Kwame's Baptism

This week was a good week for sure. Not too much happened honestly except for a lot of teaching and then yesterday we had another one of the great moments on my misison. Brother Owoahene Acheampong Fendi (aka Kwame) entered the waters of baptism.  Wow, what a great feeling that was to step down into the font with him and baptize him.  There are not many things to have in life so far that i have experienced, than to see someone find the truth, embrace it, and want to live it. We were also very glad to see that Kwame's mom, Sister Precious was able to come up from Kumasi and also that Momzoza came to church and to the baptism to see her grandson get baptized. What an absolutely amazing day it was! I will send some pictures as well. 

We are also having some decent success with another Brother, his name is Kyei (pronounced chay). But for him it has been really difficult so far. He is willing to come to church and for the last two weeks he has been coming, but he just doesn't want to embrace or believe or read the Book of Mormon, and the problem is that that book is what holds this religion together, without it, we would really have nothing different than all the other churches all over the world using the bible.  So yeah we are trying to get him to read and pray, its really not that much that we are asking him to do, but he has been somehow stubborn about it. We are continually praying for him and trying to help him understand though.

Today was a good day, we woke up early and as a district, we went on a hike on a pretty sweet mountain, although its not quite like a mountain back home, it was pretty huge for here and man it was not an easy climb, as it was basically a staircase with some trail in there sometimes, straight up that had exactly 805 stairs and each stair was tall, it was actually a pretty hard climb haha. But it was way fun and we got some pretty nice pictures and we all got really sweaty haha! so yeah this week has been a really good one! I am also looking forward to next Monday where we will be having a 4 zone soccer tournament and we already know who is gonna win that... (us haha what kind of question is that?)

I hope all of you are doing well. I love you all so much.

Elder Porritt

Kwame's Baptism

 Just so you can see, my mommy here in Ghana is the one in the dress with plenty colors. Thats Momzoza:)

Good old Elder Adjei's birthday was on Thursday so we had a nice little church movie party

Our hike today

Just a good catch with Elder Wardle

My Little Chipper Jones

Here is a video that I, Elder Porritt's Mum, shared with him today.   For those of you that know Hunter, know that he literally grew up with a bat and ball in his hands.  Whenever anyone asked him his name, he would respond with "I'm Chipper Jones".  This week he told me that his name was still Chipper Jones.  I love this kid!!

Keep the Covenants of the Temple

Hello to everyone! 

This week was another warm and good one for myself and Elder Adjei! the two of us are really getting along and working hard to try and improve this work here in Agona. We have some progress on Kwame, the 10 year old who is the grandson of the amazing Momzoza. He should be baptized this coming Sunday so updates on that will come next week. 

We also have this new brother that we have been teaching. Brother Ky. For him, he was really skeptic about the church when we were first coming to discuss things with him. He has had a TON of questions about the Book of Mormon, but for me i like it because i know that he has heard things about it that are not true and now he is trying to find out what the real truth about the BoM is. For him I really am excited. He came to church yesterday and I know that he felt the spirit. When I was teaching Sunday school, he was just looking at the pictures in the Gospel Principles manual, and he came across the picture in there of the Salt Lake Temple, and when he came across it, i payed attention to him and his face, and he paused and just stared at it for like seriously 2 minutes and i know that the Spirit was telling him something, so i am really hoping that this week when we go there to discuss again with him that he will share with us the feelings that he was feeling when he was at church cause even me i was feeling the spirit when he was looking at it. 

Those were our real highlights for the week. I do have something I wanted to share though with all of you. This came about a month ago when we had Elder Vinson from the 70 come to the mission and talk to us. He told us this very important quote: "your time on this earth is wasted if you don't make and keep the covenants of the temple."  for some reason i have been thinking about that a lot lately and just wanting all of you to also have that knowledge. Even the encouragement would be that you all should be striving to go to the temple if you haven't already, and when you do, strive your best to keep the covenants that you have made with your Heavenly Father. 

I love you all and i hope you have a great week! 

Elder Porritt

My Elephant Bud!!

 ummmmmm yeah this happened

no caption needed for this one.... just pure goodness

My New Companion, Elder Adjei

Well hello all,

This week was a real good one! Especially today! But for this week, I was able to get my new companion, Elder Adjei, and we have been getting along way way good. He is a way funny guy and we are doing well with each other. For him, he is a Ghanaian, he comes from I think he said Central Region in Ghana from a place called Acuiapim or something, i don't know how to spell it haha. But he has been here on mission for one year exactly as of yesterday. He has been a member for about 12 or 13 years i think. He is a way good guy and we are going to have an awesome time together as companions!! 

This week as far as teaching goes, we are still progressing with Kwame, he is excited about baptism which will probably come in two weeks. As for the rest of our investigators, they always seem really really happy to learn with us when we come and they seriously promise us that they will come to church on Sunday, but then 9 am rolls around Sunday morning, and all of their phones are off and they don't show up..... we even had one guy call us Sunday morning at like 8, he asked me what time the meetings started, I told him 9, then he said sweet ill see you there. and he never showed up... so yeah its not easy. There are a few problems we are facing with things in the branch and the district but its not an excuse for us, so we are really trying to do our best to keep working our hardest.  One thing that we kinda just say as missionaries is that 'its not easy' but then we say 'it wasn't easy for Christ, so why should it be easy for us?' and that really keeps us working our hardest. We have had a little bit more success with teaching because now we are able to talk with people who speak Twi only. Although its pretty awkward, because i just sit there for like 30 or so minutes, I don't say anything, and then we leave hahaha... Its weird but its good cause we are able to talk to them even if its just my companion talking. Hopefully that will open up some new opportunities to teach new people and bring them to the Church. Also one sweet thing that has been happening is that i have been learning a little bit more Twi. I am starting to be able to hear what people are talking about, I cant tell like everything but i can make out what they are talking about most times, I just cant talk back for most things haha. 

Anyway, last night, our district met at our chapel and we all rode down to Kumasi so we could stay the night last night and be able to spend the day today in Kumasi and go to the good old Kumasi zoo!! We had a blast today at the zoo. Even though its really really sad how they treat the animals and a lot of the animals look very sick and have some weird tumors and stuff. But the sweetest part was that there was an elephant just roaming around the main field part, not in a cage, as well as two huge camels!! So that was sweet!! The elephant would get mad sometimes and start charging people or swinging his trunk and smashing us, i even got headbutted once... it was pretty scary but man it was an absolute blast. There may not be another zoo on earth where you can just chill with an elephant right there and feed it *or saddle it up and ride it......* wait a minute we didn't do that... or did we? You will be able to see some of the pictures i send home! It was a real sweet place even though it is nothing compared to a zoo back home. 

For the rest of today, we have just been in Kumasi and we will also be staying the night because we have a Zone meeting tomorrow morning, so it has been a good day today, and I know tomorrow will also be a good day!! 

For me, i know that this Gospel is true and this Church is true. I love my Savior Jesus Christ, and I know that for all of us, He gave His perfect life that we might have the opportunity to try our best to become perfect, and that we might be able to live again. 

I love you all and hope you all have a great week! Thank you all for your continuous love and support.

Love Elder Porritt

Today's activity

You already know this elephant was our best bud!!

 Pumba???

 hahaha.... what is this?

 Me and my new guy, Elder Adjei!!!

Only about half the primary here in Agona

Riding to Kumasi in a small taxi with 6 elders last night......

District Leader!

Hello everyone!! 

This week has been alright i guess. It was kind of a hard week with it being the last week of the transfer and just everyone expecting transfer news and all that. But anyway, transfer news, I will be staying in Agona and getting a new companion, who's name is Elder Adjei, and I will now be the District Leader here in Agona. So I am pretty excited and it will be good to have Elder Adjei come here, i have served with him a little bit back in Techiman, so the two of us will get along well.

This week we have been teaching brother Kwame, who is the 10 year old kid who is Momzoza's grandson, and he is really excited about learning and he and his younger sister, Amma, come to church together and everything with them is just great. So here in a few weeks he will probably be baptized, ill keep you informed. 

Other than that, there is not much that happened this week. It has been a really slow week. But it has been a good week! Hopefully this coming week will be better!!

I know that this Gospel is true. I know that we have a living Prophet on the Earth today who receives revelation straight from Jesus Christ to lead and guide us and help us know what we can do better in our own lives. I know that our Savior, Jesus Christ is truly our leader and Savior. He died for us and because of Him, we will live again.   I love being a missionary here in Ghana.  I love you all and hope you have a great week!!

Love Elder Porritt

Me pounding fufu

 Fufu

 Eating pizza today with the District

Mother's Day

This is from Elder Porritt's Mom:

One of the greatest blessings in my life, my family.  Being their Mum & Grandma, is all I need.  It was so nice to all be together again with  the help of technology.  The smile on Elder Hunter Porritt's face tells his story.  What a beautiful day!

Love the People Around You!

Hello there everyone!

This has been a pretty rough week for the Elders in Agona due to another sickness that hit me hard on Thursday afternoon, and lasted til when i woke up Sunday. I am fine now thankfully and it was not anything way too serious but it was enough to keep us in the apartment, and to keep me in the bathroom all day... lets just leave it at that haha...

Anyway we really didn't teach a whole lot this week due to losing two and a half days of proselyting. We do have a new investigator who is way sweet. I forgot his name cause we only have seen him once at Church but he is Momzoza's grandson who is 10 yrs old. Momzoza's daughter is a member who has been in the Agona branch in the past but is now in Kumasi in a big ward and her son is now living with Momzoza and wants to be baptized so we will be going there to teach him so we will see how that goes. he is a way sweet kid and i will let you all know his name next week haha.

That is about it for what has happened this week. I am pretty excited for tomorrow. We will have the opportunity to be taught by Elder Vinson who is a Seventy and a member of the Africa West Area Presidency.  So Next week I will let you all know how that goes.

I hope you all have a great week, maybe if i could leave some small advice with you all, and this really does apply for everyone. You don't know the impact you can have on someone.  You never know what other people might be going through, even if they don't act like anything may be wrong, so treat them like you love them.  Even if you don't know if anything will come from it, love the people around you, and cherish their lives, because you never know when they could be gone. Something i learned in baseball was to play every game like its your last, its the same with life, live every day like its your last, because truly... you never know when it could come to an end. life is precious.

i love you all,

Elder Porritt

Just some good pictures of Elder Hill and I in some real nice traffic today in Kumasi