I'm busy and i'm tired but i love it here!

hey guys,

stew is married - wow! by the way elder eke's name is pronounced like e-bay with a k. eee-kay. man i can't belive dustin comes home this week. send him my greetings...

i had a not so normal week this week. i got a few things to share. i'll start on last monday. we were going to the asante family for fhe. they are three sisters in their early 20's and early 30's that are really cool. (afreyie, mavis, and sarah) (that is ah-free-yay) most of the other family members in the house arent members. we are preparing one of their nieces for baptism right now. they invited the missionaries in our apartment over to teach whitney, the niece, and have fhe w/them at six.

now the problem is that in order to get to their house you have to take 3 cars to get there. we took one from our apartment to one place (sofoline), and there we waited for about twenty min for a car to come that we took to another place (abrepo junction). then we had to get a car from there to a place called mainline. there were no tro tro's passing by, so we waited there for a long time with no luck. eventually, we started asking people who were just driving down the road if they could take us. (that's a normal thing here, by the way. people have no problem helping someone out and picking up someone who asks for a ride if they are going the same direction). no one was going the same place we were, though.

anyways...eventually this old toyota truck (kinda like the one from toy story when they're going to pizza planet) was going in that direction a bit so we and like 10 other people piled in the back and started off. eventually we got off the truck and started walking towards the house. there was also a young girl that got off at the same time as us. that's when elder christensen was like "elder mackay, can i talk to you for a minute?" so i stopped and he proceeded to explain (apparently he had been talking to the young girl in the truck) that she was running away from home bacause she was being beaten there. she had asked him if there is anything we could do to help. her name was rita. it really seemed like there was alot of coincidences (we were supposed to have the fhe the night before but it changed to monday, we were having some problems at our apt with the power so we left the apt late, couldnt get a car, and finally jumped into the same small truck that this girl got into). all those "coincidences" connected with the fact that we are representatives of the Lord made us feel like we should do anything we could for this girl.

we talked for a sec and decided at the very least we could bring her to the fhe and she could get some food, and we'll see if there was anything they could do for her. so we went and brought her with us. we explained everything and they offered her some food and took care of her. we had the lesson and afterwards they called their uncle, the head of the household, to come out and see what he thoguht about it all. he was real nice and responsible. we all talked together and concluded that the best thing to do was to have her stay at that house for the night. then we'd come back and go with afreyie the next day and take her to the police and they can sort it out there. so that's what we planned on.

the next morning (tuesday) we got a call at like six thirty from afreyie. she said that when they woke up in the morning the girl was gone again! she looked for her around the neighborhood but couldnt find her. so we were worried about this young 14 year old girl out there with nowhere to go, no way of taking care of herself, and no one to take care of her. but there was nothing we could do at this point.

tuesday was a good day besides that. we had a good lesson with a woman named maame (mommy) that is a muslim but her and her family dont really practice any religion. she believes in Christianity, but has lots of questions about why the churches are all corrupt like they are. she should hopefully come to church this sunday. (yea!) we had a few other nice lessons too.

on wednesday we went on splits with the abuakwa apartment, and i went out with elder harris and elder rogers - from california and st george respectively. they are two solid missionaries. during the split i got a call from elder christensen saying that afreyie called and said that the girl had come back to their house! she came back, this time, with her mother and grandmother. apparently when rita left their house, she went home again! they wanted her (rita) to show them the people that took care of her that night, so that they could thank them. they asked how they could thank the missionaries that also helped their daughter, and she said that we would be at church on sunday and they could thank us there (good answer, right?? haha).

on friday we weren't able to meet with maabina. we have tried to get a hold of her, but cant. kinda a bummer so far but we'll make contact with her again. we also had a cool lesson with mary osei-mensah, our recent convert that just went to the temple last week. she loved it.

on saturday morning we got up super early and left for sunyani for splits! that was really cool. got up at five and got ready and left and got to sunyani at like 9. they had organized a soccer match which they invited a ton of investigators to come so we played a full football game and it was really fun. there were like 10 investigators there which was the best part. after that i went with elder bahme and marimira again, and i just love those two.

in the evening, i went over to the fiapre apartment to stay the night. so i spent sunday with fiapre missionaries. (fee-ah-pray) elder hair (illinois) and elder omini (oh-mee-knee). they are two really obedient, hard working missionaries. fiapre is the new unit in sunyani that they opened about 4 weeks ago. they are starting the church from scratch there!

at church we had three missionaries, one member, and two investigators there. i ended up having to say the opening prayer, conduct the music, bless the sacrament, and give a talk haha. it was a really cool experience to be there, though - one of the cool moments of my mission. we taught some cool people after church too.

we havent heard yet if rita and her fam went to church yesterday...so we'll see.

i'm out of time but as you can see i'm busy and i'm tired but i love it here!

have a great week. love you,

elder mackay