Oh how I love this church! 3-25-2019

While waiting outside a compound, a little kid just came up and grabbed the back of my legs and he just stayed there for about ten minutes until his Mom came looking for him, ha ha! :)

This past week was really really cool! We had a couple of really good lessons, some funny and weird stuff happened and I definitely felt my testimony strengthen a bit!

Alright, first off here is something funny that happened! On Thursday we were leaving the apartment to start our day and we lock up our bikes up in front of our house to a metal railing. As I was unlocking my bike, I noticed that my companion was just standing there. I asked what was wrong and he just started laughing and looked at me and said, "I went to unlock my bike when I realized that I locked the lock to the pole but didn't connect my bike to the lock," ha ha. Let's just say, that I got a good laugh from that. 

Then on Friday night, I was going to cook my dinner and the stove was giving me some trouble  so I lifted the top of up to look underneath and see what the problem was. At that moment, I just about got kissed by a mouse, ha ha! The mouse that was living in our apartment for the past month was hiding under there and he tried running out by running straight at me, ha ha ha! SO we trapped it in a corner and I didn't want to kill it so we opened the door to give it the chance to live free. Well, instead of running outside it decided to try to sneak under the kitchen sink cabinet door... Well let's just say, I kicked the door really hard and uhhhh, that mouse was finished.... hee hee... But hey, at least we don't have a mouse anymore!

Hee hee here is the good old mouse we caught. :)

One of our super cool lessons that we had this week was with our investigator named Sarah. We have  been teaching her for a few weeks and she has been progressing quite quickly. We had given her the assignment to read the story of Ammon and how he defended the flocks of sheep by cutting off the Lamanites arms. Well when we came back, I asked her what she had learned and she pulled out a piece of paper and showed us the seven or eight things that she had learned while reading it. Now, these things she wrote weren't like, "Ammon did this," or "Ammon said that." They were "Ammon taught us how we need to be servants" or "This story shows us that with God all things are possible and that everyone can repent." She basically dissected the story and pulled out every doctrine that was being taught in the story. I was sooooo impressed! In these moments I can feel the Spirit touching me and the person I am teaching. It is such a blessing to see someone have that much of a desire to study the Book of Mormon. It is just spine tingling. She was telling us how powerful this book truly is and that when she reads it she can see how important it is to read it, because all the stories and experiences inside it truly relate to our lives today.

The last thing I want to talk about is the lesson we had Saturday afternoon. We went to go and teach a man name Ameka. Now this man we contacted in front of his house about a month ago. We taught him a little bit the first time and then the second and third visit we got nothing done. He basically talked the whole time and we weren't able to teach him anything. So we decided to give him one last try. So we went and we had asked each other what we should try teaching him and we decided to teach about how Christ started a church when he was on the earth. But then it was destroyed with the death of Christ and his Apostles. We explained that it happened because of the loss of the priesthood keys. After we said the keys were lost he asked this question, "Well than if the keys were lost, than no one could act in God's name and have a true Church. Then what do we do?" 

Just a picture because why not ??? ha ha

We continued by telling him about Joseph Smith and how he was visited by Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and so on. He was like, "Okay that is really cool and all, but where is the priesthood? They didn't give it to him when they came to him so how can we believe he is a prophet?" Then we continued to explain how he was given the priesthood later by Peter, James and John and we explained how because of that he was able to become a true prophet.Then we told him that God gave him the Book of Mormon to prove he is a true prophet. HE just sat there quietly for a minute, looked at us and said, "Elders, I usually don't listen to people who preach about their church because they never answer my questions well, but you have just answered the questions I have been asking for such a long time." He then continued to say how it all just makes sense and that he really needs to start reading the Book of Mormon to find out if it is really true. I don't know if he will ever get baptized but I can tell you one thing. This man felt the Spirit touch his heart and he felt something was different about our message and it made him really ask himself if it is true.

I just want to share with you all that this is indeed the Lord's church. When we teach this wonderful message that we have to share, it touches people, because it is backed by the Holy Ghost who is the Spirit of truth. I know it is true and I know the investigators we are teaching know it's true by the Spirit they feel when hearing this message. I invite you all to receive this witness, as well, so that you will have no doubts of the truth.

Sincerely,

Elder Baird

Mom's notes:

1. Elder Baird said that that the little boy hanging on to him kept saying, "Oh brunie" (I don't know how to spell it so that is my guess at how it sounds phonetically). It means "oh white man." Everyone calls him that in Ghana. :)
2. When I talk to him on the phone I hear people calling him that everywhere he goes. I also hear lots of traffic, goats and taxi drivers (tro tro drivers)  yelling for customers. I can't really understand them but it is pretty awesome to travel around a bit with him. Yesterday, he was checking up on a lady in a store and asking her if she had done her reading assignment. She told him that she had but that he had to wait until he came to teach her to hear her thoughts. I was listening. He says that they were speaking English...definitely not the English that I am used to. ;)