We spent this last weekend (December 9th-10th) in Sunyani and Berekum. Domfete is a village outside of Berekum where a number of members live, including the Berekum Elders Quorum President. We received approval a couple of months ago to create the Domfete Branch out of the Berekum Branch. As of Sunday morning before the new branch was formed, there were 173 members of the branch. There were 50 of us in attendance on Sunday, and that included 4 missionaries, two members of the District Presidency, and LaDawn and me. While the numbers were small, the city of Berekum is large and the opportunities there are significant. We know there is an opportunity to grow the Church in a significant way. Splitting the branch created the opportunity to put another set of missionaries to work in the area and grow from the opposite end of Berekum from where the branch is today. We are confident it will work. And that Berekum Branch Elders Quorum President? Well, he is now the new Domfete Branch President.

After the meetings we were also privileged to witness the baptism of two young men and then I also did two temple recommend interviews, one for a family to be sealed and another for an own endowment.

Saturday morning was difficult. We had a missionary who needed to go home. While he had been out for 20 months, he had never really acclimated to the obedience culture of the mission. I had been working with him transfer after transfer. Companions gave their heart and soul to help him. I had a call with him a few months back along with his stake president. No matter what I tried to do to help him, he just wanted to live on the edge of the mission rules. As his time to go home drew nearer, he became more and more bold about his disobedience. A personal phone and sim card, proselyting while listening to music, refusing to engage in personal study, constantly calling other missionaries in the mission, refusing to learn the 40 principles in Preach My Gospel. He wore out every companion he had. The time had come for him to go home and that is never easy. To recommend that a missionary return home early requires the agreement of the stake president, the area presidency, and the mission president. Once the history of the issues and the required approvals have been received and documented, it goes to the In-field Representative (IFR), who works as part of the Missionary Department in Salt Lake City to determine the outcome. On Saturday morning, I spent 3.5 hours trying to contact his stake president. With the help of the IFR, we contacted the first counselor and then the bishop. I think it is fair to say that the home priesthood leaders were not eager for him to come home early. When the stake president finally responded to my emails from two days prior he was not convinced that the missionary needed to return early. I explained that was why I had repeatedly tried to call, but he never did answer them. That meant another series of emails explaining what was going on so he could more fully understand the situation. I finally received the approval and the IFR was able to send it into the missionary department in Salt Lake for a decision. By Saturday evening, the approval to send him home was received and then the next phase began. I won’t go into the details of the drama that surrounded getting him to the mission office, having the difficult conversation with him, and then finally on Tuesday morning having the office elders take him to the airport. All in all, I spent over 8 hours working on this situation before he was finally on a plane home. While to some who are not aware of the details, this may seem harsh, for us, after we have done everything we can possibly do to help a missionary change, the only thing left is to allow him to feel the full consequences of his actions. We pray that it will be enough to wake him from his slumber.

At noon on Saturday, we drove to Sunyani and stayed in the Goodrich’s apartment overnight since we had the meeting in Berekum the next morning. We stopped at Kentucky Fried Chicken and purchased some chicken strips and fries and then added some canned green beans to the meal after arriving at the apartment. It was good. I spent the rest of the evening on coming up with my weekly email to the missionaries. The week had been so busy that I also hadn’t hardly touched the weekly emails the missionaries sent to me. It wasn’t until Sunday evening following our return to Kumasi from Sunyani that I was able to complete my email to them. The subject was titled, “Trifle Not With Sacred Things“. 

In our Sunday night meeting with the Assistants we had a lot of work to do to get ready for the transfer week. We discussed the upcoming MLC meeting on Friday, as well as the virtual MLC meeting on Monday evening. We also talked about the Assistants upcoming instruction on “The Art of Conversation” and then spent a fair amount of time finalizing the transfer board. We made a few changes that really relieved some of the dissonance I was feeling. I love how Elder Mba and Elder Baldwin can see things that I cannot see, even after I have spent hours working on getting it as right as I can. Revelation truly is scattered!

Back to Monday (Dec 4th). I went golfing by myself in the morning and was back home by 9:30 am. I played better although still not well. But it was good to be out on the golf course enjoying the beautiful morning and just have a break from the day the day activities. I spend a lot of time on Monday catching up on this blog, having two weeks to cover with all of the zone conferences. At 4 pm, we drove to the Bantama Stake Center and interviewed remaining 8 missionaries in that zone. In the evening we had the virtual MLC meeting – always a treat for me to see the valor of these young mission leaders as they continue to push the work forward.

On Tuesday, we attended the Daban District Council. This is where the Assistants and Office Elders attend their weekly meeting along with the Atonsu elders (Elder Risenmay and Elder Tapetuatoa). I interviewed the four elders (I did not take snaps) I had not yet seen and then at 1 pm we had an amazing Mission Devotional with Kevin Ball. It was focused on the temple and the names of Jesus Christ. The missionaries absolutely loved it. As we had interviews every day the rest of the week, i constantly received positive feedback on what he taught them. Thank you Kevin! I actually took some screen shots of the meeting but when my computer disk space was about finished, I deleted a ton of old screenshots and they got caught up in the purge. I hate when I do that! On Tuesday evening, Sister Samuelson celebrated her 70th birthday. Elder Samuelson treated the Lovelands, the Packs, and the Kunz’s to a nice dinner at a relatively new Indian/Chinese restaurant. We were very grateful for the meal and more grateful for our friendships with these amazing senior missionaries. Happy Birthday Sister Samuelson!

On Wednesday, we drove to Nkawkaw, Juaso, Konongo, and Low Cost and did 14 interviews. One of our missionaries from Zimbabwe had contracted chicken pox and so he was confined to his apartment in Low Cost. That meant we also went to the Sisters apartment who serve in Konongo. Getting down their road to their apartment is a bit of a pain, so we had them walk up to the roadside and I did the interviews one on one in the car, while LaDawn was with the companion just outside in the shade. Flexibility is important! 😊

We also came across an interesting scene on our way back from Nkawkaw to Konongo. A truck filled with yams had turned over on the side of the road. This is actually not that unusual. Trucks are almost always overloaded and top heavy. When a truck navigates a speed bump (and there are plenty) or gets to close to the shoulder of the road, it will inevitably tip over if the driver is not ultra-careful. This is why often trucks will be seen driving down the middle of the road to avoid the slant of the road (built so that water will runoff).

On our way home we stopped at Starbites for dinner and I ordered what looked on the menu to be delicious BBQ pork ribs. It turned out to be two bones that were 95% fat. When I took it back to the waitress and then the manager, they offered to cook another meal for me, but it would have taken more time than we had. They were apologetic, but did little to rectify the problem, ultimately giving us a 20% discount on that particular dish. My mistake was not telling them immediately when it came to our table. I kept thinking that there would be meat on the second bone after finding only a sliver of meat on the first. I think the problem is that is their idea of pork ribs -two bones surrounded in fat. Live and learn. The good news is that the french fries were excellent!

Thursday was the day I worked on the transfer board. Even though we still had the Obuasi missionaries to interview, I knew that I needed to get most of it figured out that day. Around noon, the Ray’s arrived from their temple trip to Accra. They had joined with several members of the Tamale District who rode the bus to Accra to be sealed and endowed. Elder Eli Beck, Elder Riggs, and Elder N’guessan were also on that trip. The Ray’s had picked up Elder Beck in Nkawkaw on their way down to Accra, and then he flew back to Kumasi the next day. Elder Riggs, who is serving as the branch president of the Kalpohin Branch in Tamale, and his companion Elder N’guessan flew down and back from Tamale. This was the first time since we have arrived as Mission Leaders that an entire family taught and baptized by our missionaries, were sealed in the temple. We were grateful for the Area President’s approval to allow Elder Beck to attend. Unfortunately, his companion at the time, Elder Hoyt, had already returned home. After dinner with the Ray’s on Thursday evening, we took them to Noble House for a scoop of gelato in a waffle cone. A unique treat here in the Kumasi Mission! The next morning they arose early before the crack of dawn and began the 7 hour drive back to Tamale.

On Friday, we drove to the Obuasi District Center and all had of the missionaries in Dunkwa, Obuasi, and Asonkore come to us. There were 14. It was a good day. Because it was only a 5 week transfer, we had much less time to get everything done, thus having them come to us instead of us to them really helped speed up the day.

After returning home, I worked a bit more on the transfer board while LaDawn recorded all of the phone checks into a Google Spreadsheet. She does an incredible job tracking the data usage each week and then when we have our interviews, she does a thorough phone check. She is able to see things that amaze me, and especially when a missionary is using a personal SIM card or going around the MAS 360 barrier on the phone, she can easily identify it and allow a conversation with the missionary in order to help them keep the rules. She spends an inordinate amount of time each month on this, and it is really paying dividends as we seek to help the missionaries learn the righteous use of technology. Around 9:00 pm the Assistants arrived and we reviewed the transfer board without making any changes. I asked them to sleep on it and we would pick it up again on Sunday evening after our return from Sunyani. It was Sunday evening that we finalized it with the exception of which trainer would train which new missionary. I saved that until after my interviews with each of them.

The pace of the mission right now due to the 5 week transfer has been quite torrid. We see that same pace continuing for another 10 days as we have transfers upcoming with missionary arrivals at 4 different times over 5 days. However, despite the ups and down and need for constant attention to the details of running a mission, we will forever be grateful for this incredible experience to be on the front lines of the gathering of Israel, Together in Ghana.