👥 🚫🔋💧

Another solid week this week.

  Multizone  

So this week we had "multizone" but it was just our zone so it was more like a glorified Zone Council. It was still a lot of fun and I learned a lot. Our zone Asamankese is the biggest in the mission and we were having some unique problems that President wanted to fix. Overall a great conference and I got some more cool ties.

  Power  

We lost our power again. It was around 10 pm and everyone was getting ready for bed. I was brushing my teeth and the power went out. Usually when the power goes out it takes about 10 - 20 minutes to come back on, but this time that was not the case. We had to sleep in the front room with the door wide open because of how hot it was at night. After 30 minutes of laying down we realized we were letting all of the mosquitos in and we were getting eaten alive! One of the Elders put his bed back inside his room and another started spraying his bed all over with mosquito repellent. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to spray insecticide everywhere in the room. I killed all of the mosquitos but we were all breathing in some nasty spray. It was about 11:30 and everyone was coughing and running around the apartment trying to fan the spray out the door. We all eventually fell asleep but the power didn't come back on until around 6 pm the next day. On top of that we lost power the next morning for another 5 hours. Ghana...

  Baptism  

Well we had a baptism this week but it wasn't very glamorous. In the US you usually would have a bunch of friends, family, and people from your ward there. In Ghana... well its not really the same. We invited a bunch of members to come but everyone was "busy" or just didn't want to come. We also called our Bishop and he was working. The best we could get was our ward clerk and he just showed up, gave us the baptismal clothes, and left. By the time the baptism started we had a total of 3 people there. Me, my companion, and our baptismal candidate. We just went through with everything and we had to ask someone in the building to be a witness. It all went smooth and Joseph was confirmed a member at church yesterday. He's 13 and a super smart kid. He had been helping us translate for some lessons and he said one day he wants to be a missionary too!

 Scripture of the Week  

Mormon 8:19 - "For behold, the same that judgeth rashly shall be judged rashly again; for according to his works shall his wages be; therefore, he that smiteth shall be smitten again, of the Lord."

Judge not for ye be not judged.

That's another week down. I hit my 8 month mark and that blows my mind. 1/3 of my mission is already done! I hope everyone has a good week, I'll see you at my homecoming in 2023 very soon.

Elder Holyoak

Our Boi Joseph

Nice Clean Font Water

Entire Zone crammed into a Tro Tro

Zone Conference

Buying some ties

New Tie Buys

Area Pictures

Area Pictures

Area Pictures

Soggy Cracker

Lil Guy on my Shoulder

The fruits of our labor

Laundry Troubles and a Sick Rat

Nothing that big happened this week so I'll write about a bunch of the small stuff.

Mission Home

On Friday I had the chance to go to the mission home for some medical stuff. I'm completely fine, they just needed to draw some blood and do a COVID test so that I could stay in this country. Pretty much every American in the 3 zones near us were there. I saw a bunch of the guys I came out with and some friends from past zones. They also gave us sack lunches with PB&J and some Cheez-its. Heaven in a bag. We decided that we still wanted to go to KFC after and I don't regret it. It was the first time in a long time that I saw more Americans in a public place than Ghanaians.

Laundry Machine 

Sooo, our laundry machine broke this week. We were doing a load of laundry one morning and something started to smell really bad. The smell was a mix between dirty laundry water and some sort of electrical fire. We drained all of the water and unplugged the machine. I still don't know why it died on us but we did fish out some stray socks in some of the tubes. I guess I'll be hand washing this month. :/

Bike day

We biked out to the same place we did two weeks ago with our friend Everand. He is crazy fast at biking uphill. I'm not sure if he's been training for the Tour De France or if its just because he's a returned missionary. Anyways Everand told us that he got accepted to a school in Koforidua. Shoutout to Elder Aznar. It's about an hour and a half drive from here so he won't be around anymore. RIP Everand. You were our only translator and a good friend. 

Mouse

Yeah there's not much to this one. Elder Duncan and I were just hanging out in our room at night and Elder Duncan decided to go to the bathroom. When he went out of our room, he saw a mouse running around our apartment. He chased it around to catch it and eventually it ran into the bathroom. He ran into our room and told me about it but when I came out to see we couldn't find it. We still haven't found it since, but every once in a while you can hear squeaking and scratching from somewhere in the bathroom. Little Sick Rat.

Scripture of the Week

Mosiah 27:4 - "That they should let no pride nor haughtiness disturb their peace; that every man should esteem his neighbor as himself, laboring with their own hands for their support."

Contacts 

Email - aidan.holyoak@missionary.org 

Facebook - Aidan Holyoak

That's all I have for this week. Keep on rockin' in the free world and doot dooda loot doo!

Crabby

Mission Home Visit

Jersy Swap

Cool Spot

KFC Load out

Who even is this guy? (Elder Segura)

My friend Elder Woodruff

Happy Birthday Ghana!

Mud and a Little Blood

Another solid we here in Asamanketewa. We have been working a lot on trying to find serious people but it's never easy. I feel like every time we get a solid person they decide to travel out of town for a couple weeks. 

This week we had President interviews and transfer news. President Sanders is the most chill guy in the world, so I look forward to interviews. He looked at our area and saw no crazy problems so he decided to change nothing. Elder Duncan and I are staying together for another 6 weeks! I'm very happy about it. A good area and a good companion are something I'll never take for granted. 

At interviews, I also got a birthday package from my family. Fun fact, Ghana is the second most expensive country to send packages to BUT it has one of the easiest visas to get. In order to receive packages, we have to give them to people already traveling to Ghana. There isn't amazon or anything so we only get packages every 3-4 months. All of the stuff in this one was super useful. Stuff like Twi language books, drink mix, spices, soup mix, deodorant sticks, Scripture markers, etc. Thanks to my family for all the stuff. I'll put it to good use.

Another thing that happened this week was exchanges. I had the chance to go to an area called Yayo with Elder Webley. Now Elder Webley has only been in his new area for about a week so neither of us really knew who we were teaching. On top of that, we decided to bike. Within the first 5 minutes of leaving the apartment, Elder Webley slid out on the sand and crashed. He tore a little hole in his pants leg, but the work goes on. Later on in the day, we were following Google maps to find someone and we had to bike through a small footpath. The path consisted of rocks, old staircases, sand, and a creek that ran back and forth through it. Sadly Elder Webley crashed again. This time he went over his handlebars! He wasn't hurt too badly, but he did rip another hole in his pants. On the way to the people we were going to teach, it started raining. Usually, if it starts raining too hard we will stop and get cover. It wasn't raining too crazy so we just kept biking. The tires on the bikes flicked mud everywhere so we showed up at the lesson covered in mud. I really enjoyed the exchange overall and it was a really fun day.

Scripture of the Week

Alma 41:10 - "Do not suppose, because it has been spoken concerning restoration, that ye shall be restored from sin to happiness. Behold, I say unto you, wickedness never was happiness."

Contacts

Email - aidan.holyoak@missionary.org 

Facebook - Aidan Holyoak 

Thank you guys for reading, I hope there isn't anything too crazy going on in the world right now. I'll see you all next week!

 Slava Ukraini 

Exchange Day

Taxi

Ground Nut Soup and Rice Ball

Mega Mega Bed

Pineapple Plant with a Goat

Cool New Shirt Designs

Elder Murdock's Evolution

Ups and Downs (on a bike)

This week we biked very far. The whole week was pretty normal until the middle. One of our members wanted to show us a family's house that had some less active youth. He said the only way to get there was to bike or walk so we decided to bike. The one thing that we didn't know was that he is insane at biking. We were struggling to catch up on all of the hills. Out of nowhere, he turned off the main road onto a small dirt trail. Turns out the rest of the ride was about the same as an uphill mountain biking trail. We rode on that for about another 20 minutes and finally made it to their house in the middle of the jungle. When we got there, we were all super thirsty and they offered us rainwater to drink. I hesitated for a second and then decided I'd have to go thirsty for a bit. I didn't want any parasites. Riding back down was a lot of fun because it turned into a downhill mountain biking trail. A great experience all around, especially because we are now teaching one of the kids in the family. 

Another crazy thing that happened this week was an emergency transfer. My companion and I stayed the same, but we lost one of the Elders in our apartment. Elder Steadman was transferred out of our apartment, but he will still be in our zone. Lucky enough president interviews are tomorrow and since our apartment is closer he will have one more night to sleep over with us. We will party.

RIP Elder Steadman you will be missed.

That's the week. Real transfers come this week so I can update you on that in the next email. I hope you're all living happily right now. Enjoy the small things, like ice cream.

Scripture of The Week

Revelation 10:9 - "And I went unto the angel, and said unto him, Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey."

Bitter Belly

Contacts

Email - aidan.holyoak@missionary.org 

Facebook - Aidan Holyoak 

My family said they wanted more pictures of our area so here you go and thank you, everyone, for the birthday wishes. 

Birthday Pizza

Bike Day

Our Member Hommie Everand

Goodbye Elder Steadman

Area Pictures

Baptisms and Strawberry Jam 🍓

Well well well. Another week, another email. Not a very crazy week but we had some success in the work. 

This week we were blessed to baptize 3 new people. All 3 were referred to us by members or were in part member families. Members in missionary work are EVERYTHING. If you think someone near you could use the gospel in their lives, refer them to missionaries. The restored gospel is one of the greatest gifts you can give to someone.

We had a few troubles with the font and trying to fill it up in time for the baptism. We went to the Chapel the night before and started to clean and fill the font, but it was going super slow. We decided to leave it overnight and come back early in the morning. When we came back in the morning, the water was turned off and the font wasn't even half full. A very good samaritan decided that they needed to turn the font off probably about an hour after we left. We ended up pumping water from a hose outside in through the window in order to fill the font in time. Everything worked out fine, but the water was a little green.

Like I said it wasn't a very crazy week. We did also find strawberry jam and I hit 7 months. Time seems to be picking up which is good and bad. We have some super cool friends that we are teaching and I'll keep you updated on their progress. I hope you're all enjoying your lives right now! Happy valentines day!

Zaragamba is my valentine 

Scripture of the week

Mark 7:15 - "There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man."

Contacts

Email - aidan.holyoak@missionary.org 

Facebook - Aidan Holyoak 

Enjoy your week! 

Elder Holyoak

Cool Little Baptism

Cool Little Bridge

Hiking to a lesson

Moist

Daily Role Plays

I ate 21 cans of Beans this week

Yeah... I ate baked beans for every single meal this week. Breakfast lunch and dinner. It all started when Elder Steadman, who lives in our apartment, said, "You like beans, I bet you can't eat them for every meal this week." Once he said that I was already on the way to the store to buy more cans. The first few days were pretty rough but after about day 3, I was just used to it. One of the hardest parts by far was eating beans for breakfast every morning. You wake up all happy for a new day and then you realize you have to eat a whole can of beans for breakfast. Overall, I think that it was worth it. I'd recommend it to anyone who is willing to try the Bean Diet. It'll change your life.

This week we had the opportunity to go to the temple. I love the temple in Ghana because it's one of the quietest places in the whole country. We had a little trouble with travel and the time we signed up for, but the temple workers were really nice, so they helped us out. 

After the temple, we all went to KFC. On the day we went there, I was on Bean day #6. I wasn't just gonna lose all of my progress because of some fried chicken, so I planned ahead and brought my own can of beans for lunch. I bought some fries and spread my cold can of beans over them. It was kinda weird but I regret nothing. 

That's my week!

Scripture of the week

John 20:3-4 

    3 Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple, and came to the sepulcher.

   4 So they ran both together: and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulcher."

  -Here is John flexing in a Bible verse that he can run faster than Peter.

Contacts

Email - aidan.holyoak@missionary.org

Facebook - Aidan Holyoak

I hope you guys are enjoying the food wherever you are. If you aren't, go buy a can of baked beans. Seek you next week!

Elder Holyoak

Temple Trip

Trav at the Temple

Ghana Pizza

My KFC Beans

Secret Menu Item

Bean Kill Count