Sweet news

i definitely havent heard from mat yet haha! so i got your valentines day package this week and opened it (thanks a ton for it, the africans loved having their names on the candy) and it mentioned mat's call . . . . thats sweet!! so he leaves next month or what??

thats so sweet that owen's papers are in! i thought it'd still be a few more months before he could submit them.

. . . i got alotta sweet information for you guys this week, the Lord is looking out for me! Elder ekaette's was sick, one thing after the other after the other, for the first two months of his mission. i had mentioned the idea of giving a priesthood blessing to him, but i think he just forgot . . . so i brought it up to him again a couple of weeks ago, and elder agama annointed him and i sealed it. in two days he was healthy and has remained so ever since.

today we went to a park and anyone who wanted to play football (soccer) could do so and the rest went and played basketball. it was fun.

we should be having a baptism this saturday, so i'll let you know how that works out. albert saalah and felicity are among the candidates, which i'm stoked about! georgina came to church again, and it was awesome. we introduced her to the bishop, and the relief society president and some of the other members were talking and laughing with her it made me soooo freaking happy!

now for the sweet news. president kaku, the stake president, came to the ward and announced that moree has been approved for a building!!!!! basically if we continue to pay tithing well until april, they'll begin construction. oh i'm so pumped. we've been working so hard in correlation with the ward clerk and bishopric to get people paying their tithing, to fix the records in the ward, to baptise converts and all the people in the ward who havent been baptised, to ordain more males with the priesthood (people who should have been ordained and baptised a long time ago), and get poeple to the temple.

from the sounds of it, the leadership in the ward in the past didnt do very well, and neither did the missionaries. the first bishop in moree was a spiritual guy, except he had a problem with womanizing . . . the second bishop didnt file any records. one of the past missionaires slept with a members wife, and another inpregnated a girl from the ward. but this bishop and the other leaders seem to be legit, and me and my companion are here to work. so i feel like we have really changed the culture of the ward. they've been waiting and praying for a chapel for sooo long.

moree was the second branch in all of ghana - i think the first was in accra or ola. i feel like i have actually been able to make a lasting impact in the ward because they will enjoy this building for a long time.

so on tuesday our zone learned about the mission conference that will be coming on february 23rd. president Dixon from the west africa area presidency, president Cardon the west afrcia area president, and President Snow from the presidency of the seventy will meet with us for the day. oh yea, and this other guy named Jeffrey R Holland!!! i'm so excited, i cant wait. we've also heard a bunch of rumors about president Monson himself coming to Ghana in august . . . but i cant tell if its just people talking or what . . . i'll ask president sabey about it the next time i see him.

we met with this muslim guy named hamsa this week. my companion didnt really want to meet with him i dont think, but i basically sat us down and told him to tell us about what he believes. it was really interesting . . . the same scriptures that we use to learn about Jesus Christ in the old testament, they use to learn about muhammad. the guy has some logic, but he's confused. he was talking about how moses was not similar to Jesus, but to muhammad. like, he was saying Jesus wasn't married, moses and muh were. moses had visions to begin his minestry, so did muh, while Christ began as a young boy. Christ didnt have a human father, while the other two did. the islam is interesting to me to learn about, and it helps me to know better how to go about teaching them, cause there's ALOT of them in ghana.

so i did some math this week, theres somewhere in the ballpark of 6.5 billion people in the world right now, and about 14 million members of Christ's church. i checked the percentage of people in the world who are members, and it is . . . 0.002 percent!! i want us all to think about how much the Lord has blessed us, that we are amoung the one one hundredth of a percent of the population who knows the truth.

well, always remember that your in my prayers, i miss you!

love, elder mackay