Akatsi Branch is now open!

This is the group that showed up to church. 

We had our first Sunday in Akatsi!!!!

Let me tell you, I honestly never thought the day would come when we could actually open this branch, but it finally happened! I cannot even tell you how happy I am. Like I was just ecstatic all Sunday. 

The night before church we decided to fast as a companionship so that we could have a successful day at church. We got there and we had to clean the whole place super-fast. We are using a school and the night before they had trashed the place. So we cleaned it and then set it up and just waited. At nine o' clock we only had six people in total there. We had me and my companion, our branch president, 2 counselors from the mission presidency, one member, and 2 investigators. 

This is what our chapel looks like. It's just a school compound, ha ha.

I was really upset to start. I was angry because we worked so hard last week to meet all the people we have been teaching. We were asking them all to come to church, but none of them had come. Well we started, but just soon after we started more people started to come. By the end of sacrament meeting there were 17 people.

While on an exchange with Elder Seeley, we were waiting for one of the girls we were teaching so he looked at me and said, "You know how funny it would be to take a picture of us looking like we were teaching?" Well me being me, I said, "Let's do it", ha ha. So these pictures look like we were teaching, but really we were just laughing as I was saying nonsense stuff to get them to smile, ha ha.

More investigators started to come, but none of them were the ones we have been teaching except for 3 girls and one guy. But even with that I was so happy! Then in the second hour we were teaching about Joseph Smith and the first vision and by the end we had 27 people there! I was so surprised! I mean yeah it was really sad to see that almost no one we invited came, but there were still people there! Everyone who came said they loved it and will keep coming back. We even met a man who said he had brought his wife and all of his kids and he was very excited to become a member. Apparently a long time ago, he attended church in Dzodze with his daughter like 4 times so when he heard the church was in Akatsi he brought everyone with him. I was so happy to see that he wanted to have his family be a part of the church because he knew how amazing it was. I have been so blessed to be here to witness this branch get it's start and I will get to see it continue to grow. 

Just a cool picture at one of our investigators house, you get to see the hand-made fence on the right, the palm tree in the middle and the mud hut on the left. :)

I don't have too much else to say this week. I know this was a short email but I just wanted to share this experience that I had with finally being able to see the work here move forward. It's been hard. I have been here for 5 and a half months and I thought that there was little to no progress, but now at the end of it all, I can see the rewards that are going to start to flow in. This week I will hit my 6 month mark. I can't believe that I am already 1/4th of the way done with my mission. Time out here never seems slow, it is always moving forward and it just won't slow down. 

The kids saw my camera and wanted me to take pictures so I obliged,  ha ha.

Eventually I will be leaving and looking back and saying why do I have to go home because I absolutely love it here? Ghana is an amazing place. It his hot, it is poor, it is dirty, but the Lord doesn't care. His gospel is for everyone and anyone no matter where you are, who you are and what you have done. I love this gospel and as I have been able to really study and ponder it I have been able to see the blessings that it brings to us and to others. I want to invite you all to really study the scriptures. We need to be studying the Book of Mormon every day. If you aren't, then I would really encourage you to because it will bless you and you will see change in your life. 

I love you all so much and hope that this week is good for you. Hang in there everyone and turn to the Lord in everything. Literally everything.

Sincerely, 

Elder Baird

Dinner at Norkplims. We had bonkou with occro stew (I call it snot soup because it is so sticky 

and honestly looks like snot but red and green, ha ha) and then we got some nice big old crabs to eat 

along with it. They apparently eat the entire thing here. So I ate the legs, the shell, and everything else, ha ha.

Mom's notes:

1. Elder Baird is doing great and his week was awesome! :)

2. This week he plans to be following up with all the people that came to church Sunday because they had never met them before. They will also be extending as many baptismal dates as they can.

3. I told Elder Baird that I think that I went to High School with Elder Wilcox's mom and he thought that was pretty cool! He says that he loves Elder Wilcox!

4. For his preparation day today they went to the beach in Aflao, played basketball, bought some pizza and then came to the internet cafe to do their emailing. He says that Elder Wilcox doesn't like sitting around so they stay really busy! He is loving that. (He has never been good at sitting still.)