5/5/14

Memoajo!!!
Mohotessen??? How is everyone?? I'm doing great! This week was an interesting one. It was busy, and very productive! We have quite a few people we are teaching that are progressing very well. Several of them are being baptized this month. However, transfers end this week :( so either Elder Noble or I will not be here for the baptisms... I am really going to miss Elder Noble. He is my missionary trainer. Your first 2 transfers (12 weeks total) you are trained in the mission field. A senior, more experienced missionary that is a powerful teacher and very effective in every aspect of missionary work trains you to help you learn the lessons and ways of contacting, speaking with people, adapting to missionary life, etc. Elder Noble has been a wonderful trainer and has taught me so much. I will be small lost without him.

Anyway, back to our investigators. Ghanaians are so funny! If they don't keep a commitment (such as reading or praying about something), they just say "ahh I'm on it." If they don't want to make a commitment, they just say "Um that will be next time." or they pretend to ignore you and "forget." Ay! Sometimes it's frustrating, and other times it's slightly funny how they say it and explain themselves. Anyway, one of our investigators has been notorious for having problems with commitments. A couple weeks ago, Augustine (our investigator) had a dream that made him scared of us a little bit. Ghanaians are very superstitious, especially him. Anyway, he had a dream that Elder Noble was going to sacrifice him and right after Elder Noble poured water all over him and tied him down, he woke up. We had to really strongly encourage him to not believe that dream and that he should actually truly pray to know if we are called of God to be missionaries and if what we were sharing with him was true. Well surprisingly, he still wanted to meet with us after the dream, just not as often. And it also explains why he hasn't been keeping commitments as well. We have been fasting and praying that his prayers will be answered sooner than later! Bad dreams and bad feelings NEVER come from God, even if the answer to a question is "no." Why am I sharing that experience? I just thought it was funny that someone thought that Elder Noble would sacrifice them because... well you just have to know Elder Noble. haha. sorry! It doesn't quite have an uplifting and inspiring end to the story... Yet!


This Sunday we also got to watch General Conference! FINALLY!! We saw the 2 Sunday morning sessions for church. The problem was, they did all 4 hours wiht only a 10 minute break in between.... I've never seen more people sleeping during a General Conference. I'll admit, it was even a little long for me, but I was excited to finally see it and I loved all the talks! One of the talks that I really enjoyed was Elder David A. Bednar's talk. His talk was on "being yoked alongside Christ so our burdens may be light." We all pray to God for help and deliverance, and I'm sure most of us have had times where those prayers have been answered. I would just like to point our something- it does not say our burdens will be taken away, just that our burdens will be lighter! We always expect that the Lord will automatically make everything go away and everything better. This is not the case. God gives us trials to learn and grow. Part of the learning in these trials is learning how to have Christ Help with our burdens instead of just taking them away completely. I've been experiencing this first hand. When I first got here, I expected that everytime I was struggling, my trials would go away when I prayed. I quickly learned that is not the case! Instead, The Lord helped me to leanr how to cope witht these trials and empathize with the wonderful people of Ghana because I struggle just like they do.


This church is so true! Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. Both He and God love us so much. Please always know that!


So pictures for this week... We did a service project! Weeding- the Ghanaian version of lawn mowing. You take a machete and just whack the snot out of plants until they are trimmed as low as you want. It took a little for me to master the technique, but then I think I finally got it down ;)


Anyway, i hope everyone had an enjoyable week! I love you all!


Love,

Elder Robinson

Just some pics since I don't have much time. 4/22/14

So I'm stirring banku if you're wondering what's in the pot...and the stud in the shades is Elder Reid... and Elder Noble doesn't like when I take pictures of him napping during lunch time...

4/14/14

Hello Everyone!

So I'm still alive, but I don't really have much time, so I'm just goign to send a bunch of pictures from the week, and hopefully I have next week to eplain them. This week was so so so busy! We had zone meeting, zone conference, and we are now preparing for a mission tour next month! It was an awesome week with very very very many spiritual moments.

Spiritual thought- "Get on your knees and pray, then get on your feet and work." -President Gordon B. Hinckley. Often, we do the praying part. We all face challenges and trials, and we all seek for help. However, do we always do our part of the deal with God? Or do we just expect him to fix it without any work from us? The whole point of challenges and struggles are for us to learn and grow. I was told in an email not to long ago that challenges are just blessings in disguise. That is so very true. When we have challenges, we learn and grow and become better people as we overcome the challenges. That doesn't mean we always have to face and solve the challenges all by ourselves. No matter how big or small the challenge, I would truly recommend you pray! After praying, then do your part and just try very hard to recognize the help when it comes along. I know that God will answer every single one of our prayers if we just do our part.

Sorry for such a short email. My really cool stories are too long for the 7 minutes I have to type :( I hope all of y'all's weeks went well! I love y'all! Enjoy the pictures.

Love,

Elder Robinson

P.S. However, the one picture I really do have to tell about is the second picture. This picture is of Kwajo Asomoah's parents and siblings. He is a famous professional soccer player for Juventus. His parent shave us over for dinner the first Monday of every month. Suuuper nice house! The food isn't bad either...

4/7/14

Hello Everyone!!!
How are y'all?? How was conference?? Unfortunately, we don't get to watch it here until after the DVD copies are made and sent out from the church, so we just had a regular fast and testimony meeting. I mean, don't get me wrong, it was great, but I really enjoy hearing the prophet. Haha. This week wasn't too bad... There was quite a bit of fun in some of it! One of our investigators, Effia, had her baby and I got a picture to show you all! Eyefe pa! "So stinkin cute!" The baby's name is Abina. We are teaching quite a few people right now and I love it. One thing I have found out though is that the time you schedule to see them is not the time you will see them. It's 2 days after the time you scheduled. So we've started planning accordingly to try to adapt to that, and it seems like they're now starting to change the pattern. So that's a little frustrating.. But that's okay because cancelled appointments just means some time to find more people to teach this wonderful and amazing Gospel! I never realize dhow blessed this Gospel truly makes you until I came on my mission. It is awesome.

So this weekend, there was a ward party/get together thing that the missionaries were invited to and it was tons of fun! It was mainly the Young Single Adults and they told us to invite our investigators. We invited all of them, but only Daniel and Yaovi came. Yaovi doesn't really count as an investigator because he is now officailly a brand new member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But it was awesome! There was drawing charades, musical chairs, tons of food, laughing, and a bunch of good just hanging out for an hour and a half. Yaovi was so great. He put an American flag hanky around his waist like a skirt and was just dancing around having the time of his life. Haha.

Then on Sunday, Elder Seyoumand I went for an FM (free meal) that had bushmeat. Elder Amadai refused to go with Elder Seyoum, so we got it cleared that Elder Seyoum and I could go on "splits." Never refuse an FM. Especially not on fast Sunday. We both really wanted to go because this would be the very first time we had grasscutter. I'm not exactly sure why I was so excited to try that... meat... The food was absolutely delicious! Seth, the guy who had us over, is a tailor. He is going to fix my shirts for me because they look like "giant blankets on a not so bolo (fat) guy anymore." Haha. Oh Seth, he says some really funny things. He was so excited we actually came. It was as if he thought we would turn down food as starving Americans in Africa... But he was way to eager to offer us food. i take pride in the fact that I helped pound the fufu, but if I knew Elder Seyoum and I would be the ones eating ALL of it, I woulldn't have pounded so much... The first bowl came out, it had some beautiful fufu balls, fish, and then some hairy thing... That hairy thing was the bush meat. I wasn't so excited to eat it anymore... So Elder Seyoum and I easily inhaled (literally, because you just swallow it) our fufu balls and then ate some fish. Seth waas so excited we ate the fufu so fast, he brough us some even bigger fufu balls. Now in Ghana, It's almost insulting when you don't eat all the food, and it is absolutely insulting if you don't eat any of the food or refuse it. So we ate the next fufu and I was feeling very satisfied... but we still had this bush meat. When Seth went in the other room, Elder Seyoum and I rock-paper-scissored over who had to eat the grasscutter skin. The meat wasn't bad, but I don't like hair on my food, not to mention the real fur that was never scraped off. But I'm proud to say that I ate all of that grasscutter. However, when Seth saw that we had eaten everything in the bowl, he insisted that we eat more. We tried saying no thank you, but he was starting to get offended. So after 3 pounds of fufu apiece, probably more, and some really interesting meat, we gave up before the second grasscutter helpings. Fortunately, Seth was all too happy to finish that for us and he didn't feed us anything else. I was so grateful for that meal, but I couldn't walk for a good hour afterwards. haha. What I've learned from Ghana is that the less you question what you're about to swallow, the easier it is to eat it. Sometimes it's surprisingly delicious!

Anyway, that's the exciting stuff for the week. Now for the spiritual thought :) I was reading in the Book of Mormon the other day in Alma, and I came across Alma 7:11-13. It talks about Jesus Christ, and all the many pains and afflictions and sufferings he went through for US. Christ is hands down the most selfless person to ever walk this earth. I never appreciated all He did for us until I came on mission and really thought about it. He never had to do any of these things. At any time in his earthly ministry, Christ could have easily just said "Okay. I'm done. That's good enough. I'm tired of hurting for other people." and he would have been lifted of all his earthly burdens and released from the world. But he never gave up. Because Jesus Christ loves every single one of us, alive and dead, born and unborn, more than we could ever know. That's why charity is so powerful. The pure love of Christ. Pure. Flawless. It's amazing. I know that my Redeemer lives. I known that it is through Jesus Christ that we are saved. Not by missionaries, pastors, teachers, but by Jesus Christ.

I hope everyone is safe and enjoying life. I love you all.
Love,
Elder Robinson

Almost forgot pictures!! Here are some from the party, the meal, the week, and the baby!

4/1/14

Majoo!
How is everyone this week? Sorry I did not explain the pictures last week, We email at internet cafes and I was runnin out of time. When you run out of time, it exits you out whether you send it or not, so I hurried and sent it. So I'll explain the pics. The one with me and two other guys in all white is a picture of the guys being baptized- Ferdinand and Yaovi. Ferdinand is half British/half Ghanaian, Yaovi is half Ghanaian/half Togonese. Then there is a picture of Elder Noble, their families, the ward mission leader (David Asiedu, in the back left next to Ferdi) and myself. The next picture is elder Noble and I with some of our investigators that came to church and then the baptism- Andrews, Yaovi again wit his little brother, Felix, Daniel, and Jocela. The other pictures are just me and some of the members of the ward.

Anyway, This week wasn't anything crazy. The only super exciting thing that happened is that Ferdi and Yao were confirmed so they are now official members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! It is so awesome. I just love seeing the smiles they have on their faces. It makes all this hard work and occasional struggle worth it.
Also on sunday, we had the best meal ever. Sister Solo, a member in Boukrom, invited us (Elders Noble, Robinson, Seyoum, Amadi, Riddle, and Holmquist) over for dinner as a goodbye dinner for Elder Riddle. He will be home Wednesday of this week. She made us the best fufuo I've had yet! It was fufuo with light soup, chicken, and. The thing about fufuo is that you don't chew it, you swallow it. It is the best food you will ever have. Trust me. I love it. Another thing is that I pride myself in being able to swallow bigger pieces of fufuo than any person I chop fufuo with. Instead of saying "eat," Ghanains say "chop." I've picked up that slang because it sounds cool and it's actually kind of catchy. However, The English they speak here is not the best and it's making mine worse. So please bare with me if I'm hard to understand at times.
I can't really think of much to write... It wasn't really an exciting week. We survived again... but I do have some cool pictures! I took some shots of some areas that Elder Noble and I proselyte in. We have one of the largest proselyting areas in the mission. We haven't even been able to touch half of it because we can't reach it without a car. So when you walk everywhere, it makes it a little tough to get there.... But a really cool thing I noticed is that when Ghana has rainbows,they form a circle around the sun. I think it's because Ghana is so close to the equator, but I'm not too sure. But anyway, Here's some pics! Enjoy! I hope you all have a great week ad are safe! I love y'all!


Oh! Thought for the week-

In sacrament, a returned missionary named Felix gave a talk, and he used this quote (No idea where it is from)- "They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." That is so very true. All caps, underline, and bold that statement. People don't care how smart you are, what you've done, or anything until they know that you care for them. Show people how much you care. Serve them and love them. It will definitely make life easier for both you and for them.
Love,
Elder Robinson



P.S.- Some picture of Ghana, the fufuo before, during and after, and then Elder Riddle with his good bye cake this morning

3/24/14

Eyyooo y'all!

How have y'all been?? So a phone conversation my zone leader and I had on Thursday evening really sums up how my week went...

Me: Buddy the elf, what's your favorite color? (It's how I always answer, the Africans love it)

Elder Lawson (FROM PHILLY!!): Green! good evening!

Me: Good Evening Elder Lawson! To what do I owe the honor?

Elder Lawson: Senda (the other ZL) and I are just calling to see how you and Elder Noble are doing. How are you two holding up?

Me: We are great!... Except we have no food. And no water. And no money. Most of our investigators have cancelled their appointments.... And the power just went out... And we can't pay our power bill until Monday....

Yeah... Quite the week.... But it was still great! We had many very cool experiences! Besides the minor personal issues... haha. And the week ended on a very good note! We had two baptisms on Sunday! Ferdinand and Yaovi were baptized! AND I BAPTIZED THEM!!! The experience was awesome. This church is just so stinkin true. Ya know, things aren't always easy. We have very many rough times. But honestly, we didn't starve. People looked out for us. They fed us meals. The bishop even invited us over for fufu! That is hands down the best food in Ghana. Even better than pizza! But anyway, I just realized I've been neglecting something. I never share any spiritual insight! So from now on, I would love to shar3e some thoughts on some scriptures I have read during the week at least twice a month.

So this week, I was reading in the Book of Mormon in Alma and I came across the scripture(s) Alma 32:28-30. These verses are amazing! It tells the importance of scripture study. It enlightens our minds, helps us through daily challenges, builds us as a person, and increase our faith. On top of all that, the more we read scriptures, the more desire we will have to read them. It's so cool! why should we read scripture? As we read scripture, we gain wholesome knowledge that helps to bring us closer to God, Jesus Christ, and our friends in families. In them we can find answers to things that will help us show more love and care. Tuime's up! I love you all.

Love,

Elder Robinson

Weekly Update

Majooo!!!
How is everyone?! So Ghana is great, as usual. I'm sorry I didn't write real email last week. My email time was even more limited than usual. So this week I'll try to make up for it! So these last 2 weeks, have been crazy rough but crazy awesome at the same time. We have power for about 4 hours a day, so for a pampered American, I've done my fair share of complaining. The problem with Kumasi electricity is that it is hydroelectric. Ghana is one of the richest oil countries, but as I've said before, Ghana is not very good with their spending in money or resources. I mean, I guess hydroelectric power is much better for the environment so I guess I really shouldn't complain... But anyway, Kumasi uses hydroelectric power and it all based off of one big dam for the area we are in (our apartment is in Bomsu). And whenever the water level is low in the dam, which is pretty much all the time because Kumasi is very dry, the power will not work for certain areas of the city. Our area just so happens to be one of those. The weird thing is, it has actually rained alot this week. And when you have to walk everywhere, a 3 mile walk home in the rain really stinks. I guess I should just bring my soap along... Showering with buckets is about the same, and that's what we do anyway. Actually, the rain is probably warmer than the water we shower with... haha.
Anyway, a bunch to write, not exactly sure where to start! We've been doing some really cool things that I don't have pictures for because I'm worried my camera will get destroyed by the rain. But I do have some cool pictures! So this week, we helped a guy "tile" his barber shop floor. Shops and stores here usually aren't much bigger than 10 ftX10 ft unless you go really deep into town. But all we basically did was put cement down, then push broken tile pieces randomly into the cement, and then just clean up the extra cement. I've also pounded a bunch more fufu, most fo wish I didn't get to eat because I just stop at random times while we are walking and ask people if I can pound their fufu because I think it's fun. Most people usually laugh when I first ask. They think I have "soft white man hands." The thing about pounding fufu is that it gives you blisters unless you have calluses and such. So I have to convince them I have tough enough hands by having them feel them and then they let me pound as much as I want. And then they say a bunch of Twi words thanking me for helping and I say "yo", which means okay in Twi because I still don't understand some of the things they say quite yet.
But other than that, stuff is pretty much the usual. We have a ton of people we are teaching. I love it. i love sharing this gospel and I love when I see other peoples' testimonies grow as well. The people here are so kind and friendly and so excited to hear the gospel. But today, I just want to talk about the people. The people of Ghana are very hard working. Everyone works to survive, sometimes even the children under 10 years old. They are always so eager to find someone in a shirt and tie who will just acknowledge them and talk to them. I love seeing the smiles on their faces after they smile and say hello. I really love Ghana. The people here could care less what I did in the United States. They could care less how many friends I had, what sports I played, how good I was at those sports, how much money I made. All they want to know is whether or not I will be kind to them and actually show that I care, unlike most white people they come across who just ignore them becuase their English is hard to understand or because they only speak Twi. So that's what I'm determined to do. I'm determined to show every single one of them that they are loved and that they mean something to someone and everyone. This church is true. This gospel is true. The people of Ghana are such wonderful people. And I cannot wait for these two years I get to spend with them. I love you all. I really appreciate all the pictures y'all send! they make my week! please keep sending them!
Love,
Elder Robinson
Here are some pictures... The stud is Elder Riddle. He goes home in 2 weeks. We played basketball today, and I finally caught a big lizard!!

P.S. Everyone tell Rhett happy birthday tomorrow! My little brother is getting old!!