By the End, I was Awarded Player of the Match

Sorry but I only get an hour for everything this week because I
went on an emergency transfer. I am now in a place called Asamankese,
which is not nearly as nice as Oda, which makes me pretty grumps.  But I
am now with a missionary who just came here from Liberia.  He seems ok
so far, but I have only been with him for like 30 minutes!

Tell me how the start of school goes and everything! I'm glad soccer
was sweet and the schedules are ok!

Ok so my sweet story for this week!  Got to play a sweet football match!
So we had a bi-branch soccer match that I was recruited for last week.
I was pretty much underplaying my skills when people were asking. Everyone
was laughing and expecting me to be a flop, since I'm white, I'm sure.


We played, and within the first 3 minutes I smoked some defender and
slammed a sweet shot that just ticked off the keepers hands and the
pole then out. By the end I was awarded player of the match. Some of
the people were coming up to me and asking what team I was going to
play on when I get home. And they all thought I was super in shape and
need to try out for the national team when I go home. So needless to
say, even though I got a belly and big cheeks, and I can only walk to
the refrigerator and back to bed without getting tired, I still got it!!
:)

Oh and so mom, I got pretty sick this week, but no need to worry.  It is a
new sickness that has recently come up in Ghana. We got a pretty nasty
strain of the flu that just got out here and I have been kind of messed
up with that. It was sweet! We had a less active member and our ward
clerk that work at this hospital so my companion and I were there
visiting.  We were eating some lunch when I got hit pretty hard. I ran
to a wall and just started vomiting like crazy! Oh it was not fun to
have a bunch of nurses laughing at you!

Alright so I will be on next week now I gotta go ball it up woop woop!

Love Elder Legg

Ebola Enters Ghana & a Cholera Outbreak!

The bush here is great!   I love the area and the people here!  So I am starting to get my 3 week welcome. Now that all the members and people are getting to know me, they all just want me at there house all the time!  I have a bunch of sweet friends and we get fed all the time.  Friday I had 3 dinner dates in a row.  Gosh it doesn't matter if you are a member, or an investigator, or I just buy things from your shop!  Everyone just asks me when they should feed me and what. 

On Friday I went to an investigators and she said sorry I don't have time to learn today because I have to take this fufu to my sick mother, but I made you some here.  You can just give the dishes to that little girl when you're done.   Ate it, then ran to our less active members, taught him.  Then he said sorry elders you can't go yet.  My wife is just finishing your dinner, so make sure to eat all.  His wife brought out a massive bowl of rice and stew.  Halfway through the meal, another investigator keeps calling over and over until I pick.  Then she yells at me and tells me she is waiting and doesn't want the food to get cold!  We finished our rice and stew then ran to the investigator.  She was super mad at us, but in like 5 seconds, I had her smiling again.  And she brought out some bomb ampesi and garden egg stew!  Oh man right now that food is my jam!   Don't worry about the girl investigators though, because both of them are married and with kids!   But seriously one of my strengths is working with the women like 10 years older than me.  I don't know why, but they just all love me.  Maybe it's because I'm super cute and funny.   Maybe it's my punctuality and ability to eat all.  Maybe it's because I'm just super great with kids. I guess you can have your pick of all my many wonderful qualities! :)

I had a 2 people on Saturday call me, and all they said was where are you, the food is ready, I'm waiting... beep beep beep. It's way fun when it is like this!

Sister Rose, one of my many good friends, dashed us a "few" oranges. We stopped by her house on the way back from one of my villages the other day. We were just talking, seeing how she was doing, when she offered us oranges.  I didn't reject, because 1. That's super offensive and 2. She has an orange tree.  She runs to get them, then comes back 5 minutes later with a big bucket full of oranges. There were about 50 oranges in all.  Her family ate 10 ish, then my companion and I ate the rest.

Here in Ghana, if someone gives you food they normally say eat all.  If you fail to do so, you are offending them, and saying their food is not nice.  So when someone gives you 50 oranges, and tells you to eat all, you don't ask questions.   You just sneakily undo your trou and make room in your belly!

Haha mom you said that people feeding me well is one less thing for you to worry about.  But let's throw this out there. Ebola is passed through body fluids.  We are in the sweatiest place ever. I shake hands with about a hundred people a day.  Then when we eat.   It is all out of one big bowl.   With the other people there.  All of us using our hands to take the food from the bowl, then into our mouths.  Hhhmmmm......I wonder what that could lead to ;)

But mom don't worry about Ebola coming to Ghana because well... it's already here! duh duh duh. There have been a few cases so far.  One was in a place called Nsawam, which is between me and Accra, and only like 50 miles away :) Very close! I will be meeting people from there tomorrow actually!  Oh and Ebola thrives in the bush by the way. (I love this kid for some reason!)

And along with that, even more urgent in my country, is the fact that we are having a Cholera outbreak!  For the "health something something" here, that one of my investigators works, have declared it an emergency.  In Accra they are going to churches and schools teaching people about it trying to get them to be safe. 

Best protection is to wash your hands with running water........yeah so I am in the danger zone! I get to wash my hands a little less than once a week!  

But we got the water tank in, and of course, after 9 hours of work, it wasn't hooked up.  Now a week later, and they still haven't taken care of it.

Can you believe I got smooshed by the polytank??!  The thing is like 1000 gallons and it fell on me, and I broke through our neighbor's wall!!  The tank got wedged in between 2 walls while we were moving it.  It was my job to lift, while everyone else pushed, and bam!  Big ol' nasty tank gets me!  Hehe but it's ok, I only got hurt a little bit, and no blood!

Don't worry, Tyson will do fine (he got his wisdom teeth out) and of course he vomited!   He is my little brother! 

Tali: Gosh I haven't had a sleep over in forever! I want one!  am i invited?  Uumm you can send The Friend magazine, I guess, but honestly it's much cheaper to just buy it for them. Church magazine subscription is only like 5 cedi a year or something!  All the church stuff is way cheaper here. Only problem is they have a smaller selection.

Gracie: What was the name of this secret game that you were playing?  I think I have played it at Kalli's house before, but I'm not  sure. Was it tons of fun? Why don't you have dad get you your own water balloons to pop?  So what are the names of these missionaries?

Ty:  Freak yeah,  what is that like a 14 and a half hour date? Dude you be studin!  Why didn't you take a better advantage of the wisdom teeth?  Flip when I got mine out I was destroyed! Well good luck I hear soccer is coming up! Let me know what happens!

Tay: Yeah you totally got this soccer thing, so you don't even have to worry about that!  Yeah I did the same thing for dances, except I went to the Nampa ones instead of Eagle. Gosh I can't wait to get home and see you in the FX stuff!  That will be so cool!


I think i am getting better at riding my bike again because I lost my companion twice in one day. The best loss this week though is we were up on this huge hill, that we had to walk our bikes up, just to find out the investigator wasn't there. I strapped in really tight, and raced down the hill.  Yeah I did almost crash, it was sweet! I had no control. And my feet weren't on the pedals.  And my chain wasn't even on the gears.  But I ran through a little bush, and got yelled at by some guys.  But in the end, I got to our next appointment and had to walk back to find my companion at a junction totally lost :) He is hard to get along with. He doesn't listen to anything.  And you how some people talk about following God and the Spirit and that's how they fakely justify everything?  He's one of those kind of people.  And he always tries to point out what I'm going wrong, including being too talkative with our investigators when we saw them on the street! 

Ok so that is what has happened this week. You got the stuff for Ebola, cholera, and polytank.

Love Elder Legg

Ebola-----Ain't Nobody Got Time For Dat!!

We don't have Ebola here, but really there isn't a whole lot I can do.  But we are being careful. I have only heard a little bit, but they have been talking about it down in Accra. It's kinda freaky, but I'm not very worried. I would rather survive Ebola than have to transfer missions to the USA honestly. 
We have to shake hands with about a million people everyday. They told us to wash our hands. We asked them with what water??? And then they stopped telling us to wash our hands. They told us to take our doxy.  We asked them if doxy prevents Ebola???  And then they stopped telling us to take our doxy.  They said to sleep under our bed nets. We asked them if blood was in the air???  Then they stopped talking about Ebola, and went to malaria protection.  Hehe ugh they don't know what they are doing.  So on the Ebola front, just so everyone is aware, I am not worried and it isn't going to bother me because I'm a super missionary and ain't nobody got time for dat!!!  (Typical Travis response)

Gracie: Yeah there is just a lot more rain here than in the other places. So I guess there is more shade. There are no cool animal anywhere here!!! Goodness!  I'm glad you had a ton of fun in Oregon!

Tyson:  Flip you are coming up on your senior year?!?! Gosh! Send me all your senior pics as you are taking them! Dude that is so cool! Gosh do you feel old? Are you feeling like the guy ruling the school?

Taylor: Sheesh high adventure is way fun, right?! I have decided I want to be a young mens leader because I want to woop on all you guys there! Sorry about your ankle, but such is the life of an uber boss am I right? Freak braces and soccer tryouts! Are you worried? Because you shouldn't be! You are going to do awesome!

 

I email at the cafe like always! Oda is a little city out in the middle of the bush. They don't have everything, but they have most of the normal stuff.  My house is regular. It is the 2nd best house I have been in, but we also don't have running water, so I have to fetch water out of a well if I want to get water.  Good news for that is that we should be getting a tank put in this week then the water will be running.  This is pretty much the same as before, but the village is smaller and the area has a ton of trees everywhere! There is more shade because there are a lot of clouds all the time.  It is a little bit cooler, but it is still way hot!  Um, not very many animals. I saw chickens, goats, sheep, dogs, cats, birds, cows. Plenty!

 

I got away from most of the guys that I didn't like.  Being senior companion is a joke so I don't really care :) it just means people will try to yell at me more!

Yeah hmm what did I do this week? I'm not too sure. I know I am getting way popular here which is sweet! I have had nearly 1 person every day this week ask to marry me which is really flattering! Even today the 80 year old mommy selling tomatoes asked for my hand in marriage :) you know I got that!

People have been enjoying feeding me, so I have gotten fed a lot.  You were asking if fufu is what they eat a lot, but for that one it can take a while to make, so one of the most common foods we eat here is called ampesi.  It's boiled yam, cocoyam, and plantain then dipped in a stew. Preferably a really sweet garden egg stew! mmm

So for my laundry, we have a solution already! Elder Forrest has a super cool investigator/ future recent convert named Bill.   Bill is 13 years old, super ripped, and super smart. He has been offering to do our wash and we enjoy it. We wanted to pay him, but he said he wouldn't accept any money, so I cooked him breakfast instead! He just comes to our house, we bring the stuff outside, then we pick it off the dry line in the evening.  He is actually accompanying us around all day which is way fun! I had him on my bike with me when we were riding to the market and a ton of people were yelling nasty things at us! A couple of guys tried to get a security guard at a government shop to stop us by saying it was illegal to ride 2 people on a bike.  But too bad for them, the guard is my friend so he just laughed and waved!

We go out to a village called Asene and it is way cool!   It's like 45 minutes away from the church by car. I really like going there because there are a lot of sweet people there! We only go once a week, but I call people there like very day! I make a lot of phone calls now!  On Saturday I made like 50 phone calls it was nice! They limited us to 400 minutes a month and 20 texts. Neither of those are enough. I get 13 minutes a day. I have to call my investigators in the morning, then right before the appointment, then in the evening to remind them of commitments. Each call is 1-2 minutes so I talk at least 20 minutes a day.  Also all of our texts go to reporting our numbers, so we can't even send referrals or anything it's a bunch of junk and they don't know what they are doing.

Yeah so I am having tons of fun and we will be enjoying a bunch of jollof rice tonight with Bill so Love yall!

Love Elder Legg

 

Crappy Excuse for NO email At All on 7/21 -------At Least it's Not Ebola!

Ok, so here is my crappy excuse for not emailing last week! It contains some bad news, some not great news, and some ok news.

Bad news:  I got transferred, so I had to Leave Kasoa.

Not great news:   I am now a senior companion and my companion is 5 years older than me, it's hard to be in charge, ugh.

Ok news:  I now live in Oda, which is the farthest east I can possible be from the mission home.  I live in the bush and I am and I am farthest missionary east.

So I am coming onto this week's email now. I am really sorry!

 

 

7/28/14

Ummmmm. So is it bad then if I just got some money out! I didn't know!  I moved so I can't do anything at the other ATM or bank anymore! ugh sorry!! (missing ATM $ saga continues)

 

SO YEAH I have been transferred to  place called Oda. I went from Central Region, to Greater Accra Region, to Eastern Region, and finally got to my house 6 hours later. The branch here is way cool and our chapel is suuper nice. But it's a pretty small, but the compound is gigantic!  So we have a nice volleyball spot, a basketball half court, and plenty of grass for football.

I have leveled up, and now become a senior companion.... I don't understand President's reasoning behind that, but oh well, I have no idea what I am doing. The oldest member in our district came out only 6 weeks before me, and both of our companions have only been here for 3 months.

I really like the people here in Oda!  We have Sister Portia, Sister Rose, and Brother Albert that I have connected with as members, and they are way fun! Last time I visited Sister Rose she had me eat 10 oranges so I had way fun at her shop!

Sometimes we will go farming, and literally, we have to take a cutlass and hack our way through the bush! Sweetness!

 

Tali: Gosh I wish I could go swimming with you! You know I like that party pool grind!  Did you know I have a problem with bathing too? I have an investigator that every time I call her she makes sure that I have eaten and that I have bathed because I am too disgusting and I am starving myself. But it's hard to bath out of  a bucket and the  water is soo cold!

Tay: Dude you are such a stud! Gosh dancing with 17 wear olds and hugging super cute Camryn! Man I miss going to BYS and EFY. I hope I can be a counselor sometime when I get back! Dude you became the first councilor and I became a senior companion! And we are both making a ton of phone calls! sweetness! Good luck!

Ty: Sheesh 19 year old councilor!?  Dude it sounds like you are having a super fun time holy cow! I am glad everything is doing well.  For me my time for getting my Patriarchal blessing was when I was 17. I was praying about it, but so many people were talking about it, and I wanted to make sure that I wasn't just getting it because others were talking about it. It took me until I was getting ready for the mish before I finally got ready for it.  If you think it is time then don't waste any time, just get it. It is really sweet, and it will give you a lot of strength. One thing that I always remember from mine is that I "will be blessed with confidence in my walk" so yeah I done been blessed with swag! Good luck bro!

 

Ok, so one thing I have been wanting to share, but keep forgetting, is that the names of churches here are ridiculous! The funniest church I have ever met had a huge billboard right near the market in Kasoa. It had a big pastor holding a gavel saying, "Objection over ruled."  The best thing about this church is how they wrote their name. So this church is called  "Overcomers Praise Assemblies International."  But on the billboards sign they abbreviated Assemblies different than we would.  So the sign said, "Overcomers Praise Ass." HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!  Ugh, so obviously you can tell THAT must be a true church :P oh man I just thought that was the funniest thing!

 

Also my District Leader here in Oda is Elder Forrest and he is all about getting them baptisms. You hear plenty things about the church booming here in Africa and why that is, is because us missionaries baptize everybody and anybody (of course that isn't true........ this was actually just a mix up) He had a baptism last week for a super sweet little girl who was 9 years old.  This week we were going through her records and discovered that she is only 7!  For those who know about the age of accountability, you know that you cannot be baptized until you are 8 years old and that the baptism of children is an abomination, because children are innocent and taken in by Christ. It's super funny, and so we had to tell a little girl that she definitely has not been baptized!

 

My new companion is Elder Mangwane from South Africa.  He is 24 and way cool.  It's sometimes difficult, because I came to meet him in this area and he is older than me, so it is hard for me to lead and he isn't the best listener. But it's ok, we work really hard, and he has no idea what we are doing.

When I came, I asked him what Area we were, and he just said Oda. I told him there area 4 missionaries in Oda and there has to be  way to tell the difference. He told me I was wrong, and I later found out that we are Oda 1B.  Next I asked him our phone number and he didn't know that either, so I had to look through the district leader's phone to find out our phone numbers. He keeps forgetting the names of our investigators and he doesn't know where very many people stay.  Ugh oh well I am doing my best, so we shall see how things go!

Love Elder Legg