New mission goal

Jesse's e-mail today mentions the World Cup in football (soccer) which is being held for the first time in Africa this Summer. In Ghana, soccer is EVERYTHING. All life comes to an absolute standstill whenever their beloved Black Stars have a game. It's especially hard for the native elders to stay focused on missionary work during that time.

hey.

dad, that's crazy that you never spent more than 3 months in an area. i don't even know what that'd be like. president sabey said that while he was in the mtc the prophet instructed them to focus on keeping the missionaries in areas for longer. so thats what he's doing. im sure elder adams is gunna be here for a while too. i would imagine that i might finally go next transfer (id rather stay for the year mark though!) and elder adams is already at 4 and a half months so i'd assume that he'd spend at least another transfter or a few which would be almost as long as i've been here. so moree is in good shape.

shauna. your done with seminary! isn't it a good feeling?? haha

i bet the waco looks sick now!! happy birthday saturday mom. i love you!! i miss you!!

well, this week was zone conference. it was cool. this is the last transfer for us to complete the husband and wife goal so we're all thinking about that alot. it's not looking too solid. 55 missionaries still need to accomplish the goal. that's almost ten baptisms every single week...sooo...but we're still optimistic. if our work ethic and obedience is on a high enough level, we'll accomplish it. hands down. so we'll see if it's high enough or not in about a month or so.

interestingly enough, president told us about our NEW goal that same zone conference. and it's pretty challenging. to begin i'll mention that the world cup begins and goes from june 11 to july 11. the new goal has two parts. it is first that every missionary won't watch a single football game on those days, and in addition to that, for every single missionary to baptise someone that they meet WHILE A WORLD CUP SOCCER GAME IS BEING PLAYED! isnt that ridiculous?? it's super a wise goal, though.

it gets even harder though. i have only made two convenants in my entire life (baptism and temple). at the zone conference he taught us about convenants from the book of mormon and we all made a COVENANT to not watch a single game on those days. i didnt even know you could just make up a covenant like that, but i guess if the spirit is guiding you can. also, i guess we didnt set what the Lord had to do if we fulfill our part, so i suppose he'll be fair so we'll be blessed accordingly. it's not gunna be easy for me to not watch ANY games. i don't think i would have watched more that a few games (mostly of ghana and the u.s.) just becasue when there's a game on, the whole village just stops and no one can meet with us. so we just walk around the whole time. but with this new goal, not only have i covenanted to not watch, but i also have to baptise a person that we meet while a game is being played. so i'm not gunna screw all that up for myself and my mission haha.

it gets even more ridiculous, though. i think this is mostly just president's throwing a bone to the missionaries who care a ton about the games and will struggle with it alot, but each night we're all gunna get text messages with the scores of the games that happened that day haha!!

our zone is almost finished with the current goal, but some of the other zones are struggling pretty bad, so pray for us!

i can't remember if i mentioned to your or not, but we met with our first counselor, brother pratt, and gave him our family referral lesson that we teach members to help to find husbands and wives and families to teach. the pratt's are off the hook tight. he's working like crazy to save up money to go to byu provo for his masters (he's still only like 33 or so, and his wife is even younger and she's the freaking relief society president. they have one kid.) most africans usually just go to rich people that they know and ask for money. sometimes they depend upon sponsors to pay for them to go to America, but brother pratt is just saving up tons and tons of money (but trying to see if he can get any sponsors in addition) and thinks that within five years or so he might have enough money to go! so if he does come WE WILL HAVE HIM AT OUR HOUSE FOR A WEEKEND. he is just the man. he and his wife are the two coolest people in the ward.

anyways, after the family referral lesson they told us about his best best friend sammy. his wife, anita just gave birth, (by the way, they named the kid frank, after brother pratt) and sammy is just brilliantly smart. he asks tons of deep questions and is just an extremely fun person to teach. we are super excited about them. we love meeting with him. we're having a baptism on the 19th with the saunders together. but the baptism is mostly just gunna be a group of children who are members of the ward that have found problems with records and stuff and need to be rebaptised or have never been baptised and stuff. we got alot on our plate, so me elder adams are hitting it hard. we love it.

thanks, love you!

love elder mackay

ps by the way, jason especially (but johnny b, davis, and anyone else with anything to add). i'm calling upon you in my time of need. i heard that the lakers and celtics are in the finals (while im on my freaking mission oh my gosh). anyways, i expect you to tell me game by game reports of what happens next monday in an email!!! also any of the world cup games you see i need to know what you got. mostly just the finals i wanna know alot about it. lov you!!