Elder Porritt in Ghana: Beware of Pride

Hello everyone! Sorry my email is on Tuesday, yesterday my email wasn't working and we actually don't know what is wrong with it, hopefully they get it fixed soon, but i hope all is well back home! Things here are good! We got transfer news a few days ago and i will be staying here in Agona with Elder Adjei. I am pretty excited about that. I will miss Elder Hill though as he is being transferred to be a Zone Leader. it is a good thing for him, but ill sure miss the good times i have had with him. hopefully we meet up again soon.

This week was a good one for sure. On Tuesday we had our Zone conference which was great. We were mainly learning about and reviewing a talk that was given by Ezra Taft Benson called 'Beware of Pride'. i would like all of you to go and read that talk. i really learned a lot and i learned that all of us have a LOT of pride in our lives, even though we may not think so or maybe we don't even realize it. There are a lot of things in my own life that i need to do better and i would be willing to bet that also for you, there are things that you can do better.

On Saturday and Sunday we had our District Conference which is basically the same thing as stake conference, except we are not in a stake with wards, we are in a district with branches. So yeah it was pretty nice. We were fortunate enough to be instructed by an area Seventy, Elder Daniel Yirenya-Tawiah who is Ghanaian and he had some very powerful instruction, the one thing that he centered on was this. "Love Conquers" he basically said that there is never a situation that comes up in a family with parents, children, brothers and sisters, or husband and wife, that cant be solved. They can all be solved if greater love is displayed. Love really can fix anything he said. And some people back home, you may think that that isn't true, but for me i believe it. If we can show the pure love of Christ (charity) to whoever we have a conflict with, things can be worked out if we humble ourselves. that is key, is not having pride, and being humble.

Anyway probably the highlight of the week was yesterday. Elder Hill and his comp came down from Mampong and kinda spent the day with us cause we were going to email at our chapel, and so there was only one working computer at the time so Elder Hill and I decided to take the 2 ball gloves i brought and the ball, and go over to the park where all the kids and people play soccer right in the middle of town. We thought it would be cool to see how many people would watch us. And man, you would not believe how many people stopped what they were doing and just stared at us playing catch, long tossing. it felt so good to be out on a big area where i could long toss with someone who knows also how to throw. There was one point where with all the kids who had just finished school, and all the adults who stopped what they were doing, there was easy 300 people just watching every move haha. it was SWEET!!! it got to a point where we were long tossing and i gave my camera to one of the members here who was also a student, and he video-ed us playing long toss and me catching the ball behind my back and all the kids were going crazy haha it was amazing!! You never would have though that so many people would pay attention to two white guys, but it was amazing for sure!!

Anyway, things here in GH are going awesome. I hope all of you know that i love you. Keep working hard in the things that you do, and Beware of Pride.

Love Elder Porritt

This is for you mom, since we were awarded cleanest apartment in the mission.