MOB AT SACRAMENT!!! RUN!!!

Greetings to all those who might be interested.  Well as you can see in the title: MOB AT SACRAMENT!!!  RUN!!! You might be wondering what the heck this guy is talking about.

WELL...we are all at church attending our Sacrament meeting.  Elder and Sister Pack of the Self Reliance Center was there along with another senior couple from Welfare Services.  All is well in Zion.  Meeting starts and we are going well.  THEN, just as the Sacrament hymn is starting, an angry mob (AKA the Ghana Task) storms into the chapel and stops the hymn, runs to the pulpit and over to the organ.  As soon as they enter the building Elder Pack and the other senior missionary jump up and rush over to the mob.  Our Bishop also is there and yelling starts and all of this craziness.  The 1st counselor in the Bishopric got to the pulpit and said, "please stay calm" and that just made things worse.  The mob wanted our organ! Oh, as soon as that was heard, the Mormons went crazy.  Twenty plus minutes of arguing and phone calls and what not.  The leaders were finally able to escort the mob to the commons area and continue the battle out there.  Two of the mobbers were still at the organ.  They really wanted to take the organ, badly! But the Mormons wouldn't let 'em have it!  YA!!!!

So what happened?  Finally the leaders were able to send the angry mob away, after they pocketed a little cash for themselves.  Turns out that there is some stupid traditionalist thing where today no music is allowed in the area.  So the Task Force somehow skips all of the churches around us and goes straight to ours (ours being the only one without drums and guitars and etc.) and try to take our organ.  It had to of been planned.  The Bishop and the Stake President and the two senior couples traveled to the police station to complain.  One of the members (who is a recent convert) was so upset that after church was over, he got on a tro tro and went all the way to the main Task Force Headquarters in Ghana.  Apparently he has a friend who is high up there.  So next week we shall see what happens.

Great news is that after church we had a baptism.  A 9 year old girl named Joyce was baptized into the church.  That was super awesome!  She is super smart! They school a little differently here than back at home.  She was in class 4 and was pushed up to class 6!  That is amazing!  Super smart!  She is a champ!

This week has been super busy.  We have been running all around our area looking for people to teach, but we just can't find anyone serious to teach.  We try and try and try to find people, but they just are not interested in joining the church.  We have three now that are progressing towards baptism on the 8th of June.  If we can ever meet with them.   One can only meet with us on weekends and another can only meet us on certain days at certain times and the last can only speak Twi (no English) so we have to have a member be there with us so that takes time.  At least we have these three people we can work with.  We pray that Heavenly Father will give us the places to find and the people to meet that are truly ready to hear the restored gospel.

Me, I am doing well.  Just keep pushing along.  Ghana is awesome!!  This area is super nice, except we have light off about twice or thrice a week.  That isn't any fun!  So in your prayers if you could pray for "Lights ON" for Elder Bowden and company, that would be very nice.  Thank you.  I am not sure if I have told you that we have a ping pong table in the apartment.  It's not really a ping pong table, but it is a big table with a net and we have two paddles and three balls that we can use.  Ping pong balls cost 1 Cedi here.  Holy cow!  That is expensive!  Ghana is not doing well money wise.  If you think America is suffering money wise right now, Ghana is doing worse.  Last week as of Mother's Day the exchange rate was around 2.7 and now it is 3.08!  That is a big jump.  If you have a 50 dollar bill, you would get 135 Ghana Cedis as of Mother's Day and as of today you would get 154 Ghana Cedis!  That is a difference of 19 Ghana Cedis.  With that much money I could buy almost 10 pineapples!

That was my week.  A very exciting week.  Well...ta ta for now.  I am off to a FHE tonight.

Love,
Elder
Ty
M.
Bowden