Hello! Efoa?? (How are you in Ewe)

So this is my mission family so far, ha ha. Elder Nybo on the far left trained Elder Sebuliba who was my trainer and Elder Sebuliba trained Elder Khanga and I. Elder Nybo goes home this week. He is also from Kaysville. :) So I will see him in 20 months!

How is everyone doing?? I hope everyone is doing good at home! I am doing great over here!!

SO this last week was pretty interesting. I will start with the really cool part. We are teaching a lady and her name is Mabel. She owns a shop that just sells sodas and other stuff like that. We met her the first day that I was here in Akatsi. After we met her, she went and traveled, then she got sick and lots of other stuff happened so we stopped seeing her for a bit. We are now teaching her a bunch and it's going really well. We taught her the Plan of Salvation this week. Let me just say, that was super cool because the whole time she was so involved. She kept asking all of these really good inspired questions and just wanted to know more! Well after she finished, she just said, "Wow! This is amazing!" She told us how much this plan means to her. She then got kind of worried and told us this, "So no one knows about this (meaning the gospel) and that's a serious problem! The poor children out there don't even know about this and we need to be teaching them this so they can know what the plan for them is!" She was genuinely concerned and wanted to help us to teach as many people as she can about this message! 

Here is our District ha ha. We took a picture because Elder Mathews (the other white guy) Is leaving to be the next AP!

Teaching a lesson and feeling the spirit testifying to someone that it is true is just amazing and then to see them want to share it with other people just made me so much more grateful. :)

I looked at my bed after studying the other day, man I am kind of a mess when I study,  ha ha!

Here is a funny story: Elder Bidi and I were just biking around because one of our lessons fell through. We needed to pick up a suitcase for him. He had already paid for it a few days ago, but we just didn't have any way to carry it so we were going to wait until today to get it. Well the lady has been hounding us to take it, ha ha. On Saturday we decided to take it back after we had an appointment fall through. We were on our bikes and didn't know how to carry it. So Bidi just decided he would hold it next to him while he is biking. Well it was quite a sight, ha ha. First of all there is a white guy riding his bike around town, and the man behind him is holding a big suitcase, ha ha. Man so many people were laughing and staring at us.

I was too lazy to cook anything so I bought a watermelon, cut it in half, and just ate out of it with a spoon, ha ha. It was pretty good. :)

Then when we were just about to get to our apartment, one of our investigators stopped us. She asked us to come and greet her family really quick. So we did. Little did we know, she had pounded a ton of fufu! So she fed us 2 massive balls of it! I have not felt that full in a very long time. Well biking home after that was a struggle, ha ha.

I am becoming a pretty good cook out here. :p I made some pretty good spaghetti and was pretty proud of myself!

So kind of a disappointment on Sunday, we were supposed to have 5 investigators at church with us. We were anxiously waiting for them and they just never showed up. To be honest I really thought they would come. But they didn't. Missionary work out here is not easy. But, the blessings are there. So that is my little take away for you all this week. Things may be hard and difficult and we won't really understand why. We just need to look at our blessings. Everything is a blessing. Life itself is a blessing. The chance to be here is such a big blessing.

That moment you realize your pringles, oreos... 

...and oatmeal pies are all gone!

I love you all and hope you have a great week! :) 

Sincerely,

Elder Baird

I saw this and almost cried reading it. Show it to Grandma and tell her how much I love her and tell her I am praying for her. :)

Mom's notes:

1. He is doing great and he and his companion are working really well together.

2. He is teaching a lot of people and it is hard to keep track of all of them. 

3. He is teaching Mabel, this is what he said about her, "She was one of the people we met on my very first day. She has been gone for a really long time and we finally got back to teaching her. We met her just by walking around and I had a specific prompting to just go say, "hi". It's been quite a blessing from that day. She accepts everything and knows the church is true. She told me the other day that she dreams very vividly. In her dreams sometimes she feels an evil presence. The presence is so strong that she can't even say, "God help me". She told me that she now reads the BOM every night because in her dreams she can now say "God help me" and she sleeps so much better now!

4. I asked him about how Norkplim is doing. He said, "She is doing so well! :) Last week she actually taught the Relief Society class and she is also telling everyone she meets about the church, ha ha, and it turns out that she is making me 2 more shirts!"