Dear Family,
How is everything going back at home? I can't believe all that snow you have been getting back there!!!! It is always very hot here so snow kinda sounds nice. It's weird though, the sun here is different. I'm out in the sun all day and really am not that dark. Yeah I have the camera cord but the computers here may put a virus on the camera. If you have a card reader it saves your camera. I'm thinking about taking my card some where and having them put the pics on a disc and sending that. The Internet here is just to slow to upload pics. and I would rather write the emails then wait for pics to load. As for the package I can't wait for them!!!
I am doing great though! This week has been pretty good! I'm healthy and all is well. We had zone conference this past week and I got lots of your letters. I love getting them. I will be responding back to them. But zone conference was great. The mission is trying three things taught by the mission President: 9 hours of proselyting each day, strive for exact obedience, and help the mission expand. The cool thing about the expansion part is I am going to be here when really the lid on the mission goes shooting off. In Kumasi and Suyani, the president has opened some new areas and has put missionaries in them. In every ward or branch there is only one set of missionaries so no one is stepping on toes and all that. But in those areas in Kumasi and Suyani, he has small units where the missionaries are holding church services there since there are not branches there yet, and then once it grows branches will be created there. They are going to create these units, and maybe try them throughout the mission. Hopefully, the mission will expand and the church will all the sudden boom here in the mission. Its a really cool idea and is going to be great to be a part of that. Though i am not in that area, it will still impact me.
In fact, there is an area that is part of our branch that is about a ten minute taxi drive, but on a bike it is so long. So my comp and I are going to see if we can do more work there. We went to take a sister, in the branch, a temple name paper so she could do work for here ancestors. While we were there we did some service and helped these guys unload a truck. When we finished one of the guys said he wants to learn about our church cause of our sincere service and attitudes. We kept walking around and people came to us to find out about the church. One man came up to me and said, "I don't know why but I just felt as though my wife and I needed to come talk to you. I think what you are doing is great and feel like I needed to come to you when I saw you." I told him, "Sir this is not a coincidence that you felt this impression." There definitely was a reason he came to me and proceeded to tell him a little about the church. This area is prime for missionary work, the people are ready to here the message, the town is quiet, and so prime to hear the Holy Ghost, and so we are going to see if we can go there more often.
Another cool lesson was with one of our investigators. He is a very receptive man. He know and believes the gospel, loves the message, and wants to be baptized. He is an elder in another church, but we are continuing to teach him hoping he will become fully converted to the church. But the cool part was that we went to teach him, he was asleep and asked if we could meet another day. We said it would only be a quick lesson, so he said ok. We taught him the plan of salvation the first two question of where we came from and why we are here. It went really well and ended up not being a quick lesson. He told us that this was by far his most favorite thing we had taught him yet. Its just amazing how the Spirit works. Like this day we also were on splits with out DL and so Elder Smith the Ghanian was with me and the day ended up being really good. I got to see how much I am learning and growing, and the Spirit lead us to people we were to talk to like. For example two people we had kind of dropped because they weren't keeping commitments, but we went and visited them and it had been a while since we had. When we went to both of these men, they both had been reading and learning and seemed to had changed during the time that we had not visited them. It's cool cause we probably would not have gone back, but we felt like we should and look whats happened.
Now for some kind of cool, fun, interesting things. They celebrate a lot of holidays here and every weekend is a big two day funeral party. But the other day was a Muslim holiday and everywhere we went people had been sacrificing goats and then roasting and eating them. Kind of interesting, I know, but we were offered some goat so now I can tack on goat on my list of foods I have had. We got to go to the beach last p-day (did not get into the water no worries) and when in that area I talked about the way, we got to see the beach. It's fun to see and be close to. To think that the ocean and a lot of land is between us kind of bizarre, but I get to just look out and think that you are all on the other side. So next week we had the baptism scheduled, but now its just 1 lady being baptized. The others we have postponed, but it's going to be great. I get to baptize her and she was the one I extend the invitation to last week so its going to be great.
I also really want to tell you all how much love and appreciate all of you. How blessed am I that I was brought up in a home where I learned the gospel, but even more important a loving supporting environment. It's sad to walk around and see so many broken families, and all that here. You feel so bad and want to help, but really can't do much especially when it comes to people suffering. It's not always like this, but you see it while your out and about.
Thank you for the all the love and support. I really do see how I have been blessed. I miss you and will write letters and email next week!!!
Love you son,
Elder Ryan S. Alba
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