10 months in Service

Well time continues to fly here in the wonderful Ghana Kumasi mission, yesterday i hit 10 months serving as a missionary. It is crazy to think where the time has gone to, but i love every day that goes by.

First off, my toe is healing quickly, just for anyone who might have been wondering haha!! 

But This week was another good one. The big big big highlight of the week came about 30 minutes after I emailed you all last week, and it came in the form of a news phone call from my good friend Elder Hill. I thought he was kidding when he told me but then I got a phone call as well from Elder Snow, my trainer, and then i realized that it was real. But on August 13, we will have the AMAZING privileged of having David A. Bednar come to GKM. Oh man when i heard that I about flew out the window of the tro tro that we were riding in hahaha! I am soooo excited to have an Apostle of the Lord come to the mission!! That was for sure the best news I could have gotten that day, and I cant wait for that. 

The other highlight of the week came yesterday with the baptism of Sister Cynthia, a sister we have been teaching for quite some time now. The tough thing is that she speaks about zero English so it  has been really hard for me to get to know her or talk to her much, even with Elder Adjei who speaks the Twi, he has taught all the lessons in Twi, and i know that she is a powerful woman and we are very fortunate to have her here in the Agona Branch.  

Other than those things, this week was a week full of teaching and serving, helping people to hear more about the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. I love being a missionary, and I love helping these people to learn about this gospel. I am thankful for all of you and the love and support that you send me and show me each week, I hope that you are all striving each day to become more like our Savior Jesus Christ, truly that is our purpose on this earth, to "Prepare ourselves to meet God" (Alma 34:32)

I love you all,

Elder Porritt

Sister Cynthia's baptism yesterday, Brother Michael, an elder in the branch baptized her.

This was Tuesday night, one night after the surgery

 This morning's results, I'm getting better

Surgery on the Mish..

Well folks, i am alive, but it didn't come easy that's for sure. One piece of advice to all who may read this, avoid ingrown toenails at ALL costs, cause someday it might get so bad that you have to have surgery on it, and I now know first hand how painful that surgery is... 

But before we get to that, this week was alright ha! Wednesday was a good day, due to a sweet service project we did for Sister Mary who is just a random old lady we met one day at her house, she doesn't speak a lick of English, she doesn't have any family at all that she even knows about, and she now is basically not able to walk more than 20 feet or so before she gets so tired and painful that she has to sit down again. We didn't ask how old she is, but she has got to be at least 90-95. Even with all of this opposition, she still takes care of herself (i have no idea how) but she does.  She is an amazing lady. But outside her house there is a field that is about the size of a baseball infield, and that field had weeds up to your knees all around the whole thing and it looked plain out horrible... So we gathered our District and on Wednesday, and went and weeded that thing with cutless, i don't know if anyone back home knows what a cutless is but its like a big knife, somehow like a machete. I wish i would have thought to take a picture of the field, but unfortunately i forgot... We had a good time and it felt really good to help her out especially since she cant really do anything for herself and she doesn't have family with her. 

The rest of the week was us teaching and me somehow suffering with this ingrown toenail that has been bugging me for about a month now.. i have been trying to take care of it myself cause all my life when i have had ingrown toenails, i have been able to take care of them, even though it hurts like no other. But so what has happened in the last few days, i talked to Sister Wardle, our mission nurse, that was on i think Saturday the 2nd July or something like that. She said that i should try and see if it would go away in the next few days, well on Wednesday after the service project, i could hardly walk it hurt so bad so i called her again, and i was going to come to the mission home to get it worked on, but President was too busy so i had to wait from Wednesday clear til yesterday.. That was a painful few days as well. But yesterday we went to the UST chapel for a soccer activity, but i didn't play obviously, after that, the Wardles took us to the mission home and we proceeded with what ended up to be literally the most painful thing i have ever felt in my entire life. 

The first thing that happened was one of the worst for sure. In the pictures you will notice that the side of my toe was so swollen, well that was the most painful and tender part of the whole thing, and that is the exact place where President Cosgrave stuck me twice to try and numb my toe... oh my goodness, i just remember being in a whole lot of pain and i think i was yelling... Then he took some little scissors and had to pry up the toenail and he cut a straight line down my toenail about not far away from the skin, and he had to cut all the way down the nail, then when he got to the bottom i was already bleeding pretty good, but he then grabbed the ingrown part of the nail and pulled out a LOT of toenail, a lot more than i thought was there.. and that's when i started to feel some relief from the pain, cause the nail that had been in there was now out. But next came the worst and most painful part of the whole operation.When President cut down the toenail, it left a little hole on the side of my toe going down, and he pulled out this big long stick thing that looked like a giant match stick. And he went on to push it down through that hole and down into my toe. Wow, at first i thought i was supposed to be numbed up but i felt that worse than all the rest of the whole thing. When he pushed that down into my toe, he left if there for a minute for people to take pictures, and then he started to pull it out really slowly, it was supposed to be releasing medicine inside my toe, and that was just awful, it felt like my toe was on fire!! But that was about it, he then threw a bandaid on it and sent me on my way haha. I am really grateful that my mission president is a doctor and knew what to do with this situation, even though i am still just feeling some real nice pain.. i might be limping around for a week if this doesn't go away. But I will survive haha:) 

I know that the church is true, and I hope all of you will continue to learn about the Gospel and the scriptures each and every day! I love you all and im thankful for all of your love and support you give to me every week! I hope you all have a good week!

Love,

The Crippled Elder Porritt

This was taken on July 4.. so a week ago this is how bad it already was..

The piece of toenail that he is holding with the clippers is what he pulled out of the side of my toe... not easy..

 Elder Porritt bearing the Pain

The piece of nail taken out

Most painful part of the whole thing, even though i was numbed, this one hurt the very most...

This stick has silver nitrate on it to kill the nail bed, so it won't grow back.

It's done

 Monday night after all was done...

 Our service project crew from left to right: Elder Adjei, Elder Porritt, Elder Amponsah from Ghana, Elder Mkandla from Zimbabewe, Sister Mary, Elder Udoh from Nigeria, and Elder Mpisa from Zimbabewe

The result of using a cutless for 4 hours

Finally found one haha!!! absolutely amazing

Happy Birthday to the Promised Land!

Well Happy 4th of July everyone!! 

Happy birthday to the promised land!

Today has been a sweet day for us as missionaries, especially with all the missionaries who we always see in town when we go to Kumasi. Today we drove down to come to enjoy small and so we could get some stuff from Melcom (a somehow decent grocery store) we don't have anywhere in Agona to buy stuff like that..  But we enjoyed some KFC and that was pretty much how i celebrated my 4th of July. All of you will probably be at fireworks tonight so i hope all that goes well.

This week was another good one full of teaching and that sweet stuff. We were also able to have the confirmation of Brother Opoku and that was another very amazing experience!  That guy is one of the happiest i have ever seen to have the gospel in his life. He really wants to help his family to have this in their life. He really understands the importance of the gospel and wants to share it with all around him. He is really a powerful guy. He will bring many to the knowledge of the Gospel i really feel.  

Other than that, I dont have a ton that i have to share about this week. Not too much that stuck out, just another great week here in the mission field. There is nothing better than serving a mission and serving the Lord. But the great thing is that you dont have to be on a mission to serve the Lord, that is according to Mosiah 2:17. I hope all is well with all of you. Things are good here in Ghana, hotter than ever.  Have a great week!!

Love Elder Porritt

Opoku's Baptism

Well howdy there everyone!! 

It has been a GREAT week.  The weather here has been cooling down a tiny bit and that is just cause of the rain that has been coming brings more clouds and sheilds the sun. Trust me when its cloudy, we are a happy couple of guys hahah. But its still as humid as ever so i still cant even go 10 minutes without being sweating bullets. 

Haha a funny story... this week we contacted a family who is good friends with a member who lives in a nearby branch, Mampong, and from the first two visits, we've come down to the decision that really only one member of the family is serious about learning, due to the fact that she has been the only one who has stayed through a whole lesson and the next time we came, the mom and others didn't even join, but we have been teaching Fl, who is around 20 or 21 years old, but the funny part about this story is that they own and live at a spot. A spot is what Ghanaians call basically a alcohol house. They have a homemade alcohol they call pito, which is really really strong but they sell it for really cheap so a lot of the people love it, but the crappy thing is that it STINKS. Aw man its really really hard to teach a lesson when that stench is there.  You would not believe the amount of guys who come here just absolutely HAMMERED. Like barely walking hammered, and they buy even more and down it. And some of the reactions we have got are pretty hilarious but are starting to get annoying haha.. here people LOVE to talk to white people to try and seem smart, and when they are drunk that desire multiplies by about 1000 so every time we go there, there is always at least 2 or 3 guys that come up and start babbling on in broken English and it makes me sick cause all i can smell is the nasty breath.. haha its not easy but if you experienced it, you would laugh pretty hard. 

The highlight of the week came yesterday with my guy, Opoku, who was baptized!!! Oh man this was a sweet experience. Along the path of teaching this guy, we watched him go from literally not being able to say a prayer and being so shy he wouldn't even answer our questions, to saying some of the most humble, sincere and heartfelt prayers I have ever heard and reading and studying the Book of Mormon and all the doctrine of the Church, this guy, since the 2nd Sunday we started teaching him, has not missed a meeting (Sunday meetings, sunday movie show, and midweek) and has been on time and even early to every single one of them. And I will give him respect cause he is the ONLY person in the entire Agona who I can say that about. Even we, the missionaries were late to a few meetings, but Opoku has always been there waiting for us. The guy has truly been converted and it hasn't been easy. His wife and children have been against it big time, and flat out rejected the invitation to come to his baptism, which was really sad but it didn't seem to have too big an effect on him. 

With the baptism yesterday, It was a sweet one and it was also the first time that i have had to re-baptize someone cause they didn't go all the way under... haha his feet kicked up.. But it was such an amazing experience.

Also some really exciting news, I don't know if any of you remember brother Desmond from Techiman who was preparing to serve a mission, well he got his mission call this week and will be reporting in October to the Ghana, Accra West Mission. So I was very happy to get that information.

I hope all is well for all of you whether on missions or at home. Life is precious. And the Church is true. I love you all.

Elder Hunter Kenneth Porritt

Last week at district conference, Elder Hill and Elder Morford and myself engaged in the challenge to see who could pull the ugliest/ best face for a selfie and these are the two winning pictures.

 Cleanest apartment in the mish..

The powerful Brother Opoku

 Twinners!

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. 

 The SDA church where we did District Conference. it was huge.

The Agona District missionaries.

BASEBALL at the PARK!!

Teaching and Sweating!!

Hello everyone!!

This week was just like a lot of the other weeks haha just a lot of teaching and sweating! Things here in Ghana are real hot but they are going really good. This week i don't really have a ton to talk about but we are having some pretty good progress in our area, especially with Brother Opoku. This guy is seriously an awesome guy and he has been reading the Book of Mormon and praying a lot about the message, he has been coming to church and to all the meetings and programs that we have throughout the week. He says that he knows it is all true and he is excited to be baptized in a few weeks. So we are really excited for him right now. He is such an awesome guy and he is so receptive to all the things that we are coming to him to teach. 

Anyway some other good news is that this week (Wednesday) we again have Zone Conference so it will be great to again be able to hear from President Cosgrave and get back together with some of my other mission friends. I am pretty excited for that. 

On the other hand, we did have one thing this week that was quite discouraging... We have had an investigator for over a month now, i won't mention his name, but he has been way powerful. He has been coming to church, and asking really good questions for the most part, just really wanting to know what was so special about the church, but the last few weeks with this guy have been really rough because he has been trying to tell us that we are wrong in the things that we are teaching and that there is nowhere in the bible where it talks about the things that we are teaching. Then on Friday, i think, we went there with a powerful lesson in hand to teach him, but it didn't even go through because as soon as we brought the first topic, he started arguing with us about how there is no possible way that God answers prayers to anyone that is a sinner... That was really sad to hear.. But that lesson ended with me and my companion basically bearing our testimonies to him and to our Father in Heaven that we know this work is true, my comp even said that if this message wasn't true, he would pray that God would show him and punish him, and the guy said back to that 'well surely God will punish you soon then because all this that you are teaching is lies' So yeah i guess not everyone you come in contact with is as humble and  receptive as you would hope, but all you can do is bear your testimony and pray to Heavenly Father that that person one day humbles himself and comes to the knowledge and truth. 

I hope all of you know that i know that this work is true. There is nothing that could come that would make me deny this Gospel and the things that I have learned and am now teaching. i always tell my investigators this: that i would not have left my amazing home in America, my family, and my friends to spend two years in Ghana, preaching something that i didn't know was true. I KNOW  that this is Christ's true church here on the earth and i know that soon, that same Christ will come again and we will be rejoicing with Him who is our Savior. I love my Savior and I am striving every day to become more like Him. I hope you are all doing the same. I love you all and hope you have a great week.

Love Elder Porritt

Me and the big bad Elder Adjei...

yeah i think i pooped a little big when i saw this guy... legs spread this bad boy was easy 5 maybe 6 inches... sounds small but go look at a ruler and then see how big it is.. good thing Grandma Oyler wasnt the one that discovered this one...

Mom these are white shirts that a guy in my branch, Elvis, got from the mission, just wondering if they are the ones that you sent?..

You Are Never Alone

Well first of all, how is it already June.... I still feel like i just walked off the plane in Accra and now its been nearly 10 months since then. That is crazy. This week was another good one here in Agona.

Well first of all, we have a new guy that we have been teaching quite a bit and for him his name is Opoku. He is probably about 65-70 years old and he is a really smart guy and wants to know the truth. The first couple weeks that we taught him, he didn't seem that serious cause he didn't want to leave his church, which is about what 99% of people tell us, but this last week we really taught in depth about the Book of Mormon and the importance of it and how we can gain our testimony from its pages, and man ever since that lesson, every time we go there, we always walk into the compound (house) and he is there sitting on his chair reading the BoM. It is truly amazing what a testimony born with the Spirit present can do for a man. He came to church yesterday and he is really progressing well right now.

Also good news is that I was able to confirm Kwame yesterday, and that was a great experience as well. I love seeing the things that he continues to do and the way that he wants to always learn about the gospel, even though a lot of times when we go there he just wants to play football, but that's about every single Ghanaian kid here. But one day for sure Kwame will be a powerful missionary.

Also today was a way awesome day, but i am beat to heck and back right now. We played football for like 4 hours in the nice blazing sun of Ghana. It was way fun and i got way sunburned but the most unfortunate part was that my camera was dead so no pictures......... sorry.

The thing that i want to encourage all of you on is one thing that i really have learned here on mission and that is that you are never alone, no matter what happens, your Father in Heaven is always there for you.

I love you all and i hope you are doing well.
Love Elder Porritt

Had these nice muffins that didnt turn out to be muffins on Thursday, but they tasted amazing

Me and Elder Morford on exchange

peeps?...

Just the legendary Elder Adjei back there...