Hey family,

The pictures are of my baptism with the french guy (as you can see the
tan lines are coming in just fine, plus the baptismal gown was small
:-S), one picrture is of the delicious breakfast we had at the baker's
(missionary couple) house this morning! it was sooooo good! one is a
picture of a bat that died hanging upside down in one of the chapel
windows that we found during district meeting. The one with elder
nembaware and the fried alligator thing is actually called a
"navigator" (like a komodo dragon, but it's they're known to live in
the nile river I guess). The family we found it at was just taking
pieces off as they wanted while it sat out with flies buzzing around
it...pretty sweet. And then I think the last picture is one of me on
top of an apartment building looking over our whole city.

DearElder.com letters are awesome just because when the Bakers (couple
missionaries where we live) go to accra to get letters, they'll bring
back those letters all printed out for me, and I love that!
 That's rough to hear about Chris. It would be fun to be home
and get to know him more and visit him, especially since it sounds
like he's just had a lonely life. Being alone sucks. If I ever forget
on my mission (because sometimes I just forget, which I wish I never
did) that I can pray so that I won't feel alone, everything around me
just comes down one after another. Prayer is HUGE, and it's even more
important to have the faith that my prayer will be answered and that
he's listening, or else praying is almost a waste of time without that
faith. Washing clothes for me I'm sure will always be something that I
never want to do, but I've gotten used to it and it's not hard, it
just takes a good 2 straight hours of scrubbing, soaking, wringing
out, and rinsing. The mosquitoes, or something has really gotten to my
arms. I called sister Judd (mission president's wife) and told her
what was up. She called the area doctor for the church and he says he
thinks I am alergic to something somewhere in the bush areas. I think
it's still mosquito bites though. So he put me on 40 mg of
prednisolone for 5 days, today will be my 3rd day. The medicine is
supposed to take down the inflammation and stop them from itching,
because they were itching REALLY bad, and I probably had like 40
between the two arms. But they were only on my arms. But don't worry,
I just followed her directions, bought some medicine (40 pills of 5mg
prednisolone for only ONE u.s. dollar...WAY CHEAP) and am taking it, and it's working really well. My arms don't burn and everything is
healing up! I'm gonna be just fine. Although I think I'm

gonna put on
some heavy duty mosquito spray before I go into those areas again.
All is well though, everything is fine! I'm just happy the Ghanians
won't ask me if I have chicken pocks any more, haha. They women here
are really funny and they get way concerned and start offering me
advice and start diagnosing me with these crazy diseases, they're so
funny, but I tell them "you don't worry, eh?" and that they're just
mosquito bites.I've been thinking about that FHE we had before I left where we talked
about doing the "hard" things. It almost seems to me now that anything
else besides doing the hard things is a waste of time. If you're not
working to be better, you go no where. But I also had to learn that
"it is not good that a man should run faster than he has strength"
 So we need to take a
break sometimes and not be too hard on ourselves, but the moment we
are rested, for us to do anything else but continue to work to be
better can really just be a waste of time sometimes. oh man, I laughed
when I read your part about "The Far Side of Heaven", it's called "The
Other Side of Heaven", isn't it? It reminded me when you used to always
call "Finding Nemo", "Little Nemo". Oh man, that made my day! But
don't worry, no rat bites on my feet, just dead rats in the kitchen
that I kill so my kitchen is clean, ha ha. The conference talks were
awesome and I loved all of them, I'm going to download a ton more
after this! I'm getting better at missionary work every day, and every
week is hard on me, but i'm growing and learning so much because it's
hard. I'm learning how to become my own person when I have nothing
else to rely on besides Heavenly Father. I'm making my own decisions,
and I'm standing up for what I know is true (Especially after
listening to Elder Holland's talk during the priesthood session of
conference).   This last week we went to a bunch of tall apartment
buildings in our area and Elder Nembaware said that in that one hour
was the most in his whole mission that people have just shut the door
in his face without letting him explain! We both just decided that
after that we were now "real" missionaries, haha. We had a baptism
with a french man from Ivory Coast and he's gonna be a really good
member. He had about 15 people from his own family attend his baptism
who aren't members and we were able to have a little baptismal meeting
with talks and songs. The 2nd counselor (a recent return missionary)
in the bishopric invited all of his family to attend church the
following day to see him confirmed, and about 5 of them even showed up
to that, including his parents! I really think if we continue to visit
that home and teach his father especially, that they will see the
truthfulness of the church and come into it. Especially because this
man's father has 2 brothers who are bishops (one even in utah). The
family has a lot of support and I think everything will end up going
so well! We had fufu again this week and it was not good. Too much
Fufu, and not enough time to digest makes a missionary in pain for the
next 5 hours, so that wasn't so fun. But it was worth it, because the
meal we ate was a "thank you" meal from a mother whose son we're
teaching really enjoys our lessons. He's having a hard time with his
father (who's divorced from his mother) and he started to cry and
break down to us in one of the lessons (He's 18) because of how his
father doesn't like him as much as his step-mom's kids and is hard on
him. My companion and I tried to be compassionate and help him, and
afterwards he was just thanking us so much! I think that's why his mom
invited us over for lunch (fufu). My companion mentioned how much
divorce just destroys families, and how he really wasn't happy with
the way the dad was. I agree, and it's so true how much divorce just
screws up some kids lives. But this kid has a baptismal date for this
saturday and it's looking like everything will work out well,
especially because he's found peace in the gospel and his mother is a
member who will help him. Anyways, the work is good and it will always
continue to be good as long as I just have faith and push through hard
times even when I don't understand why they're happening (which can be
really rough sometimes and it's hard not to get discouraged). But I
know that every hard time happens for a reason. A reason that we don't
even realize how beneficial it can be for us until we have had the
faith and endure. If I can stress anything in this letter, it's how
much we need to endure those hard times with as much faith as we can.
If we don't, we miss out on huge blessings that may just pass over us
without us even knowing! I love this church so much, and I know this
is exactly where I need to be right now. A mission is like a
heavy duty spiritual boot camp. It's hard, but ALWAYS worth it. I hope
it gets harder, because I've only got 2 years, ya know? Anyways, I'll
try to attach some pictures this time! OH! and thanks SOOOO MUCH for
the "nearer my god to thee" song by vocal point! I'll probably listen
to it every day!

---Elder Littlefield