Spending Time on My Knees in Prayer

Oh boy, this week was definitely an adventure... And I say that because we did absolutely nothing this week due to sickness that pinned our companionship (me) in bed for the week. Last week Monday, in the evening, I started to feel pretty crappy, and Tuesday throughout the day it got worse and worse, until about 4 in the afternoon on Tuesday I was out til the evening time when we met with President Cosgrave and he diagnosed me that I was sick...

Well to our great boredom, we literally spent the whole week inside the mission home, thank goodness it was at the mission home though, cause Sister Cosgrave, the amazing woman and mother that she is, she took care of us!! Thank goodness for her and President Cosgrave, without them, it would have been an even worse week ha.

Well if there is anything that I learned and experienced this week, it is that prayer is powerful. God really does hear our prayers, He really listens, and He really does answer them, even if it is not always in the time that we want haha..  This week I was fortunate to receive a Priesthood Blessing from my companion and the other Elders in my apartment, and in the blessing I was reminded how important prayer is. Well needless to say, I was on my knees a lot this week pleading for strength and energy to get out of bed and out of the mission home.  Though the strength didn't come much through the week, yesterday morning, I woke up and felt decent, at least good enough to make it to Church, I got through the first two hours of church and then we had to come back.

I am really thankful though that I had the opportunity to partake of the sacrament. I have come to learn how important the sacrament is in my life, and I couldn't imagine missing it, I would feel weak spiritually if I didn't get to take the sacrament on Sunday.  I am so thankful for the knowledge of a Savior, even Jesus Christ, who came to this Earth and suffered for me, He suffered for my pains, and this week, I am especially thankful for that, as I have been through quite a bit of pain. I am so thankful that I have been able to find strength and comfort through relying on Him. I know that without Jesus Christ, life would be a waste, but because of Him, this life is everything and it's our chance to prove ourselves worthy to live with He and the Father for eternity.

I am so thankful for those of you back home who still care, i hope you have a great week!

Love Elder Porritt

Probably the most troublesome kids in Ghana, but two of my favorites!!

Happy Easter!!

Dear Fam,

Happy Easter!!! I hope your Easter was a sweet one! As for us, we really had a great Easter weekend, and especially Easter Sunday! Really it was a great week all around, and it was another quick week, that is for sure. Time is going by too fast… 

Well with this week being transfer week, it also brought a whole lot of craziness into the week with all the things that we get to do with the transfers. As I said last week, we were able to have a devotional with the few missionaries who were departing for home, and then Tuesday, we brought them to the Kumasi Airport early in the morning and sent them for Accra for them to get their flights home! After that on Tuesday, we had to be back at the airport at around 1 to pick up the new missionaries who were just coming from the MTC! This transfer, we did something different with the new missionaries that has not been done here in the Ghana Kumasi Mission before, and it went awesome. On the way back to the Mission Home from the airport, we all got down from the cars at a big junction here in our area where there is always a ton of people.  From there, we each split out with 2 of the new missionaries, and we let them go contact people and place a few copies of the Book of Mormon. That was such a great experience to be there with some new missionaries to see the Spirit they have with them! 

Well the rest of Tuesday is just a bunch of orientation with those new missionaries, and then a testimony meeting with them. Then Wednesday comes and that is when the craziness comes on transfer week. Wednesday, we have training and meetings from like 11-5 and so we are super busy, then we got to go and take missionaries to their stations for them to get tros home to their areas.

As far as our investigators go, Yw is doing good, he wants to get baptized so bad but he is still struggling to keep some of the commandments still, so we will hold off with him still, and he didn't come to Church today either, but we also have one new lady, Sister Brn, who we contacted this week and she is actually doing great, she came to church and she loved it!! She was so excited at Church today, so hopefully there will be some progress with her here in the near future as well! 

Well all in all, transfer week is just crazy, but Elder Lindley and I had a sweet week. We are having a blast together! This week though, just as Easter was approaching, I had the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the Resurrection on my mind quite a bit. I thought a lot about how amazing it is that God would send His eldest son to come to this earth and suffer so great and terrible pains as Christ suffered, and to come here and die for mankind. As I thought on that during the passing of the Sacrament, I felt the Spirit really strongly come into my heart. I am so thankful for the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the true peace that it brings to my life. I know that because Jesus resurrected, we too will resurrect, and so will our family members who have gone on before us. That is the sweet truth about this Gospel. 

I love you all, and I pray for you, I hope you have a great week!!

Love Elder Porritt

Last day with Elder Hill, typical picture with him haha!

This was the beautiful sky on Easter Sunday afternoon. God is Wonderful!!

Easter Fufu

Elder Lindley and I

The new crew in Daban, now featuring Elders Lindley, Speakman, Ayim, and myself.

A New Companion!

Good evening to you all from GH!!

Well we just finished another departing missionary devotional, and tomorrow morning we will send off another group of missionaries to the airport and pick up another group of fresh missionaries straight from the Ghana MTC. I have a big love/hate feeling with that experience.. I hate it a little bit because every time we send off another group, it seems like time goes faster and the next one is already gone, and its getting so close for it to be our turn.. but on the same side, I love it cause the Spirit is strong as ever with the new missionaries who come right from the MTC. The orientation meetings we have with them, and especially their singing, which usually blows the roof off the mission home, brings the Spirit way strongly!

So yeah transfers are this week, and wellllll Elder Hill is leaving the office and going to train another new missionary! And my new companion is Elder Kyle Lindley from Cache Valley. He graduated the same time as me from Mt. Crest. He is a sweet guy and I am super pumped to be with him, I have served with him for quite a long time since he has been a zone leader for almost a year now, and we have been talking at councils and meetings for quite a long time!! So I am pretty excited for the time that I will get to spend with him!

Well this week, we had Mission Leadership Council on Thursday, and that was when President Cosgrave told Elder Lindley that he would be coming with Elder Hill and I and that he was the new Assistant, so right after the Council, we drove up to Sunyani and spent the night there, and then Friday we spent the day in and around Sunyani visiting all the missionaries in that zone, that was such a great day!! That night we returned and the rest of the weekend we have been working out the plans for traveling for all the missionaries that will be going on transfer this next week.

Great news with Yw, he is doing well still. This week, we didn't get much time to go and visit and teach him, only once on Saturday night late, but he did come to Church on Sunday, he got there right before the Sacrament Hymn, just like he always does hahah! He is seriously such a smart guy, but one thing that we noticed that is holding him back right now is his intelligence.. because he is so smart, that he wants to know EVERYTHING about the Gospel and the Book of Mormon, and the Church, before he says that he knows that its true. We are really struggling with that because at least for me, I know that you don't need to know everything to have a testimony of this work, in fact you don't need to KNOW anything, you just need to believe, and let the seed of faith grow inside you, and the Holy Ghost will testify to your hearts that these things are true. I know by that very power that these things are true.

Well not much to talk about, those were the highlights of the week, it was just a lot of busy work on the computers trying to prepare for Mission Leadership Council, preparing for the transfer, preparing for travel, and even traveling ourselves. Life in Daban is divine!! Haha I love this work though, I am sad to see how fast it is flying by. I would just like to share my personal testimony that Jesus Christ is truly the Prince of Peace. You can find comfort through His Atonement that was performed for you and for me. He was born, lived, died, and rose again, so that you and I could live, enjoy our lives, repent of our sins, and though we will die, we WILL rise again. He is the Master and the Redeemer. I would invite all of you, if you have not already, to go to Mormon.org and watch the Prince of Peace video about the Savior in preparation for this coming Easter Sunday!! Happy Easter a few days in advance!!

I love you all!!

Elder Porritt

Picking up the New Missionaries

 Elder Lindley and I working on transfer travel

Pictures for the Week

For P-Day we had a Pig Roast!

hangin with a prospective missionary

 Sister Monica Made us these ties

Doing what we Love Best!!

Classic Ghana!!

Happy Traveling

Our Trip to Sunyani!

BAM! I hit a Guinea Fowl

Jesus, Listening, can hear the songs we cannot sing

Today's letter is quite long, but wow, what an awesome week it was here in the heat of Ghana!! Last time you heard from me, I was in the real heat of Tamale, in the Northern Region of Ghana. Well since then, we have been on exchanges up there, and returned back home here to Kumasi on Wednesday. Thank goodness we have been getting some HUGE rainstorms too! The lightning and thunder here is actually quite scary though. If you think back home we have big storms, well I'm sorry for your imaginations, because any small storm here puts a giant storm back home to shame. The big storms here are ones where you are scared to even be outside at all. In fact, I believe it was Thursday evening, a big bolt struck either right on the mission home or right next to it and the power blew out right as the lightning and thunder boomed, and now some of the appliances don't even work here in the mission home, pretty crazy.

Well there have definitely been some great highlights to this week, the biggest was definitely having the wonderful opportunity and blessing to be able to watch all 5 sessions of General Conference!! I am so thankful for modern technology that enables us to be 7,000 miles away from Salt Lake City and still be able to watch live the counsel and words of Prophets and Apostles of God!! I would be lying if I told you I had a favorite talk from this Conference because so many of the talks were so amazing!! As always, Elder Holland blew the roof off, and President Uchtdorf had some amazing words, but just a few quotes I wrote down really are sticking with me up to this point that I would share.

-Elder Bednar shared in Priesthood Session to 'love being worthy and remaining worthy' as we prepare for blessings that will come to us through service in the Church and especially coming through the Temple.

-My other favorite quote is the line of the hymn that Elder Holland shared, that really hit me hard as he talked about it. 'Jesus, listening, can hear the songs we cannot sing'

I hope all who didn't listen to or watch the Conference will go back and watch, and all of you who did watch it, go back and re-listen to it cause you probably didn't catch all you could have while watching or listening for the first time, I know I didn't. We are so privileged to live in a day where we have living Prophets and Apostles who like the Twelve of Old, they converse with our Father to know His will for us in our day. Those men, though we may think that they don't know what we are going through, they really do, they receive divine revelation from the Father of us all. The words they speak are meant for you, they are the words of God to us.

The other highlight of the week was one of the greatest lessons and moments that I have had as a missionary in the last year and a half. I'm sure you may remember Brother Yw, the guy we have been teaching now who has been an investigator for years. Well we have been seeing some progress with him lately the last few weeks with him reading the Book of Mormon, coming to Church, and even watching the Church videos that we give to him, but Elder Hill and I could tell that there was still a few things holding him back from going all in. So Friday evening, we went there and followed up on a few things that we had given to him to read and watch while we were up north and he did it all. He also watched the Restoration Video and loved it. About 20 minutes into that lesson, we started just asking questions about what was holding him back from being baptized and giving up his addictions and a bunch of stuff, and you wouldn't believe it, but he went on and talked for a good 30 minutes or more with no pause. He literally let EVERYTHING that was holding him back.  By the time he finished, my mind was spinning thinking what to say, but he then asked us "does God even care? does he have something there for me or is it just imagination and I'm wasting my time here?" Well when he asked this question, the Spirit overcame us both, and quite honestly, I don't remember the words I spoke, but I know that I bore powerful testimony to him that God does live, He does love him and that He is there for him. The Spirit was so powerful in Yw's room at that time. We then expressed our own love and care for him, and that was another amazing feeling that came into that lesson. No doubt, that was one of the most Spiritual lessons that I have had on my mission and during that, I felt closer to my Father in Heaven than I have in a long time! I felt His love for me and for Yw.

I don't know if Yw will be able to overcome all of his problems very quickly, maybe not even while I am here in Ghana. I may not be here to witness his baptism, but I KNOW that man will be baptized eventually. He felt the Spirit testify to him so strongly that he too cannot deny what he felt. I love that man, but more importantly, I know that God loves him and God loves every single one of you so much more than you can imagine. Our Savior Jesus Christ died and suffered for our sins that we would be able to repent and be forgiven, He is reaching out to all of you, in whatever problems you may be having, big or small. He is There!! I know He loves us and He will be there for you when you finally take the step of faith to kneel down and invite him into your life. Remember the hymn 'when your life gets dark and dreary, don't forget to pray'

I love you all,

Elder Hunter Porritt

This was last week at the Bolgatanga branch, this was about half of the youth class

Long story short, we found crocs while proselyting and got to take pics with them, sweetest moment ever!

This is our apartment Elders, the other companionship is Elder Motloung (my previous companion from Agona) and Elder Sewell from St. George

Game time..