When You Cease to Dream, You Cease to Live! I Dream Every Flippin Night!

Of course you can celebrate me even though I'm not there!  That will be awesome!  And YES I got the packages Tuesday and they are flippin awesome!!  Mom I love you so much!! I still don't really understand when you got so creative! But it is amazing! I open one each morning and I go out totally inspired and super happy!

We had zone training in Accra.  We had meetings forever.  The meeting was not very fun, but I got out of some of it because one of the office elders was having to run a ton of errands and he couldn't find his companion. So i just followed him everywhere! It was way nicer! Since we left Monday we stayed the night at the Hill's house in the air conditioning! I know it sounds awesome, and for all those people that have been out for only a little while, it was way awesome.  For all us oldies here on the mish, it was miserable because we froze in the AC and got colds and we were unable to sleep!   And the food supply was somewhat limited.  Best part was we all got to watch Passage to Zarahemla, we were trying to get  Forever Strong, but we couldn't quite convince him.

I don't know where the scar on Sister Akos's chin came from.  There are 3 options, it could be a tribal scar (a lot of tribes here do that and most of them look stupid, but a few of them are really cool) I have never seen another one like it though so I doubt it.  It could be from someone having beaten her very seriously when she was younger (kids that are stubborn get beaten pretty badly here, it's way nice!), or she could have just been in an accident, which is pretty much the most likely option.  But I don't know.

I had a pretty awesome week! There were a ton of things that got in the way of proselyting, so that was kind of sad.  But we still did our best, and there was a lot of improvement on my part! 

My companion and I cleaned the baptismal font this week. When you think of what the font represents, and what you do there, it should be pretty clean and a pretty pretty place.  The last few baptisms we have had you can't tell when the person is completely submerged because you cannot see any part of their body!  It is all under the thick brown water ewww. Yeah I had to baptize in that, and I almost vomited when I saw it. So we spent 2 hours on our hands and knees with 2 scrub brushes and 2 liters of bleach scrubbing until our knuckles began to bleed.  That may seem like just a saying or a joke to all of you, but we scrubbed until blisters rose, then we kept scrubbing till they broke and bled.  Now we just have some nice little sores on our knuckles!  Pretty sweet place to have an open wound when trying to fight against ebola and cholera right :)  Ebola really is nothing to me, and it doesn't affect me like at all. There is pretty much nothing to worry about, yet.  We believe it will be pretty well taken care of in about 6 months-ish, but who knows.

We had the best open venue ever!  We were going to have it starting at 5, so of course, at 4 a huge downpour started and no one could leave where they were.  Luckily my companion and I were taking lunch, so we got stuck in a tiny little tin shack.  Of course, since we are missionaries the show must go on! We sang as loud as we could and still no one could hear us over the rain, but it was fun.  By 5:30-6ish we all made it to a street corner near the market and we just sang as loud as our lungs could possible make it until about 730-8.  When you got tired you were supposed to go and try to contact people while the others sang.  Every time I tried to go contact people someone told me to stay and they went and contacted them! So I sang the whole time. We sang about a bagillion hymns.  And you can really only sing so many hymns for so long until you are about ready to explode!  So we serenaded people with other songs such as, All Star by Smash Mouth (talks about individual worth in the sight of God) Baby by Justin Bieber (of course our dependence on the Savior) As Long as You Love Me by Justin Bieber (God's love for us) and a couple other sweet ones in which we just went crazy! We also threw out a bunch of Christmas hymns because those really get the people going!

I got to go on an exchange With Elder Moyer. He is from Pennsylvania. He is super cool. He is pretty quite and reserved, but he is a sweet guy! It was tons of fun, even though I kind of felt like I was waaayyy obnoxious compared to him! One girl yelled at us that night complaining that we hadn't come to see her. She was acting super not serious. I thought Elder Moyer had taught her before because of how she was acting and I was sure he had stopped teaching her because she wasn't serious at all!  So we sat down and I began to absolutely finish her and I was kind of condemning because she had really made me angry! I let her know that we were sent by God and if we didn't find the people that He had sent us to find then their blood would be upon our heads and that if she was wasting our time and because of her we didn't meet with someone who needed us then their blood would be upon her head........ yeah it got pretty heavy. About half way through she has to serve somebody (she was a seller at a junction) and while she is serving them Elder Moyer leans over and whispers, "we've never taught this girl, we just met her yesterday, and we had an appointment with her that we missed." Oh man I felt soooo dumb! But I honestly think what I did helped her, because she got way more serious and was actually willing to listen instead of just play around :) 

Saturday I had another fun oops moment! 8 of us missionaries got invited to a baby blessing or baby shower where we were to preform a special musical number. We get there on time and, of course, they start more than an hour late.  My companion & I are looking all over for the baby, pointing out all the cute looking new babies trying to figure out which one we are there for.  When the ceremony actually starts a fancy dressed couple walks forward to the front and sits in 2 chairs in front of everyone.  That got us really confused. First of all who are these two people??  And what are they doing??  And where is the baby?? When finally the branch president gets up and starts reading some vows I turn to my companion and ask him,"When did we get invited to a wedding?!"  

Yeah that was weird, plus the people getting married were in a different branch so we didn't know them at all, and we were the only ones that were there, but hey wedding means free food!

Also my companion and I are complete morons!  I mean who signs up for a special musical number in sacrament meeting on Wednesday, then picks what song to sing on Saturday, then practices it on Sunday!? Flip I don't know what we were thinking, but we were busy and we wanted to do something nice for the branch.   Good news is that it turned out really well.  Bad news is that the congregation sang the exact same song about 10 minutes before!  We sang "There is a Green Hill Faraway" it was beautiful and everyone loved it! I felt so dumb when we found out that we would all sing the same one! I wanted to change it but my companion said we should stay with the same one! We stuck with it and super rocked it!

What are they doing??  I thought this is supposed to be some super stud dream team and then they are just going to flop against Kuna and Calwdwell?!! Come one you guys! I am over here kicking the buttockses of plenty Ghanaians whose only dream is to be a professional baller, and you cant even take Caldwell?! Y'all need to get your heads in the game! (Tyson's Varsity Soccer Team)

Tay: Goodness your life is all about them ladies now huh! anyone say puberty!!! goodness just try not to make too many cry because tears only lead to you having to make them feel better. So my advice is you be the one who cries and then they will have to make it better!

Grace: Flip you're wayyy to young for boys trying to give you their numbers!  Did he have an Adam's apple??  Because that would make it ok right? (Gracie is crazy for Adam's Apples--loves them!) But still any boy who is using drama class as his way to get to girls is a bum and you don't need to entertain any bums ok!

Tali:  Umm yes girl I went to Wagons Ho, but I don't really remember it that much! I know we did some butter making and something with making a wagon ho or something like that :P glad you're having fun still!

Ty: Ok so first what is with you and bekah being like best friends now! I hear about her all the time and I never hear anything about whats her face or whoever your many girlfriends are now! Why don't you fit in to Mads? Who is even in there? Dude while I am here hearing that I am turning 20 sounds normal and just whatever, but when you and Tay say it, it is so weird!  Ugh when I get back you will be 18, man that is just down right crazy! That is how old I was when I left! I feel like that still ! I don't feel like I am a man, or ready to go to college, or look for a wife, or any of those adult things.  But I am pretty confident it'll be easy :) Love you bro.

Yep same old same old fun stuff!  Hope y'all have a sweet week.  You can try to compete with me, but your week is not going to be as cool as mine! The next time that you hear from me I will be a 20 year old MAN and I will have overcome the hump that is my 1 year mark on mission and be half way finished with my mission! Because of my incredible mother, we will be having a ridiculous party like y'all wouldn't believe! I am soooooooooooooooooooo excited! 

When you cease to dream, you cease to live! I dream every flippin night, so no problem there!  Just think though how many of you die when you think you are just sleeping? :)

The people who can see that which is invisible, are the only people who can do that which is impossible. Some will say that means having vision, some will say that means having visions, and some will say that's just darn crazy! As for me I think I am just darn crazy, but hey it's kind of nice to see something others can only dream of :)

Love Elder Legg