Landon... Australia.... Melbourne..... August......... 26th.........2015
Landon!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so happy, so excited for this call! You are going to be a full time missionary for the Lord! What I would give to go back out with you, to serve another mission.
We had a wonderful meeting with the missionaries of Tema zone this week. We had some sweet activites and workshops and role plays, really one of the more interactive and effective meetings we have been able to have in a long time! I learned a lot more than planned and was so glad to see the missionaries working together to improve themselves. You could see they cared, I love missionaries who care! I try to love all missionaries, but the ones who really care are a lot easier to love haha :)
4/13/2015
As it was time to give some instruction I was reminded of the words of the white handbook: 'The time you have to serve the Lord with all your heart, might, mind and strength is extremely short...'
At the beginning of my mission I thought this was a terrible false doctrine and that 2 years was endless. Now I know, the white handbook is inspired of God and teaches us the way to live, line upon line I have seen it and the other scriptures be fulfilled on mission. The time we have is extremely short. Looking back to when my call arrived it feels like yesterday, only when I recall the immense details does the space appear. By Then time was a solid unchangeable mass, by now it is as the sand on the streets, moving past before you can catch any of it. Jacob was right 'it seemed to us a dream'.
Landon, this is such a sweet time, soak every second of it in. Even in Ghana were I didn't like the smells at first I soaked it all in and engraved it in my mind. That is one of the greatest things I have done on mission: live every moment. This is the time to give every ounce, take every chance, and do ALL you can. Leave the standing still part (D&C quote) to when your on the plane back home and give it all to Him!
You and I and all of us, are CALLED TO SERVE HIM, The Heavenly King of Glory.
Over here, we had a lot of services opportunities this week, very unplanned ones. Not able to turn all of them into new investigators, nice to be of help though. We did things like: painted a compound wall, carried a shop load of watermelons, and fetched water up to the top of the flats (lucky nothing in Tema is more than 4 stories high haha). We saw some sweet progress with Benjamin and also with Adwoa and Ronald. These are some of the sweetest people. Benjamin's baptism has been pushed back though, we want to teach him somethings more clearly and ensure he is ready. We finally got a great fellowship set going on for him, good friends with a lot of people in the ward now. Adwoa too has a friend now, sister Lydia is such a good friend for her, she would have been an awesome missionary!!
We met a man as the rain was coming to fall. We had been stopped by some people and thought we were late. Seeing him I thought he was the one we bought water from a couple days before and went to talk with him. Wasn't even him hahah, but he was super excited that we came to him and expressed great interest in our beliefs and a desire to know why we didn't just have one gospel (every Ghana Accra Missionaries dream question). As we discussed with this man, Moses, who also is a reverend minister, we had such a sweet lesson and he really understood so well! We are going to meet him at 6 and I'm so excited to see how his reading of the Book of Mormon went.
Over here, we had a lot of services opportunities this week, very unplanned ones. Not able to turn all of them into new investigators, nice to be of help though. We did things like: painted a compound wall, carried a shop load of watermelons, and fetched water up to the top of the flats (lucky nothing in Tema is more than 4 stories high haha). We saw some sweet progress with Benjamin and also with Adwoa and Ronald. These are some of the sweetest people. Benjamin's baptism has been pushed back though, we want to teach him somethings more clearly and ensure he is ready. We finally got a great fellowship set going on for him, good friends with a lot of people in the ward now. Adwoa too has a friend now, sister Lydia is such a good friend for her, she would have been an awesome missionary!!
We met a man as the rain was coming to fall. We had been stopped by some people and thought we were late. Seeing him I thought he was the one we bought water from a couple days before and went to talk with him. Wasn't even him hahah, but he was super excited that we came to him and expressed great interest in our beliefs and a desire to know why we didn't just have one gospel (every Ghana Accra Missionaries dream question). As we discussed with this man, Moses, who also is a reverend minister, we had such a sweet lesson and he really understood so well! We are going to meet him at 6 and I'm so excited to see how his reading of the Book of Mormon went.
On Sunday I was praying about what to do again, how to improve, and all those things. We sang 'Master the Tempest is raging'. As we sang the second and third verses it was harder and harder to sing, guess sometimes you still cry. I felt the power of those words 'No waters can swallow the ship where lies, the MASTER of ocean and earth and skies.. peace, peace be still'. It was hard not having the people we worked so hard for at church this sunday (Although they called to explain that their clothes were soaked from the rain) but I felt a great drive to work that much harder.
I know this is the work of the Lord. I know he loves each child so much that he will send and send and send missionaries out to find them. And that he loves the missionaries enough to suffer them to come and try, feeble as it is, to represent Him, the Master of ocean and earth and skies.
love you all from Ghana and Back and to Eternity (with a side stop in Australia)
Elder Van Wagoner..... Ghana... Accra.......July...... 26th..... 2013
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