and overcast. and last night it rained so hard all night! i couldn't even sleep from the noise of the rain hitting our tin roof. it was loud, but i was so happy to wake up this morning to a rain storm. and it rained for quite a while during the day.

Another miracle from this week is a guy named George. we were just walking down the street when one of our investigators called us over. she just said, "preach to this guy" haha so we started to talk and talk. long story short, we gave him a baptismal date right then and there, and we also started to fill out the baptismal record with him. sadly he didn't come to church, but we are praying for next week :)

We currently have 7 investigators with a baptismal date, but how many of them came to church? zero.. lol so we are praying that they will all be able to make it to church this week. please i beg keep them in your prayers.

My companion is getting better and better at speaking English. i am trying my best to teach him. well help him improve. i am the last person who should be teaching anyone English haha. but he is doing great. none of his companions have done language study with him since he came in Ghana, so he has basically taught himself haha. it is sad really. i don't know why they didn't do any language study with him. so we are going to start  doing language study as much as we can.

This morning was great! we had a wonderful privilege to be able to listen to Elder Ronald A. Rasband of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. he came to speak to us at our combined mission conference. he talked a lot about how a missionary is called, and how we are called by divine revelation. he asked how many of us had hopes of going somewhere else other than Ghana. haha i am not going to lie, i raised my hand. he said, "don't worry, i felt the same way before i received my mission call. but i can promise you that this is exactly where you are supposed to be." and it is true. i know without a doubt that this is the perfect mission for me. i love Ghana! haha  it was great to be able to receive council from him.

After he talked, i was able to see some of my friends from the mtc! i was so happy to be able to talk to and see all of them from my mission and from the Accra mission. it is crazy how much i love them even though i was with them for just 12 days. i consider them some of my best friends.

I feel great in my new area. the members are all so nice and willing to help us. and i have made so many new friends. Dansoman is a great town. we don't have bikes, we just walk a ton haha our area is pretty big and we have to go all over the place, so my legs are getting a good work out. it is good tho, they need it. i don't know why, but working out just has seemed like an awful idea since i came on mission. maybe it is because i don't want to sweat more than i already do, or what, but i need to get over it. everyone from my MTC was saying how big i was hahahaha it was funny. first they looked at my tag and said why?.. and then they said, "dang you are big" lololol

Also there is someone in my MTC who's name is Elder Jamison. It was cool i took his tag and put my tags together and it was my full name haha ELDER BEN, ELDER JAMISON, ELDER ELDREDGE. sorry i didn't take a picture..

Well that is about it for this week. thank you all for the emails! i love you and you are in my prayers! have a great week!

love, ELDER BEN 

my shop

Elder Ferrin and I. it is crazy that he is going home in just 6 months! i remember being at his farewell like it was just yesterday.

Toy Yo Ten?

Hello, everyone! 

I hope everyone i didn't hear from had a good week! my week was great! we have been working hard and having fun! plus, this week the Lord blessed us with RAIN! hahaha it rained twice this week! once on Tuesday, and then again on Friday. each time it was for like four hours straight. it was so nice to feel cold. the storm on Friday was a little more intense. it started to rain around 5. i looked up and saw the biggest wall of black moving directly at us haha. me and my companion just looked at each other and said, "we gotta get out of here" it was great. we sat and talked to our land lord and her husband. she has been a member of the church for 29 years. all of her children and grandchildren are members, and sealed in the temple. and finally after 29 years, her husband baptized into the church. it really is quite the story. it was so nice to talk to them and hear their story. i felt so much love from them, and i know that it came straight from the gospel. they are now planning for when they will be sealed together as one big family in about a year. their story makes me so happy!

On Wednesday i met President Snow for the first time since he has been here haha, but he is such a good guy. he is very spiritual and loving. you can tell he really cares about his missionaries and all the people that we are working with. he also gave me my new name tag. (ill send a pic) 

our teaching pool is building and building. the work is moving along. i really love the people here. they just need to come to church and feel the spirit there. 

I don't know if you remember the prophetess woman i spoke of a few weeks ago, but she is doing so well. we taught her about the book of Mormon yesterday, and the spirit was so strong. she has so much potential to be a strong member of the church. she also has a beautiful family of two sons and a husband. she hasn't even been baptized, but you can already see the big difference in her life, even just from the small truths that we have taught her about. the gospel is amazing. miracles happen everyday. 

We have this recent convert named S-------. he is from Nigeria. we taught him about missionary work the other day, and already he has given us more referrals than the rest of the ward combined. you can see how much the gospel has impacted him and how much he loves it, because he has a desire to share it. 

I love that you talk about what you learned at church on Sunday at dinner, but i challenge you all to talk as a family about what you did during that week to share the gospel with someone. i was reading a Liahona and it was a talk from Pres. Thomas S. Monson. it was titled, "have i done any good in the world today?" i love that talk. try to focus on being a true disciple of Jesus Christ. small or big, it could change someones life. but you will never know if you don't act.

The woman i was teaching in Winneba stays in the area next to me, so i gave the referral to the elders in that area. i hope and pray that they can find her and she will get baptized.

i love you all with all my heart. have a wonderful week! stay safe

love,

 ELDER BEN

my new tag... the font is absolutely ridiculous, but oh well. at least people can pronounce this one :)

before it rained there was a big dust storm haha it was nuts. i could even open my eyes. i had to dig a ton of dirt out of my eyes after.

after coordination on tuesday, my companion and i got the munchies... so we started to eat these small bugs that were on the wall.. hahaha i ate only one, but my companion was loving life lol. there were a ton of them flying around a light in the parking lot, and elder lokutshu tried to jump in the air and catch one... he slipped as he tried to jump and squealed like a small girl and fell so hard on the ground! hahaha oh my goodness i was laughing so hard. not quite the injury you would expect from trying to eat bugs... 

i got my package from grandma and grandpa Eldredge! my companion and i have been enjoying!

Two Different Kinds of People

Mondays are great! i love hearing from everyone and seeing so many pictures. even though it is weird to see so many white faces haha. 

This week was good! our area is starting to really come together. we went out with some of the members and found a ton of members houses, so that will help a ton. we also found someone that the sisters were working with! she is married to a member, and she was being prepared for baptism, but because she was pregnant they had to wait. but she gave birth haha so we will most likely baptize her next month. also we contacting a guy the other day, and he instantly accepted baptism! hahaha it was an absolute miracle. it made me so happy. i know that God prepares His children to receive the gospel. he too, will be baptized next month if all goes well. i love this gospel so much! 

This week was cool, because i got to see two different kinds of people: the first was the people who are willing to let the spirit teach them, they are so humble and ready to learn. and the other were those who felt like they knew everything about the gospel. even when we show them plainly the truth, they deny it. it is so sad. but now just isn't their time. it will come tho. i have noticed that the people who feel like they know everything are the ones who don't go to church at all.. i don't get it. i am so thankful to go to church every week, and to hear from a living prophet every six months. i cant wait for next months conference. i feel like we just had general conference, and now it is almost time again.

If you remember, i was preparing three people to be baptized in my last area, and on Sunday, one of them was baptized!! A------was baptized in the ocean at St. Charles beach. i was so happy to hear that it happened. As for the other two, they are still working on it. A-------'s sister, R---- is ready, but turns out she is 7 months pregnant.. so they will have to wait a couple months for that baptism to happen. and the other one: sister A---- had some things she needed to work out before she would be worthy to be baptized. she is leaving Ansaful tho.. so that is tough. but on the bright side.. she is coming to Dansoman! hahah i am praying that she is going to live in my area so i can teach her. if not, other missionaries will come. she is ready.

We were blessed with some little rain this week. even tho it was just for about ten minutes it was like heaven haha. 

Yesterday we were just walking past these houses and i saw someone cooking fufu, so i started to talk to her. she couldn't speak English at all.. but i could just understand her asking me if i could eat fufu, and i told her that i loved fufu! hahaha she gave us a seat, and we ate fufu. it was so good. it had been a long time since i had chopped fufu. the soup we had it with was light soup, and inside was cow... which in Ghana can be kinda sketchy. good thing we always bless the food :)

anyways, our week was great! soon we will bring souls unto Christ through the waters of baptism. (i pray)

I love you all so much! sounds like you had a great week! stay busy, there is no reason to not be busy. our time on this earth is too short haha. rest later. LOVE YOU

love Elder Ben

This is the face you make when you are about to eat something that you don't know if it will kill you or not.. hahahahaha

haha my companion called fufu, "fufu ghaha" lololo i was laughing so hard. he is still learning English, so sometimes he gets a little mixed up.

Bathroom Selfie

Bonjour Ma Famille

wow, this week was so great!! 

Hahaha we were very very busy haha. the area we took over used to be a sisters area, and let me tell ya... the sisters in my mission are not serious AT ALL hahahahaha our area book is empty, or phone has no credit, we have no teaching records, nothing. we didn't even know where our area boundaries were. it has been a busy week. 

My companion is so awesome!! his name is spelled, ELDER LOKUTSHU. i was way off last week haha. but he is the nicest person i have met here. he has a cool mission story too. he was originally called to south Africa, and because of visa problems he had to stay in his country. he served in his hometown mission for three months, then in another mission in his country for seven months, and then he got a visa for Ghana and was called to the Accra west mission. he has been in Ghana for about the same amount of time as me, so his English still needs a lot of work. i hope i am helping him with that, i have never taught anyone English before. but he is doing well. he has a strong love for everyone and it is such great example to me. i love him haha we were closing the day one night, and after we had finished planning and what not i asked him if there was anything else that we needed to talk about, he just looked at me and said, "i love you." hahah it was a little awkward, but i just accepted it lolol. he also is teaching me how to cook! this week he taught me how to cook jolloff rice! it is so good, but it is so bad for you. it will make you so fat and the amount of oil will kill you. i cant wait to kill all of you with jolloff rice when i come home. this week i will learn how to make an Islamic food called waakye. we eat it almost everyday on the roadside. i am excited to learn.

Yesterday we were contacting around the area, and i felt like we should go to this door that was super tucked away and hidden. when the woman answered the door she seemed surprised and offered us a chair. she told us that she has been seeing people like us before but thought we were JW's and she said that she has heard of the church before and has always wanted to know more about it. she also thinks she is a prophetess... hahahahahahahahah I LOVE GHANA. it is too apostate to handle hahahahaha but i think we helped her understand the difference between gifts of the spirit and being a prophet. my companion straight up told her that she didn't have any authority... lolol but she accepted it. i honestly think she will progress.

Yesterday was Elder Fryar's birthday, so today we went to KFC. it honestly was kind of depressing. it is super expensive (for Ghana) and i just didn't feel satisfied after. but the restaurant was nice, it had A/C and everything haha. it was short-lived when we opened the door and entered back into the oven that is Ghana lol. 

The reason my subject line is in french is because of my companion. i realized how hard it would be to learn a new language, and that reading the book of Mormon would be such a tough task. so i told my self that i would read the whole book of Mormon in french after i finish reading it in English. I'm pumped. it will be a good experience and my prayer is that it will help me to help my companion learn English. 

I have a feeling that they are trying to prepare me to train a french speaking greenie. just my guess tho. 3 of my 4 companions i have had to teach English to them. who knows tho. i am excited :) 

well that's about all this week. another great week down and another one waiting for us. 

love you all! thank you for everything!!

Have a great week and be safe

Love, Elder Ben 

Read carefully. this is Ghana hahah

Me and Elder Lokutshu

woke up this morning to fungus growing out of our sink... nasty

Wa Bor Dum Papa

Hello family! 

This week has been great!! the weeks go by faster and faster. my week was pretty normal. incredible as usual. and incredibly hot as usual haha

We didn't have any baptisms this week, but we will have two this coming Sunday, and one more the next Sunday! sadly, i wont be there to witness them because i have been transferred to Accra! my new area is called Dansoman. my new companions name will be elder locoochoo or something like that. he seems very nice. he is from the D.R. Congo, and because of visa issues he has served for over a year in Congo, so he doesn't speak English very well. but it will be alright. hopefully i will be able to teach him the language. we are white-washing the area so that will be fun haha. so much contacting will be done. 

I am pretty sad to leave Winneba tho. i love this place. i love the people i love the area and i love the zone that i am in. but i am still excited to go have new experiences in Dansoman. 

on Saturday we went all around our area with some of the members passing out invitations for the open-house next week. it was fun! it was nice to have the members there to help with the language barrier and also to have the people feel comfortable coming to the church. i am excited to hear how it turns out. 

We didn't have water this week, which was rough. the whole area is suffering. when we would go to meet people, they were never there because they had to go fetch water. it is sad. not having water will definitely humble you. simple things become really difficult. these people are much stronger than i am.

This morning we went to an investigator and less-active members house. we went so that i could say good-bye. they gave me the biggest bag of banku! it weighs like 10 pounds!!! hahah not sure what i am supposed to do with it but lunch today was nice :) 

Well not much really happened this week. except for oh ya! i talked with president snow, and my name tag is going to be changed haha. they are giving me another one that says ELDER BEN lolol no one can say Eldredge. so i am now ELDER BEN hahaha hopefully i get my tag tomorrow so that i can have it in my new area. i am pretty excited tho. for now it is not engraved, but hopefully before i go home it will be. 

Sounds like you are all having a great time in bryce canyon! tell Wade and Mia and all them that i say hello! and thank you grandma for sending me the package!! 

i love you all! have a great week, talk to you soon!

Love, Elder Ben

His comments about the transfer:

I know, i was shocked too. i have been here for five weeks haha. we came a week before the transfer started, and then this transfer was a four week transfer. i feel like i just unpacked haha now i am packing again and leaving. my new area is far too. they said that i have to just take a tro tro by myself tomorrow until i get to buduburam and then meet up with elder Nilsson and take a taxi with him. he will be going to the area right next to mine.

I'm excited! and there is a kfc really close to my new area haha and the guy who makes suits is super close too. 

we found a guy when we were contacting that was making kente haha it was so cool to watch him make it. takes some serious skill.

Me and Elder Sakala

hahaha this family is the funniest ghanaian family i have met. the one closest to you in the pic will be baptized this sunday, and we just re-activated the man lounging. the woman in the back is a less-active who came to church yesterday, and they are the best. they are the ones who gave me a ton of banku. 

my subject means "you are crazy!!" which in ghana if you say that, it is like the biggest insult haha. they always say it tho! it is hilarious. i have a video of the one in the blue saying wa bor dum papa. hahahahahaaha it makes me laugh so hard to watch it. i wish i could send it.

Lucky Monkey

Hello everyone! 

This week was great! a lot of wonderful things happened. we have been working hard and trying our best to be the best missionaries possible. Our teaching pool is growing and growing. And people are progressing. we are lucky to have the chapel in our area. we have had at least two people at church every week. we are preparing 5 people to be baptized! one will be baptized next week and hopefully two more by the end of this month or the beginning of next month. we are working with a couple that is so ready to be baptized. they just need to get married. they have been saving money for a long time to pay for the wedding, and they are planning on getting married by the end of this month. i am happy here.

We are teaching this family (a mother and two daughters) and we told them that they should pray and ask if Joseph Smith was a true prophet. when we went to follow up on them they didn't have time for us to sit down, but i just asked them if they got the chance to pray. one of the young daughters told me that they did. she said that when they were praying together the daughter said "if Joseph Smith was a true prophet, please show us a miracle" and then she said that after they said amen she saw a sparkling ball in the air... haha i was a little confused so i just said, "so.. was that a miracle?" she said yes! hahaha i thought it was awesome! the gospel is true!

On Thursday we were riding our bikes on our way to see an investigator, when we saw a member at her shop, so we stopped and started talking to her. then i heard my companion say, "ahh can we play with it??" I didn't have any clue as to what he was talking about but then i looked over and saw a small monkey!!! it was just a baby, but we fed it some banana and held it! he grabbed me with his foot, and it was the weirdest thing.. his foot thumb wrapped around my thumb! haha so that was cool.

then on Saturday we were teaching one of the people we are getting close to baptism with. as we were sitting there outside, her grandfather came out and caught a chicken, took it a few feet away from us and slit its throat allowing it to bleed out.. haha it was nasty. then we sat there and watched them pluck off all the feathers to prepare it to be cooked. hahaha GHANA... lol gotta love it.

things are going great here! the gospel is true! i love being a missionary so much.

Sounds like you have had a great week! glad to hear that you had a great time together celebrating Haley's birthday and watching the super bowl! (happy birthday Haley) that is cool that you saw President Robinson. he is awesome!

thank you for visiting Lisel and her family, and making those things for her! she loves you guys a lot. ah i am sad that i will miss Bryce canyon this year! i love that trip so much! you'll have to update me on how everyone there is doing. and ask wade what his plans are! tell them that i say hello and to email me!

congratulations Cole! that is super exciting!! i am happy for you captain crack sparrow! lol love you man. i am sad that i wont be at the wedding but i am so happy for you.

Me and lucky the monkey!

hope you all have a wonderful week! i will keep you all in my prayers. love you all!

The Beach

this is kenke. probably the nastiest food in Ghana. we had it prepared for us a few weeks ago, and while we were eating, i just couldnt take it anymore. luckily elder wilcox (an elder in my district) had a plastic bag in is shoulder bag. when carefully placed it inside making sure that no one saw us and then we went outside and threw it as far as we could hahahahha it is the worst.

i shined my shoes for the first time about a month ago.. they needed it bad if you cant tell hahaha

Here is my companion: Elder Sakala

The Bush

Elder Eldredge 

A Blessing to Remember

Hello Family! 

This week went by so fast! sorry that last week's email was super crappy and short. we went to Swedru which is like this bigger city which was nuts. i don't like there haha it is too busy, and people are super rude to white people for some reason. we searched forever for a cafe and when we finally did we only had an hour before we had to make our way back to Ansaful. so i apologize.

This week was great tho! we are slowly building up our investigators. we have a lot of people to teach, it is just difficult to teach. they don't really speak too much English... or twi... they speak Fanti and a lot of it. but it is good i am learning it the best i can. i can understand most of what they say, but i need to work on replying. i am getting to be able to teach lessons very simply in Fanti haha. it is awful Fanti, but they understand at least. it is hard because i feel like we cant teach more than two or three principles because if we do they will just get confused.

I have been learning to cook stew to keep myself alive! hahah just kidding but we have a super nice apartment with a nice kitchen so i decided to learn how to cook. it is going well! we make stew probably twice a week and it is so good.

Yesterday at church we had a really good experience. we were teaching an investigator who came to church on her own a couple weeks ago. and as we were teaching her she just kind of buried her face down into her chest and started shaking.. i didn't know what to do. we just tried to talk to her and see what was wrong. we figured out that she had malaria and wasn't feeling well at all. we decided that we would give her a blessing. it was incredible. she was shaking very badly the whole time we were giving her a blessing, and then when my companion said amen she stopped. and we just stood in silence. it was so special and the spirit was so strong. it made me so thankful. this past two weeks i have heard alot about a thing called black priesthood. or joo joo. and i will tell you that it is real. the power is real. but i know that all power bows down to the power of the priesthood. we always need to be worthy and ready to protect ourselves from any outside powers.

I am so thankful for this gospel. i love being a missionary. they don't lie when they say it is the best two years. i cant believe i have already been here in Ghana for four months. I feel like i just got here yesterday.

Sounds like the life back home is great! thank you for the pictures and emails.

dad i know both of them! haha not well but i know exactly who they are. that's cool.

We have bikes now. they came last Wednesday. it is nice to have them. i don't think i got the picture of the Zimbabweans. The picture that you sent me of the chapel is my chapel! my apartment is just near there. you can"t see it in that picture but it is just down the road.

This morning we went to the beach and played american football and the other soccer. it was so fun! there was an insane man just watching us play tho haha it was kind of creepy. he just would write things on a piece of paper, and then kneel down and say a prayer and bury the paper in the sand. it was weird. he came into the picture that we took tho! sorry tho i don't have any way of sending pictures.. i need some sort of adapter/card reader. we are still struggling to find a good internet cafe as well. I'm sorry. it might be that i will send a ton of pictures when i get transferred to a new area... yikes.

Mom congrats on the scuba diving thing! that will be so cool! i am glad that me leaving didn't hinder your ability to have fun haha. thank you so much for making the scarf! i know she will love it! i love you mom!!!

Have a wonderful week! i love you all. stay safe. Can't wait to hear what happens this week.

Love,

Elder Eldredge