🏨 Hospital Trip 🏥 (Not for me)

A very eventful week here in Asamanketewa. From American food to hospital visits. Let's get into it.

American food

Right now I am in a 4 Elder apartment. Our apartment has me and my companion Elder Duncan, but we also have Elder Webley (who is from Washington State) and Elder Bright-Essiakoh (who is a Ghanaian). It was Elder Bright's birthday this week and Elder Webley decided he wanted to make an American dish for every day of the week. A list of the meals have been hamburgers, chili cheese dogs, potato soup, teriyaki chicken, spaghetti, french toast, and breakfast burritos. Elder Duncan and I are blessed to be in this apartment. Haha.

Biking and more biking

This week we had a baptism interview for the same boy that lives in the middle of nowhere. For the interview we told our district leader that we would have to bike pretty far. I don't think he knew how far I meant. It takes about an hour and a half to bike there and a good part of it is uphill. When we got there no one was in the house and we almost left when the boy Kelvin showed up. Kelvin is in a part member family and he speaks ZERO English so every lesson we have taught was through a translator. We were able to get the interview that we needed and then we had to bike all the way back. 

Hospital Trip

Yes, I'm fine and my companion is fine. We were walking near the main part of Asamankese on Friday when we got a call from some of the Elders in our district. One of them said he needed us to get a taxi for them so they could go to the hospital. We asked what was wrong and apparently one of the Elders threw up blood. We rushed over and got him to the hospital. We thought everything was good when we got there... until we walked into the hospital. The next hour was one of the most unorganized experiences I've ever had. We had to walk back and forth for each little test, while we were making sure our Elder didn't pass out. The funniest thing to me was that this hospital was sponsored by an energy drink called Lucozade. They had an ad for it on every sign there. We were able to figure out the problem and he has Typhoid Fever. You get Typhoid from infected water and fruits. He is on medication now and has been doing a lot better. Pray for Elder Hill.

Esubo

We held a baptism this week. It was kind of a headache trying to squeeze it in because it was also Stake Conference this week. After a bunch of struggles, everything went smoothly. The two candidates were Kelvin and Eunice. The other guy in the pictures is Ebenezer. He is from the other Elders' area. Kelvin is the boy that we bike to and he is a great kid. I don't think he's missed a day of church in months and he lives in the middle of the bush. Eunice is one of our friends and she works at a seamstress shop where a bunch of our members also work. She is super positive all of the time and Ebenezer is actually Eunice's brother. We didn't figure that out until a week ago. We were teaching Eunice and other missionaries in our area were teaching Ebenezer. Overall they are great people who will make great members.

Scripture of the week

Alma 5:40 - "For I say unto you that whatsoever is good cometh from God, and whatsoever is evil cometh from the devil."

Beautifully simple, Simply Beautiful

Contacts

Email - aidan.holyoak@missionary.org 

Facebook - Aidan Holyoak 

Well thanks for reading this monster of an email. We have been having tons of fun here and we had the chance to make another Facebook video! I'll let you all know when it is posted so that you can watch it. Thank you all for everything, you are always in my prayers and I'm grateful for every single one of you.

See you next week!

Elder Holyoak

Cool View

American Food Week

Mmmm... Cheeseburger

Chili Cheese Dawg

Spaghetti and Garlic Bread

Potato Pasta Soup

Long Bike Trip Aftermath

Village in the bush from our bike trip

Esubo

Ghana Hospital

Hospital tests sponsored by Lucozade

RIP Honda Pilot

👥 🚫🔋💧

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