What a day

i got alot to tell you today. all i kept saying at the end of the day last night was "what a day." but i'll come back to that.

i'm glad you guys are enjoying the singing children video, it was fun. still after this whole time here, one of my top top favorite things about africa is the children. if you're with an african child, you do not have a decision but to be happy. seriously. sometimes, if i'm tired or down or in a bad mood, i'll make sure to stop and play with any random kid i see before i go to our next lesson, cause it just lightens my spirits. and the culture of africa is cool in that way too. i remember once, when mylie was way young, sharie was telling us about a guy in the grocerie store that wanted to touch the baby. i joke not, here i can legitimatly go up to some random woman i've never met, say "good afta-noon" and take her child out of her hands and start playing with it. the kids are always just so curious and happy around us white guys, and they just don't have a care in the world. they'll be one of the biggest things i miss when i have to leave.

that'll be sweet to have tristin and her husband over. elder adams says they're way sweet. he says his sisters know about as much about sports as we do, so i'm pretty sure i love his family already.

i got the newsletter a couple of weeks ago, and that package with the bath towel about a week later. sorry i forgot to mention that last week. your amazing mom. and on saturday night we got your cereal package!! oh my gosh it was so good. we saved it for sunday evening after breaking our fast. elder adams liked the milk, but you know how particular i am about my milk. but it was by far, better than anything i've had here, but just the cereal alone was glorious. it'd be sweet to have more at random few times in the future.

so for the mothers day call, i think it'd be cool to try that conference call thing, but i donno if we could do an "i call at 3, you call at 3.03" type of thing,. it's tough to get an exact time here cause no one really worries about time that much. (you can get it maybe within 5 or ten minutes, but ya never know ha! time is something that isnt that important to the people over here, but that's a whole nother topic also). anyways, maybe i can call you (mom or dad or whatev) at the house at a certain time, i can hang up and call johnnyb's conference call number in like 5 minutes. then, while i'm waiting, you can get the other brother and sisters to call over the following minutes?? (by the way, while i'm on hold, how do i know when everyone who is going to call has called??) thats just an idea off the top of my head i donno. i can try to maybe give you a call saturday night, and you can tell me if you have any better ideas for it and we can set final plans for the call. i can't promise you that i'll be able to call you saturday night. maybe if i can't call on saturday night (that'd be saturday afternoon for you), i might have to just call you sunday morning (about eleven or twelve on saturday night for you) and maybe just wake you up if your sleeping. i'll see what i can do. but yea, i'm down for trying the conference call thing. i'll buy a phone chip and a bunch of credit to put on it later today and we'll see how it goes!

well, i better tell you about the day yesterday. i'll begin about a month or two ago. we started planning for this baptism and seeing who was progressing enough to have a goal set for may 2nd. we went to work and got a few really really solid people. (there could have been quite a bit more, but the longer i've been on the mission the less and less i want to baptise someone unless i'm POSITIVE that they are very strongly rooted in the church).

so as of two weeks ago, we had a few in mind, but they were'nt yet prepared enough. last week we just DID WORK had an extremely productive week in preparing the people for it. we ended up with 4 strong family candidates by the end of the week.

so this week began, and we started preparing for a sweet baptisimal service at the beach. it would be sunday, may 2nd right after church (which ends at 12). we got all of them interviewed by the district leader over the course of the week.

we have a really cool zone of missionaries right now, and there's some really good singers. so i had an idea and got a few of the missionaries in the zone and we tried to think of a hymn we could sing at the service. (i havent even seen a musical number since i've come here.) we planned the program and stuff with the ward mission leader. we talked to Elder and Sister Saunders, the office couple (love them) and she offered to print nice paper programs for us (you NEVER see that here, so it's nice to do). we finished up preparing all of the investigators for the service, except each time we went to kobe's house on friday and saturday, he wasnt around. thats not to uncommon though, they go out of the house alot. there's more things we did in preparation, but thats the jist of the important stuff.

so yesterday morning rolls around finally. it had been raining all night long, and it didnt stop until morning, so we werent sure if it would stop so we could go to the beach after church. thankfully it cleared up though. i woke up and gave kobe a call to tell him what he needs to bring to the baptism and ask georgina if she'd give the opening prayer. he tells me that he's not around georgina, but that he'd "try and force" to come. i was a little unsure about how he was talking, so i gave it a little time, and called back. at one point in the conversation, he tells me "i dey go accra." (that is pigeon english for saying that he is in accra right now, which is 3 plus hours drive away!!!) so this is at like 8 oclock in the morning. we had to pickup the programs from the saunders and go to church. it was way loud where kobe was, so we didnt get to talk much.

so we went to church and watched general conference. to our surprise they showed them in english! we watched saturday evening and part of sunday morning session. we got to see christopherson give a cool one, bednar's was sweet, and elder holland just rocked the mike again with his talk. really. two conferences ago, he gave "none were with Him," about Christ's suffering. last time he gave "safety for the soul," about the book of mormon. it was the third in that line! i love that guy, he's just so soulful and bold when he speaks.

so while watching conference, we called Kobe back and he said he was waiting for a guy to give him some money and then he'd come back. then we called him back at like 10 and told him to come back now. we said if he wanted us to reemburse him for the travel there and back later that day we would, but he had to leave now. he said he was coming. about an hour later, we called and he said he was about an hour and a half out.

so the service ends, and the ward choir practice began. some people stuck around, waiting for the baptism. most of the elders in our zone came, cause we put so much work into it that i think we all knew it'd be a sweet one. so the saunders came, and the assistants, zone leaders, and four other missionaries came. we got all of the other candidates dressed and kept waiting. we waited until about 1 o clock. we'd been trying his phone for the last little while, but there was no service. we finally got a hold of him and told him to come straight to the beach right when he got there.

we began the service and just hoped by some miricle he'd make it to the beach by the time we finished. so we began the service in the chapel. we had 3 convert candidates there (enoch samson gyan, stephen awotwe, veronica essoun), plus 2 children of record. we had a family member of each one of our converts IN the baptsimal program, which is just amazing. georgina said the opening prayer (kobe's wife). nyameyie, the ward mission leader (who's about to get his mission call) conducted the meeting. we heard talks from atta gyan (the albino twin who also has his papers in. enoch is his brother) and suzy pratt, the relief society pres. still no kobe.

we walked to the beach, about a 10 minute walk. we grabbed some baptisimal clothes to bring in case kobe ever made it. once we got there, us few missionaries sang our song we prepared. it was elder strong, elder hill, elder lewis, and me. we took off our socks and shoes and rolled up our pants and sang "nearer my God to Thee" barefoot in the sand with the ocean behind us. it was sick! elder adams took a video of it for me so i'll see if i can send it. it might be too long to fit in an email, though, we'll see next week.

after the song, elder adams did the baptisms. elder hill and lewis went in with him to witness and help steady the people with the waves and stuff. i wish we wouldve had that idea back when i was the one baptising in the ocean cause its so freaking hard to do by yourself! he did really well, though, and it was sweet. after that, brother pratt, the first counselor and relief society president's husband gave the concluding remarks and we had a prayer by juliana awotwe (stephen's sister, who'll also be going on a mission soon-or get married soon to our recent convert samuel otoo. its a different storyevery time we talk to them).

after that we got to take some sweet pictures at the beach and started heading back. it was a really cool baptism, but i just wished that kobe couldve made it. so as we were walking back, we were towards the back of the pack cause we were enjoying and taking a bunch of pictures and stuff when we heard a bunch of the people way ahead of us yelling "elder mackay! elder mackay!" and the phone started ringing and it was brother pratt. he says "kobe just got here, elder mackay, what do we do?!?" they had run into him as we were leaving!! so we gave him some baptismal clothes that we had, and elder adams and hill and lewis went back out there and baptised him right there!! it was sooo sweet!

maybe i'll just add here that the mission, as a whole, is struggling with this new goal, for every missionary to baptise a husband and wife family. president sabey decided that from friday night until saturday night, we'd have a mission fast from 6pm to 6 pm for help with the goal. its a good thing, right?? that day, we witnessed a straight up miricle and accomplished the goal for our companionship!

from there, it only got better. after we went home, when we broke our fast, we took the cereal that we had gotten from mom the day earlier and just chowed down on it!! we just kept eating the whole night haha. i ate a couple of egg sandwiches, a little bit of indomie (just like top ramen), and a tuna fish sandwich that was really really good (it was made with fresh tuna fish ha). i slept pretty good last night :)

well, as you can see, the Lord is taking good care of me over here. i love you and cant wait till sunday!

love, elder mackay