Dear Family,

              This week was nice! I'll be singing this next week on Wednesday! I'm the only musical number too. I thought there would be others, but they said I'm the only one! I'll be singing "Be Still My Soul" A Capella, and it's going to go really well I think! I wish I could just sing as my mission, but there's not too many opportunities, and the style of music that people like here is nothing that I would sing. I asked the bishop on Saturday if I could sing in sacrament meeting the next day, and he said that the choir was singing a number, but we're having a ward family home evening at the church tonight and he said I could sing for that. I feel like singing is a contribution I should be making more to do missionary work and support the ward.

           This last week we all went out for pizza again one night this last week with a few other missionaries, and we even found probably the only miniature golf course in Ghana, and we're going to go play this afternoon for a p-day activity!

           We taught a lot of lessons this week, and they were good lessons too! In all we taught 31! Crazy huh?! I don't think I've been able to do this much teaching for like 8 months! It's been nice and the ward had a missionary open-house that turned out to be a lot more successful than I thought. People walked in, they met some members, watched a small video clip, and then we sat down with them and taught them.

           Some more mission news! Transfers will be this Thursday. There were only about 8 missionaries called to train this transfer, but I heard that the next group of missionaries to come in after this will be one sister missionary, one African, and 18 Americans! There are also rumors going around that there will be a change in the way transfers happen now, like maybe the transfer length will be shortened or lengthened. But that's just rumor right now. We do know, however, that because of whatever the change is with transfers, the dates of those going home are being changed, just like you said. I don't know what the dates are going to be changed to, but I imagine it ought to work out for me. If I go home a few weeks early, I"ll make it in time just fine for school. But if it's a few weeks later, I'll just choose to go home some few weeks early to make it in time. Either way, that's still like 8 months away. Elder C. Scott Grow is supposed to expound on it all a little more during our conference with him this Wednesday.

            We're still working with an old man named Tetteh who was the one who was a co-founder of a church. He's afraid to be baptized we think. He's so funny. When he comes to church, he sits down and leans back in his chair and closes his eyes like he just came there to sleep. Then every once and a while he'll speak up in the middle of the lesson and bring up a really good point, and sometimes it stirs quite the argument among members. We'll both (Elder Henderson and I) just kind of look over at Tetteh and think, "Wasn't he just asleep?!". He fed us some potato soup yesterday which tasted more like home than any Ghanaian dish I've ever had here. It was pretty good and he even made it himself. His wife kept calling him "chef" the whole time he was serving us, ha ha.....I should probably write more about things like this huh? There's just so many unusual things that happen every day that it just doesn't hit me that it's unusual anymore. We also went with a recent convert who had come off of smoking marijuana to go and teach some members' 25-year-old son who has been smoking it for some time now. Both the recent convert (William) and the members' son (Mathias) are big guys. William pretty much took over the lesson and we're pretty sure Mathias was high while we were teaching him the whole time, ha, but it still went well. The way of teaching and counseling people here (at least amongst themselves) is so different from how you'd think it should work. They sweet talk each other as if it's a business offer sometimes. William started out by saying things like, "You know, your parents, they love you so much. Every time I see your father he tells me how much he loves his son. He wants you to be a gentleman and to be successful. And can you do that if you've got your hair like it is and you're becoming a Rastaman? No." (A Rastaman is pretty much someone who like to grow their hair out long in dreads, listen to reggae music, act relaxed, and smoke weed. Bob Marley is a perfect example of a "Rastaman") William even convinced Mathias to at least trim up his hair and his big beard promising him that if he did, he would be able to ask his father for 1,000 cedis and his father would surely give it to him, ha ha. It was a good lesson, but it's so different from what we would do. They're very straight forward with each other and they don't take offense at things that we normally would, so they say some pretty bold, sometimes funny, things. Oh, and to dad: I've been keeping a pretty good track of names and areas because I've kept all of my planners from past areas and they have all the people's names I taught and what I taught them. I think I should be able to remember a lot just from those. I've got every day's plan in missionary planners since the beginning of my mission inside my suitcase.

         I haven't been able to receive any mail for the last 2 weeks, but I'll make sure to send McCall's letter off. I did hear though that I have a package waiting for me in the mission home, so I think your Christmas package to me arrived! I'll find out this Wednesday.

        One last thing, I went to the temple this last week with our ward and some recent converts and the temple workers gave us the papers with names on them, showed us how to do it all, and then left us missionaries with the ward members in the confirmation room to do about 120 or more confirmations. So that was fun. I felt pretty official ;)

        Thanks for your e-mails! That sucks that everyone is so sick. I'll be praying for Aunt Linda especially! Tell her I say she should just eat some jelly beans. I think that ought to take care of it :) I'll talk to you guys next week!

                      Lot's of Lutchin' love, Elder Dallin Littlefield