I just closed my eyes for a second and thought to me self "I will not fall! I will stand tall

Hi from Laterbiokoshie,

This is my first Monday in my new area. Well all that I can say is I miss Elder Wing and I miss our clean apartment. I kind of forgot what it was like to really live in Ghana.  For the past six months I have lived in one of the nicest apartments in the mission.  When I got to my new place I felt like I had just land in Ghana again for the fist time. The place smelled terrible, no one had done dishes in probably a month, leaving cooked on rice in the bottom of all the pots. The aroma around here smells worse than when I used to clean up that old wet moldy wheat at the mill.  I had never seen a brown toilet before until I got here but then I realized they don’t make brown toilets only white ones. The shower room had stuff growing on the walls and all over the floor. Then my corner of the room had all this crap that I had to clean up before I could move in.  Over all I was pretty upset and frustrated about the whole thing. I mean I went from a pent house suite to living with house pets that would eat that little dog "Zowie" in one bite.  The rats here are so big they might even eat me and they are fearless.  I have been around the block a time or two here in Ghana and I thought I had seen it all but I get sick to my stomach to think that I might have to live here the rest of my mission.  I felt defeated like a boxer sitting in his corner bleeding from both eyes and nose, staring at the other guy just wanting to get this over with even though he doesn’t want to be the one that falls flat on his face. I just closed my eyes for a second and thought to me self "I will not fall! I will stand tall and I won’t let anyone or anything defeat me”. Then I thought to myself “faith without works is dead”, and with out faith or work I’m for sure going to be dead so I got the broom and started sweeping and cleaning the place up. This morning I have also spent some time doing some spring cleaning. Now I can say that I feel good about going home at night to sleep and not wanting to just stay out all night and work so I didn’t have to go back to the apartment.

Well other than that things are great! Elder Mudenga is really tight! He is from Zimbabwe but spent most of his time in South Africa while he was growing up. He came on mission one transfer after me and he is like 6’ 6”. He is huge; it is weird to have a black brother that is taller than me, since they are mostly shorter then I am. My new ward is really sweet, they all love missionaries so much. It’s going to be tight to get to know all of them and work with them. Our ward building is like the oldest one in Accra, so it is pretty cool to be serving in a historical area. We are really close to Accra and to the Korla bu hospital which is kind of why I think I am here, but we will see I hope I never have to go there.

There are six of us in our apartment so it gets kind of a mad house around here at times. Between all of the missionaries in our apartment there are over 20 different languages spoken. We have one from Zimbabwe/South Africa, two from Ethiopia, one from Ghana, and one from Fort Worth, Texas. Elder Quinn from Texas can speak Japanese and every one else can speak several different types of Africans languages.  Its going to be cool to be here and try to learn a little bit from each one of them and their cultures.

I don’t know if you guys remember Christian that came out with me and Elder Wollenzien in Ordokor. I ran into him at church and found out that he is in our ward.  I had to do a double take to make sure it was him. I was pumped to see him; it’s been a long time. I posted a picture of him on Picasa. Sunday was good day I got to bare my testimony in the ward except there were only like 20 people there. Most of ward members still haven’t gotten used to the time change from the beginning of the year.  Ha-ha! Hopefully they will get the hang of it before next year. After church the Stake President invited me and my companion over to his house to talk about some of the things that are going on in the stake and trying to working everything out between the missionaries and the ward leaders. Our stake president is really cool and he is really young, he loves missionaries and wants to make sure that everything is always running smoothly in the work.

Mom I got the shirts out to everyone in our zone before transfers. Everyone loved them and said thanks for them, especially all my African brothers. They were pumped they got zone shirts that they didn't have to spend money on. Transfers were good; I didn’t really know very many of the Elders because we have gotten so many new ones, so if they were not in our zone then I didn’t get a chance to know them.  It was fun to meet so many missionaries that I had not met. Well, once again I had more to say but when I get under pressure of putting it in writing I forget what happened during the week. But everything is going well, I am happy with where I am and everything is going to be okay.  Congratulations to Lone Peak 5th graders it sounds like you’re getting things done, too! Ha-ha good work! Well I hope that you all have a good week and thank you so much for all that you have done for me.

Love you all, 

Elder Berry