Elder Ty Brayant

Ghana may be my new favorite climate. We have not had very hot days here in the last week and it has rained most days for about an hour which really cools it down a lot. I am stationed in a rain forest area with lots of vegetation and farms. I do not miss the desert heat I left at all and I will probably roast like a pig when I get home. I love seeing all the green around my area but It is sadly soiled by the trash along the ground. I really enjoy going to the villages we cover because there is much less trash and much more vegetation. The town itself is splashed haphazardly around with no real sense of organization. The shops are very small and surround the street. The shops themselves are like very small Konnex boxes and all sell pretty much the same products. The houses are just 4 concrete walls and a roof with a door and maybe one window. It really humbles a person when they see how much they really have and how little the people here have. The people themselves are wonderful. They all walk around with scowls on their faces until you greet them and then instantly they become much more friendly. They smile, ask you how you are. It isn't ever a long interaction but they are much happier the friendlier you are with them. Truly Ghana is a wonderful place to live. My companion Elder Williams is from Idaho and is a very hard worker, yet at the same time has managed to adjust to the Ghanaian lifestyle of going with the flow. He teaches me a lot, what I really had to learn right off the bat was how to simplify the gospel so that the people here can understand what we are teaching. The people we do teach have some very insightful questions and are usually attentive and inquisitive. They are so incredibly generous. It is not hard to tell that the people here have almost nothing, but about half of them offer to give us water or other small things. One lady gave us small bags of ground nut paste (peanut butter) which was all she had to give. One of the families we visited are pineapple farmers and they gave us fresh pineapple right off the bush and It was extremely delicious. I am not usually a fruit guy, but I wanted to eat a million of the pineapples. They skinned them and made handles out of the top, then we ate them like a giant Popsicle.  We have an interesting mode of transportation here in Ghana. Unlike some missionaries who have cars or even buses we have tro-tros. 20 person vans that drive around and pick up passengers. Roughly half of them feel like they are on the verge of falling apart and seem like they are 30 plus years old. Not only that the drivers are crazy. If a driver wants to go somewhere he is going to go and nobody is going to stop them. everybody crams in like sardines and goes for a ride. The other mode of transportation we use is motos (AKA motorcycle taxis), You flag a driver down tell him where you are going and hop on the back. Sometimes they can fit up to four people on one motorcycle. They may be the most skilled drivers of all time if you ask me. They dodge and weave by potholes like prize fighters. Definitely not what I am used to but very enjoyable rides through the jungle. We spend most of our time teaching lessons and very little time tracting in the towns. We get a lot of referrals from the members here. Our hands are very full to say the least. I still have a long way to go when it comes to learning everything about teaching and the culture but it is all coming along bit by bit, or as they say in Ghana small small. The lessons are usually pretty simplified and I have to talk very slowly for people to understand my accent. Other than that we keep busy busy busy teaching and walking teaching and walking. It is the missionary life every missionary dreams of having. No awkward conversations with random people and lots of lessons that are ready to go.  Our apartment is very nice. It has 4 rooms and a bathroom which for 2 people is a massive amount of space. It is nothing like we have in the U.S. but it is more than sufficient for our needs. I have attempted to eat the local food but the texture of it all is very foreign to me and does not agree with my gag reflex. I will get better at eating it, but for now I stick to the foods I know I can eat for sure. I am doing well here in Ghana to say the least. I am happy, I am teaching, and I am not starving. Thank you for all the support and the love.

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