February 13, 2012

Momma!

Happy Valentine's! I have a lot to say and a short time to type it all because my companion is getting impatient, so I'm rushing a bit, ha ha. This last week we were supposed to have a baptism, but a long story happened instead, and now we have some problems to work out. The long story is that the place where this boy lives, another pastor of another church also lives. This pastor doesn't like the Latter-day Saint church at all, and he keeps encouraging our baptismal candidate to stop listening to us. He doesn't listen, so the pastor somehow got a hold of his mother's phone number and called her (she lives in my old area actually; Koforidua) and told her all these bad things about the church and how her son was involved in it all. So she called her son and told him that if he keeps going to the church or gets baptized that she'll stop giving him money to live and go to school out here in Nsawam. The boy is very adamant that he will get baptized one way or another, so we're working with him. I'm going to meet with him and call his mother this week and talk to her about everything, and probably dispel some rumors that this pastor told her. Hopefully it all works out and this boy can be baptized. He's 18 years old. He said if it doesn't work out that as soon as he's out of his mother's care, that he'll find the church and be baptized, no matter where he goes. He has a strong testimony, and I know Satan knows it too, so he's trying to stop the work.
Another neat story. We went to Adoagyiri, which is an area that's a little bit farther away from where we live. We've been teaching a mother and daughter who live alone with the grandmother to take care of. The mother knows the church is true, and her only child, the 11-year old girl is brilliantly smart and reads the book of mormon and can tell us everything that happened and even sometimes what lesson we can learn from it. The mother (Grace) has been very sick and she's been having stomach and chest pains. It got so bad that she couldn't get up from her bed. She even mentioned to us that she just wanted to die because of how much pain she was in. We had given her a priesthood blessing before when it wasn't so critical, but I offered that we give her another priesthood blessing and bore what I know was a powerful testimony of the healing power of the Atonement of Christ, if we only ask for it. She and her daughter had also run out of money and didn't have much food left, so I told them to pray for health, and even for a way to have money to eat. We fetched 6 buckets of water for her and then gave her the blessing and left. The next day we came back and she told us that after we gave her the blessing the day before that she vomited for an hour and a half. I first thought, "oh, how terrible, I'm sorry". But as it turns out, she was trying to vomit the whole day, but couldn't seem to, so it was a miracle for her, and us too. She also mentioned that someone came by the same day and gave them 30 cedis so they could buy food. IT WAS A MIRACLE! I knew God answered her prayer, and I knew she knew too. She reads the Book of Mormon everyday now because she says when she reads it, good things happen to her. We even had another investigator that said that since we've been visiting her, she's been praying for her small shop to get more business, and then when we started to visit her, her shop's business increased dramatically, and so she's very intent on being baptized and learning more. On top of all that, we gave a pamphlet about the Restoration, and then one on the Word of Wisdom to a drunk guy that approached us. I thought, "He's drunk now, but maybe later when he's not drunk he'll read the pamphlet and call". He Did! He called us, we went and visited him and his 2 children, and now they all have baptismal dates for the 3rd of march! Pretty sweet huh?! He said he used to be pastor of a church, but stopped for some time and he said that he feels that he should join us. So he told us very firmly that he's bringing himself, some friends and his children to church this Sunday. Normally you can't believe someone until they actually show up to church, but I know this guy will :) Anyways, I love you all! I'll try and get Kade's report done this next week, Thanks for the letters.  I'm glad everyone is doing so well and mom said the spirit is more in our home, that just makes me want to cry I'm so happy!

--Elder Littlefield