Awesome Baptism!!

Dear family,

I hope that everything is going well for you all this week, for us here in Nkawkaw, we have had a great week!! Well isn’t it crazy that time is flying? I can’t believe that General Conference is just a few short days away. I am really hoping that I will be able to watch all the conference, and I hope that you all will watch each session with questions in your hearts, and with full attention because this is the 1 time every 6 months that you will get to hear ALL the Apostles of the Lord speak to you. You only get this opportunity ONCE every six months, I personally wish we got it once per month, cause in those conferences, our Heavenly Father is the one speaking to us through His chosen servants. I pray that each of you will pray to receive answers, and listen closely to the inspired messages that you will be given.

There were really a few highlights from the week, and the first one was that all of my TC’s (my MTC group) went to Kumasi to renew out Non-citizen ID cards cause we were illegal for 2 days.... So I was glad to see all of my good friends that I came here to GKM with. It was a great time talking with everyone and we all went to lunch together. Unfortunately when the guy was doing my picture for my card, he didn’t tell me he was taking a picture so on my new card, I look like a thug.... Its not easy haha.

We had some progress with Stella this week in teaching, but unfortunately she was not able to make it to church... She is doing good still though, we are looking forward to continuing to teach her and help her to understand more about the church. She told us the other day that she will for sure get baptized, she has a really strong fellowship though so I know that she will here in the near future.

Well I guess best for last, the best part of the week was also most likely the highlight of one of the most humble people I know. Bro. Ibrahim was baptized yesterday and it was a day that I will never forget. This whole week he has been preparing for his baptism and finally Saturday he went for the baptismal interview, he did well, then Sunday morning, at 7:45 I called him, and he said that he was already walking to the chapel. Well he lives only 5 minute walk away, so he was likely the first person to reach the building. We got there at about 8:15 and when I saw him, I had NO CLUE who the guy was until he talked. The reason was because before Sunday, he had bushy hair and wasn’t very clean shaven at all, well Sunday morning he had a clean haircut and clean shave, and he was fresh for the first time I think that I have seen him. I was so happy to see all this change in him!! Church was cool, (mainly in Twi....) but after Church, we went downstairs for the baptism, and everything was just very peaceful and joyful. The Spirit was STRONG in the whole service. I think one of the greatest things was the opening Hymn #44 “Beautiful Zion Built Above” for a few reasons, one because this is the most popular hymn in the country of Ghana, they absolutely love it and can actually sing it very well, and also because Ibrahim’s Christian name is Zion and when we were singing this, I could see in his eyes that he was seriously touched by the Spirit, and even I was very touched. I think that was one of the best meetings that I have been in in a long time. We were so happy to see this great moment in such a great man’s life.

I know that the work that I am doing is divine. I know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the only true Church on the face of this Earth.  I encourage each of to do your best to strengthen your knowledge of the Savior Jesus Christ. Go and read through the New Testament, learn about the Man who laid down His sinless Life and learn how you can “come unto Him” and be more like Him. I promise you as you read about His life, you will be uplifted and encouraged to do more in your life.

I love you all and hope you have a great week.

Elder Porritt (Kwame Bofoo)

Our TC's (missing only a few)

 Ibrahim on Saturday

Ibrahim on Sunday

Show Charity to Those Around You

Dear Family,

This week was pretty cool. I hit my year mark, so that's kinda weird..
time is seriously flying. but haha anyway Wednesday was transfer day
so we made the trip with our departing zone members to Kumasi to get
them to the big bus station where all of the missionaries meet for
transfers.  We got the leaving ones off and got the new ones coming
and we came back to good ol’ Nkawkaw. As i said last week, Elder Bbosa
and I are staying together, we only had one change in our apartment,
we lost one guy, Elder Djedje from Ivory Cost and got Elder Precious
from Nigeria who actually was trained by Elder Bbosa so that is cool
for them to be back together in the apartment.

As far as teaching, this week, we are having some good progress with
two investigators. Obviously you have heard about the first one,
Ibrahim, well as for him, he is loving the Gospel more than any person
i have taught so far here in Ghana. He is so willing to follow the
teachings of Jesus Christ. And he is so anxious to get baptized! On
Saturday we went to his house and we were actually planning on doing
his interview Saturday evening so he could be baptized yesterday but
he told us that their tribe’s chief died so they were having a huge
meeting that him an his family had to attend or something so he
wouldn't be able to come to church, so he was seriously like begging us
to do the baptism on Sunday evening, but we explained why we wouldn't
be able to do that, and he finally accepted next week for his baptism,
so we are really looking forward to that next Saturday or Sunday.

The other progress is Sister Stella that we began teaching two weeks
ago, but she travelled to Kumasi the day after we went and taught her
and just returned on Thursday i believe, we saw her on Saturday and
taught her about the Book of Mormon and she was really touched and
excited that there was an evidence that she could read that proves
that Joseph Smith was a true prophet. Well she also came to church
yesterday. For her things are going to work out really great, cause
she was previously going to a one man church (that is basically an
apostate church where they just speak in tongues(babbling) or do crazy
miracles) and she didn't go very often anyway, well she also lives next
door to our Elders Quorom President bro. Maxwell and his wife Rita,
who were baptized somehow recently, and they are great friends, so I
know for sure that Stella already has a great fellowship right by her
so she will certainly come. So those are our two really great
progresses for this week.

That is about all that happened for this week, although i do want to
share with you something that i studied that really had a big impact
on me. This week i was studying a lot about Charity in the scriptures,
and some really really powerful scriptures stood out to me, mainly
Luke 6:27-35, Moroni 7, and all three chapters of John 13-15. I hope
you read these and understand why they are so powerful and relate them
to Mormon's comments on Charity in Moroni chapter 7 from about 45 or
46 going there. I can truly say that i understand that Charity is one
of the most important things that we can have in this life. I hope
that we can all 'pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart,
that we might be filled with this love' so that we can love our fellow
men, we can love God, and we can even love and pray for our enemies
and those who hate us. Loving people may not be easy sometimes but it
truly is a commandment as said by our Savior in Matthew 22:34-40.  I
promise you that if you read these things and understand them, and
truly PRAY unto our Heavenly Father for his love to be a part of us,
then you will become more like Jesus Christ as you go out and show
that Charity to those people around you. Go and do service, go and
visit a friend, a widow, an old couple in your ward, go and do
something good for someone. That is how we can be more like the Savior
and have his love in your life.

I love you all and hope that you have a great week this week!!
Love Elder Hunter Kenneth Porritt

Hump Day Care Package From Mom

 Hit my year mark and my stuff is somehow getting beat hahah... gotta love mission!!

 My Pillow!

1 year on the Mish

Dear Fam,

Well this coming week (17th) i hit my one year mark on mission sooo yeah that is weird.. it still doesn't seem real to me that i have been out for that long but it really is true.

a few thoughts on my year mark though:
-the most significant thing that i have learned on my mission so far is that Heavenly Father loves EVERYONE no matter their situation in life. We all sin in this life but our Father still loves us unconditionally and perfectly. 

-the thing i wish i could change doesn't come from what I've done on mission, it comes from before mission and that is cause back home i really lacked in reading from the scriptures and praying on my own. I would encourage everyone who is alive on this Earth to read daily from the scriptures to learn from the teachings of our Savior Jesus Christ, and to pray to your Heavenly Father daily to learn from  Him and get to know Him.

-the one thing that i have enjoyed the most is getting to know and love the people of Ghana. I know everyone says it when people are going on mission that "you will have a hard time coming home cause of the love you have for the people" and i know that that is a very true statement for me at least. i have loved being around these people even though their culture and mine are not even remotely CLOSE to mine.  I truly love being set apart as a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It is the most amazing thing that i have been a part of in my life up to  this point.

this week was another cool week here in Nkawkaw.  today was especially amazing due to the district activity we had today. i will try and send some pictures today of that one!!! we went to lake Volta which is just right here by Nkawkaw and we were able to go out on a canoe on the lake and we really enjoyed the activity!! Not really much at all happened this week to be honest. Mainly that is due to the HUGE amount of rain that came down this week.  Lately it will be hot hot hot in the morning when we go out, then we come back around 12-1 to eat our lunch and then out of nowhere the rain will just start pounding us and man, when it rains here, it doesn't joke at all, it is HEAVY rain. some news here is  that transfers areon Wednesday and i will be staying here in Nkawkaw with Elder Bbosa and i will be his last companion since he goes home in 6 weeks at the end of this coming transfer. so that is kinda crazy that he is going home but that is how the work is i guess with bro. Ibrahim, this week was looking really good, we went there and had lessons with him throughout the week and he is doing so great but Sunday, his phone was switched off and he never showed up at church... we don't know why still cause still his phone is switched off. We will be going there either tonight or tomorrow to check on him t o see what happened. Unfortunately this will push his baptism back a bit, but we are still seeing a lot of progress with him.

In other news, we had Zone conference on Friday. It was good again to get together with a bunch of the people i have served with in the past and see them and talk to them, and also it was great to be instructed by President Cosgrave again. It was weird though, that i and Elder Bbosa were also part of the instruction with us being the Zone leaders... its still weird to be the one teaching in front of bigger groups of people but its also nice in some ways. I have seriously learned a lot since I've been called to be a Zone Leader! 

One thing that really stuck out to me at zone conf. was one thing that President Cosgrave had us do, he had us to think back on a time when we had an intense experience or revelation from the Holy Ghost and when that happened i immediately thought back to the night when I was with Elder Hill and we had a extremely special experience feeling the spirit, I don't have time to relate all what happened, but ill say that it was the most real feeling that i have ever had in my life. More real in fact than any physical feeling that i have ever felt. I really felt of the presence of my Heavenly Father in that room that night. Well when my mind went to that moment, i was really feeling the Spirit, but then i looked at Elder Hill and i could tell he was thinking the same thing, then he looked at me and we both nodded that we knew that was it, at that moment man i was overtaken, i felt the love of Heavenly Father so strongly, I felt the power of the Atonement so strongly. I know that Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ love us and want us to repent and come back to them, that is why Jesus Christ sacrificed His perfect life for us, in our imperfection.  He knows that we will sin, and He still loves us anyways. I remember what Elder Holland said last General Conference, 'the great part about the Gospel is that we get credit for trying, even when we don't always succeed.' That is why the Atonement of Jesus Christ is the greatest thing that ever happened on this earth. I hope that all of us will remember our Savior each day as we go about our busy living. After all, the things of this life don't have as great an impact on us as the things of the next life. I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior, and His Gospel is found in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
I love you all. Have a wonderful week!

Elder Hunter Kenneth Porritt

Pics are of our activity today at the Lake!!

Busy, Busy, Busy

Hello everyone!

This week was a cool week, but it was somehow different than other weeks that I have had on my mission so far.. the reason is that we were crazy busy with meetings and stuff this week. Tuesday, we had District council like every normal Tuesday, but since last Monday the internet wasn’t working, we had to go to the cafe and email, and send supplies orders for our zone since we had MLC this week. Then Wednesday morning, we had to go to the 2 sister's apartments in our zone and fill their gas tanks (propane) cause the mission has the zone leaders do that for them, don’t know why.. but did that, and then went to Kumasi for MLC.

Before Kumasi, there was some big news because we had a new AP called this week, well our new AP is my guy Elder Hill!!! hahah it’s so crazy that he is AP now but I honestly wasn’t surprised when I found out, the new zone leader called is actually my former companion though, Elder Motloung from South Africa. Kumasi was sweet though, Wednesday night, we met with the Techiman Zone leaders and went to KFC and enjoyed, then went to the mission home and stayed over the night, then Thursday Leadership Council was amazing. I forgot my notes today cause I was going to share some of the things that I loved, but as I said, I forgot.... sorry.

Well Thursday night after the Council, we went out with some of my TC's (the guys I came on mission with at the same time) and we went out to celebrate our 1 year mark (yeah that is weird but its two weeks away..) since I won’t be in Kumasi with them again for who knows how long to do that, so we went and got a nice pizza and had a lot of fun!! It was nice, but I forgot my SD reader today so I can’t send pictures..

Friday morning we returned to Nkawkaw, and then we had a training on creating baptismal records with our branches so we can be able to get people's membership record number quicker so they can go to the temple quicker and have no confusion about all the paperwork. So one of the highlights of the week is definitely Brother Ibrahim (Zion). Unfortunately again sister Emelia didn’t come to church cause her sister got married on Saturday and they all went with the family to church that Sunday, that is like a tradition here in Ghana that they do, but with Ibrahim, yeah things are cool! Way cool. We went there to learn with him twice this week, and the two lessons were about 1. the Book of Mormon, and 2. the plan of salvation. Needless to say that both lessons were absolutely amazing and the guy is so humble to learn and open to what we teach. On Tuesday we gave him a Book of Mormon, and on Saturday when we came again, he went on for about 15 minutes describing to us all the things that he read(which was A LOT) he had read the introduction, the testimonies of the three and eight, and of Joseph Smith, and he had been going through the pictures in the front, and he saw the one of Jesus Christ coming to the Nephites and

he said "well ya know I didn’t even know that Jesus Christ came to America, and it’s a good thing I have this book now so that I can read what he did there."  when he said that I was like yeah well that is why we came haha! The guy is just so amazing and yesterday he showed up to church on time and he is so excited about everything and he said that he doesn’t want to wait at all to get baptized, but we still have to teach him all the lessons before we can get him in the water haha. He is really an amazing guy.

Well that is how this week went. If I could give you a suggestion to read or listen to, it would be a talk called 'what lack I yet' by Elder Larry Lawrence given a year or so ago in conference. We watched it at the mission home before MLC and it was very very moving. I know that this work is true and I’m thankful to be an instrument in my Heavenly Father's hands. I love you all and hope the best for this week!!

Elder Hunter Kenneth Porritt