So, this week was kind of crazy. I went on splits with Elder Bills on Tuesday, until 1700, and then on splits with Elder Farnbach (ZL) from 1700 to 1600 the next day. He had to check out to be sure that the baptismal goal we set for October was legit (we said 5, which is apparently really high for here). He met with the people we are planning on for our goal, and passed them all. So now we're just working as hard as we can, and praying, that they will choose to keep their commitments and be baptized in due time.
It's kind of hard; I'm not good at writing events [David requested that Jacob add more “events” or specifics of what is happening rather than what lessons he is learning]. I tend to keep track of the state of mind of everything, what I got out of it all, or any insights I get during the week. This week though, none of that really happened. But I'll try to write as much of what did happen as I can. Either way, here goes.
First thing I remember is that we had to drop a lady we had been seeing since before I even showed up here. She hadn't been keeping commitments, she hadn't read, she was canceling appointments, not coming to Church, etc. All she wanted to do was be buddy-buddy with the missionaries; she had no interest in what we were trying to teach her. So Elder Farnbach told her that, and showed her how she didn't value what we had given her, what the Lord had given her. She got angry, wouldn't listen to our 'increase in love' at the end of it, and was still mad the next day when Elder Zadi and I saw her on the street. But the day after that, she said she missed having us teach her, that she didn't feel as good anymore, etc, and that she would be willing to read and whatnot. It seems like she finally got the hint and looked at what was really before her, and changed for the better. We shall see. Let's hope it's for the better!
We started teaching a family: Aunty Dorris and her family (Sewa is her daughter). Dorris and Eramah (her other daughter) have been reading and praying, and really feel the Spirit. They both say they know the Church, the Book of Mormon, and everything we've taught them is true; they also believe Joseph Smith was a prophet. It's great; they came to Church and everything, and invited us over for fufu for dinner Sunday. We convinced them to let us pound (it's not that bad; you just get scared that you're going to crush the person's fingers as she mixes the dough stuff after you pound) and then got them to let us wash some dishes (it's usually impossible to get them to let us help!). They then served us the fufu with light soup (no idea why it's called that), goat (yum - ah not!), fish, and snail. Not just normal garden snails, though. The snails here are massive. And very, very chewy. It didn't taste all that bad; you can taste it yourself if you walk into some kinda Greenhouse place, or Garden store, like Home Depot, and take a nice big whiff and let it rest upon your palette. That's the taste; no joke. Elder Bills and I both were laughing about that. The only problem with the snail is that, well, it's snail. The mentality of what you're (unless you’re French) eating makes it hard to keep eating it. But you just don't think about it, ignore the incredible chewiness of it all, and keep eating. Then it's actually not bad.
It's kind of hard; I'm not good at writing events [David requested that Jacob add more “events” or specifics of what is happening rather than what lessons he is learning]. I tend to keep track of the state of mind of everything, what I got out of it all, or any insights I get during the week. This week though, none of that really happened. But I'll try to write as much of what did happen as I can. Either way, here goes.
First thing I remember is that we had to drop a lady we had been seeing since before I even showed up here. She hadn't been keeping commitments, she hadn't read, she was canceling appointments, not coming to Church, etc. All she wanted to do was be buddy-buddy with the missionaries; she had no interest in what we were trying to teach her. So Elder Farnbach told her that, and showed her how she didn't value what we had given her, what the Lord had given her. She got angry, wouldn't listen to our 'increase in love' at the end of it, and was still mad the next day when Elder Zadi and I saw her on the street. But the day after that, she said she missed having us teach her, that she didn't feel as good anymore, etc, and that she would be willing to read and whatnot. It seems like she finally got the hint and looked at what was really before her, and changed for the better. We shall see. Let's hope it's for the better!
We started teaching a family: Aunty Dorris and her family (Sewa is her daughter). Dorris and Eramah (her other daughter) have been reading and praying, and really feel the Spirit. They both say they know the Church, the Book of Mormon, and everything we've taught them is true; they also believe Joseph Smith was a prophet. It's great; they came to Church and everything, and invited us over for fufu for dinner Sunday. We convinced them to let us pound (it's not that bad; you just get scared that you're going to crush the person's fingers as she mixes the dough stuff after you pound) and then got them to let us wash some dishes (it's usually impossible to get them to let us help!). They then served us the fufu with light soup (no idea why it's called that), goat (yum - ah not!), fish, and snail. Not just normal garden snails, though. The snails here are massive. And very, very chewy. It didn't taste all that bad; you can taste it yourself if you walk into some kinda Greenhouse place, or Garden store, like Home Depot, and take a nice big whiff and let it rest upon your palette. That's the taste; no joke. Elder Bills and I both were laughing about that. The only problem with the snail is that, well, it's snail. The mentality of what you're (unless you’re French) eating makes it hard to keep eating it. But you just don't think about it, ignore the incredible chewiness of it all, and keep eating. Then it's actually not bad.
 |
| Picture of the snail.... |
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| Cleaning up the bowl |
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| Pounding the fufu |
After dinner, we gave a lesson about the Sabbath Day, and how to keep it Holy, and how it's a commandment. Eramah hated the lesson; on the way home (we walked her home because Dorris had to come to the 0800 meeting due to duties in her church.) she wanted to buy some plantain chips, and we wouldn't let her. We felt bad; she almost started crying! But we talked her out of it and got her home before she lost it (I said a prayer, because we were lost as to what to do, and soon afterwards one of her neighbors whom we had met before pulled up and offered us a ride. Yay for answered prayers!) But apparently, in their current church, everyone can buy stuff during and in between the services. Dorris, however, said she felt like she had been "delivered" because of what we taught. She had always had a problem with people doing that, and now that she saw - in the Bible even (Neh. 10:31, 13:15-21) - that it was commanded not to do it, she loved it, and promised she would always obey it.
It's going really well with that family. I have high hopes for them; Dorris is the primary teacher person at her church, and would make a perfect Primary President for us at the Ward - the Primary President is moving out two days before Dorris' scheduled baptismal date. Who knows; maybe she can get that calling after she's confirmed? haha. If not, she's the perfect example of a relief society member. She gives us stuff every time we stop by and say hi; last time she gave us a huge bag of garri (dried cassava) and a huge bag of peanuts. The time before that, we got a massive 15 lbs bag of fruit. It's great! I love that family; not only are they really nice, but they're so well prepared to receive the Gospel. It's always a delight teaching them and meeting with them.
After the lesson, Elder Zadi had to send the numbers to the ZL's, so he left the talking area (I could still see him; he was just out of the way) and I talked with the family and Bro. Botwe (Sewa's friend and the guy who gave us them as a referral). We started talking about who knows what, and eventually Bro. Botwe said something about the UK, and told me he never realized they didn’t do that something in America. I quickly explained that there's a big difference between the UK and the US. That somehow got us into talking about accents in English, and I mentioned how if I spoke in my Texas accent, they'd have no idea what I was saying. They asked me to talk small in 'Texan', so I did. They flipped out; they loved it. So they asked me to talk in Californian accent; I just said like, and threw in some small surfer dude stuff, and they flipped again. Then Aunty Dorris mentioned watching BBC and asked me to do that accent, so I did, and they flipped again. They never really hear any English other than what small (and very bad grammar) they have down here. In the end, they asked me to do the accents for Texas, California, England, Scotland, Ireland, and then spoke a wee bit of Spanish. They loved it; they had never heard any of it before.
Speaking of Spanish; I really wish I had had someone to speak Spanish with these past 4 years so I didn't forget so much of it. It's incredibly useful; to a degree, anyways. If people start speaking to me in Twi, and are deliberately insulting, I just talk to them in Spanish, and it shocks them into silence. They've never heard it before and it completely throws them off. They forget what they were saying, why they hated me (other than the fact that I'm White and from America; I get reminded of how terrible I am for that every day here; haha), and their entire brain just stops. It's nice, but I can’t remember the vocabulary at all. I can speak bits and pieces, and in truth they have no idea what I'm saying so who cares, but I know what I'm saying, and I want to speak something with a wee bit of sense. Anyways, using Spanish here is just kinda fun. However when I need them to be nice, I use Twi; they love a white guy that can speak Twi (unless they already hate America; then they just find it insulting. But that's only happened a few times so far; haha).
Anyways, that's about it for this week. Report more on it later.
This Gospel is true! Take care, and God bless!
--Elder Collings
It's going really well with that family. I have high hopes for them; Dorris is the primary teacher person at her church, and would make a perfect Primary President for us at the Ward - the Primary President is moving out two days before Dorris' scheduled baptismal date. Who knows; maybe she can get that calling after she's confirmed? haha. If not, she's the perfect example of a relief society member. She gives us stuff every time we stop by and say hi; last time she gave us a huge bag of garri (dried cassava) and a huge bag of peanuts. The time before that, we got a massive 15 lbs bag of fruit. It's great! I love that family; not only are they really nice, but they're so well prepared to receive the Gospel. It's always a delight teaching them and meeting with them.
After the lesson, Elder Zadi had to send the numbers to the ZL's, so he left the talking area (I could still see him; he was just out of the way) and I talked with the family and Bro. Botwe (Sewa's friend and the guy who gave us them as a referral). We started talking about who knows what, and eventually Bro. Botwe said something about the UK, and told me he never realized they didn’t do that something in America. I quickly explained that there's a big difference between the UK and the US. That somehow got us into talking about accents in English, and I mentioned how if I spoke in my Texas accent, they'd have no idea what I was saying. They asked me to talk small in 'Texan', so I did. They flipped out; they loved it. So they asked me to talk in Californian accent; I just said like, and threw in some small surfer dude stuff, and they flipped again. Then Aunty Dorris mentioned watching BBC and asked me to do that accent, so I did, and they flipped again. They never really hear any English other than what small (and very bad grammar) they have down here. In the end, they asked me to do the accents for Texas, California, England, Scotland, Ireland, and then spoke a wee bit of Spanish. They loved it; they had never heard any of it before.
Speaking of Spanish; I really wish I had had someone to speak Spanish with these past 4 years so I didn't forget so much of it. It's incredibly useful; to a degree, anyways. If people start speaking to me in Twi, and are deliberately insulting, I just talk to them in Spanish, and it shocks them into silence. They've never heard it before and it completely throws them off. They forget what they were saying, why they hated me (other than the fact that I'm White and from America; I get reminded of how terrible I am for that every day here; haha), and their entire brain just stops. It's nice, but I can’t remember the vocabulary at all. I can speak bits and pieces, and in truth they have no idea what I'm saying so who cares, but I know what I'm saying, and I want to speak something with a wee bit of sense. Anyways, using Spanish here is just kinda fun. However when I need them to be nice, I use Twi; they love a white guy that can speak Twi (unless they already hate America; then they just find it insulting. But that's only happened a few times so far; haha).
Anyways, that's about it for this week. Report more on it later.
This Gospel is true! Take care, and God bless!
--Elder Collings
Snails? Three words: butter, garlic and parsley.
ReplyDeleteMince a few cloves of garlic, chop parsley fine and mix both with cool (not hard, but not runny) butter.
Purge snails (starve for a couple of days with water in a closed place).
Remove snails from shells; rinse (both the snails and the shells).
Stuff the shells each with one snail and the garlic-butter mixture.
Place on pan (cookie sheet, whatever), turning shells upward as much as possible so as not to lose any of the sauce, in medium oven (150-175 Celsius) for maybe 10 minutes.
Serve with fresh-baked bread: fork the snail out of the shell allowing the garlic-butter to follow and soak the bread.
Yum, yum!
I would imagine the "purge" part is pretty important....
ReplyDelete