To be Ghana long time: Friends, Silvas, Countrymen...

This one is from last week:

Friends, Silvas, Countrymen. Lend me your ears for a small moment. This e-mail is going to be a little shorter. Not much has happened. We're kinda stuck in a rut right now. Contacting isn't going well and we don't have anywhere new to contact. One of those deals where you feel like you've been to every home in the area. I forgot to send baptism pics from last week. I'll get those to you this time. Bad news is my favorite investigator didn't show up to church this week and we couldn’t catch her at home. She was going to be baptized this upcoming Sunday, but I think we'll have to post-pone it until she's more ready. I haven't been around a golden contact since Obuasi and sometimes it seems like I've been in Effiduasi my whole mission. Funny how that works. It also feels like I've been in Ghana my whole life. I remember Mom telling me that home seemed like a dream on her mission. I understand that completely. I can't really remember how some aspects of home feel real anymore. It's really hard to describe. Sort of feels like I'm split in two. Like Ghana isn't my home but then, well home really isn't either. Well enough of that, maybe I'll answer some of Mom's questions. My health is alright. I've never felt all that healthy on the mission, but I'm not sick or anything. We had one investigator come to church and he was the only one in investigator's class so we just taught him a missionary lesson. It went very well. To answer your question...Trials? Well there's a lot of that on the mission, but nothing out of the regular really. We have a mission tour coming up for someone so we're all busy preparing for that. President Holmes will be leaving early July so we'll be having a new mission president soon also. Just a lot going on. Well I think that's it for this week. I'll send pictures as usual.

I wish you all a great week! Until next time.

-Elder Silva

The little girl was baptized

The sacred tree of Effiduasi. The traditionalists pour libations here.

The dawn of a new day!

A self portrait with my Sunday orange.

This week’s e-mail:

Heidi Ho Ranger Joe! ...Not sure why that just popped into my head.

Well something awesome happened on Sunday... I got your letters! They were really good and there were some good things I learned. I also got one from Em. I'm going to write Grandma and Grandpa Silva this week as well as Grandma Jones. I’ve been meaning to write them for a long while, but just never got around to it. One important thing I wanted to share before I get to anything else is a lesson I've learned on my mission. It's a lesson of suffering. No no no, before you get to thinking this lesson is depressing, let me re-phrase; it's a lesson about being positive about suffering. Basically we suffer as missionaries, but honestly I've learned how to laugh about it. Sometimes it's funny how bad a day can go. The best way I can describe it is like shrugging a backpack off. There was a good lesson I learned once about this. It's about ninja stars and kittens. Kittens represent positive emotions and ninja stars negative. You're standing in a dark space with light about 3 feet around you. Sometimes ninja stars come and hit you and sometimes cute little kittens come to snuggle with you. The obvious thing to do is just to have less ninja stars come, but that's kinda impossible sometimes. What needs to be done is to learn how to dodge the ninja stars that do come. Then life is much better. I've accepted the fact that not all suffering will end when the mission is over. I expect that there's plenty more ninja stars to come, but I'm learning how to dodge. Besides, there are still plenty of cuddly kittens on the way!

Well I'll get off of the soap box and start to answer some questions.

“Will you be able to call home for Mothers day?”

For sure I'll get to call. I'm working on a Skype option again. More details next week, and I'll find a brighter room this time haha. Be sure to be writing down questions now before you forget :)

Well I'll send a few pictures and wish you all a fantastic week!

-Elder Silva