While this past week was busy with zone conferences and interviews, I can’t help but title a post after the name of the local golf course which in only about 2 miles from the mission home. After being here for over 27 months, I finally decided to go and play a round of golf Monday morning instead of playing basketball. It had been over 2 years since I had hit a ball, so to say I was rusty was an understatement. Elder Pack was kind enough to go with me. To rent a set of clubs was 150 cedis ($13) and the course fee was another 150 cedis. The caddie cost $4. So for about $30 each we enjoyed 18 holes of golf. The greens were extremely slow because they had not yet been mowed for the week. They had also recently been aerated. But even with the negatives of the course, it was still an amazing morning. We were on the course at about 6:15 am and back home by 10:00 am. My watch showed that we walked just over 6 miles (there are no carts). As it turns out, the Ashanti King was there playing golf with some friends and his security detail so they would not let us on the front 7 holes. We played the back nine plus holes 8 and 9 and then started back over at 10 and played 6 additional holes. Elder Pack and I were both pretty beat by the time we finished.

And here is a map showing the proximity of the course to our home (yellow dots).

On Tuesday we began our zone conferences in Kumasi. We had planned to start with Dichemso and Suame on Tuesday, but we received a phone call from the University Sister Training Leaders and then the University Stake President that another event was planned at their Stake Center on Wednesday. Therefore, we switched the two conferences and on Tuesday we held the Konongo / University combined zone conference. One of the highlights of this conference was Elder Tapatuetoa from Australia, who was born in New Zealand, and is of Tongan descent, singing a family favorite song of faith. When we had our interview last week, he brought his guitar and sang it for me. I was touched by the spirit of the song and asked him to sing it for zone conference. I share it here.

Here is the agenda of the zone conferences.

• Birthdays
• Health & Safety – Elder & Sister Loveland
• Vision Refresh – The Holy Ghost
• Instruction from Sister Training Leaders
• Testimonies of departing missionaries
• Instruction from Sister Kunz (A Fulness of Joy)
• One Minute Drills
• Lunch
• Assistants Instruction (Finders Keepers)
• Instruction from President Kunz (A Soft Heart)

Once we have completed all of the conferences this next week, I will post links to the documents we used. We are always grateful for the instructions from the Sister Training Leaders and Zone Leaders. This transfer, the Sister Training Leaders covered the following topics and all did a great job of delivering powerful messages:

• Seek this Jesus – Sister Asantewaa and Sister Konoekor (University/Konongo)
• Goal Setting and Planning – SIster Nyaketcho and Sister Ganjiri (Suame/DIchemso)
• The Power and Authority of our Calling – Sister Muwenge and Sister Toe (Bantama/Obuasi/Bibiani)

During the Assistant’s instruction, we did role plays on how to transition to teaching by asking good inspired questions. Here are some pictures from the University / Konongo conference.

On Wednesday, we traveled to the Dichemso Stake Center and held the Dichemso / Suame combined conference. The format was the same. On Wednesday evening, I held my biweekly Mission Presidency Meeting with President Obeng, Presidnet Asante, and our clerk Eugene Ghorman. Elder and Sister Loveland were in Accra for a medical advisor meeting.

On Thursday, we interviewed the missionaries in the Abuakwa District and all of those in the Bibiani Zone (they came in early Thursday to the Mission Office for their zone conference on Friday). We have learned that it is better if we do not do three zone conferences back to back due to the toll it takes on us. Putting a day in between with interviews is much, much better.

Friday, we held the Obuasi/Bibiani/Obuasi combined zone conference at the Bantama Stake Center. Same format.

I will just add one more comment about the conferences. During my instruction on having a soft heart, we read some scriptures that reinforce the connection between a soft heart, repentance, and a remission of sins. I am always looking for these self-sustaining scriptural “systems” so that I can teach them to the missionaries. These will mean more once the underlying scriptures are shared which I will do next week.

On Saturday morning I picked up President Edmund Obeng and we drove to Obuasi to take care of some member district business. LaDawn stayed home and caught up on laundry, housekeeping, and worked on beginning to pull together parts of the 2023 Mission History. I returned back to the Mission home around 4 pm and then worked on the weekly letter to the missionaries titled, “The Great Exchange”. At 7:30 pm, the BYU vs. TCU came on and we viewed that up through the third quarter and then went to bed. It was painful to watch.

On Sunday morning, I completed the letter to the missionaries and then we attended the University Stake Conference where Elder Kofi Sosu was the presiding authority. Prosper Mensah is the stake president of the University Stake. It was absolutely the best session of a stake conference we have attended since arriving in Ghana. The place was full and the spirit was in abundance. They had invited some of the local Muslim leaders and they came. What an honor it was to have them with us. Topics covered included: Repentance, Using Technology Wisely as a Youth, Preparing to Serve a Mission, Loving One Another, Straightway Leaving our Nets, The Pre-mortal Existence and Mortality. That list does not even begin to do justice to the nuances of these topics and the overall spirit of the meeting. It was excellent!

After arriving back home I spent the rest of the afternoon reading and responding to the missionary letters from the prior Monday. With zone conferences, there just hadn’t been time to get to all of them. Sunday evening the Assistants came by for our meeting and we agreed the agenda for the next evening’s MLC meeting and talked a bit more about zone conferences. All in all, the first three went extremely well. For those interviewed after each respective conference, I asked the missionary what was most meaningful for them. I loved that so many aspects of the various instructions were meaningful to different missionaries. In other words, it wasn’t just one single message that hit home to everyone, rather each missionary was able to get what they needed individually from the conference. That is always our goal.

I stand in awe of the Lord’s hand in this work. Each transfer we go to great lengths as mission leaders and the Mission Leadership Council to figure out what will be most helpful to the mission. We pray, we study, we counsel together, and then we go to work preparing our messages. I never cease to be amazed at the outcome and spirit of these conferences. We glory in the opportunity to be involved in such a manner that we are witnesses to the miracles of this great work of gathering Israel one last time, Together in Ghana.