Elder Kade Edler Eppich: I'm so happy to be an uncle!

Elder Eppich and sweet little girl in Kaneshie, Ghana

February 25, 2013

My wonderful family!!

Wow I honestly don’t know where to start! There is so much crazy stuff I want to talk about and hopefully I can remember everything. I’m so happy to be an uncle finally and I’ll expect 2 more when I get home :) Bree is a cute baby! Ok, so my comp is an amazing guy who has been out for 6 months, he is from South Africa and his name is Elder Van Scheltema(scale-tema) he has 5 brothers and an awesome accent. I told him to write Karigan because I think they would be cute together. So my area is called Kaneshie and it’s on the outside of Accra. Its super poor and hard to see some of the things I see. I’ve seen more than enough things I need to see already (if you know what I mean) we were in sacrament meeting and the lady next to us just started to breast feed and I was like OH MY HECK I’m a missionary!!! Don’t let Kortneigh do that!! So Ghana is a Christian country and so everybody loves Jesus, we probably have 2 people a day tell us “come over and preach about Jesus”, but the only thing is they don’t keep their commitments, we had like 15 people committed to attend church but only a couple came but they brought their friends so we had 10 investigators there. Oh my heck, African kids are so cute! A few nights ago like 5 kids between the ages of 4-8 stopped us and asked us to teach them about Jesus, so we did! I have a few pictures Ill try and send. Oh and all the little Africans come running to us and grab our legs and say "Obruni, Obruni" (means white boy) and it’s so cute and funny!

So when we were at the MTC they told us to be careful when eating at the chop bars (little stands on side of road that sells food) and.........that’s all we eat, you just have to be smart about it, if the place looks super sketchy (everything looks sketchy) than we don’t eat it. But it’s so good! You can get rice, chicken, fish, bonku(Ghana food), pepe (Ghana food) for very cheap. So I can eat at one of those bars for breakfast, lunch, dinner for less than 5 cedis (2.5 American dollars) it’s pretty sad how cheap everything is here but it’s nice for me. For breakfast we have a lady across the street that makes us bread with eggs and veggies and its delicious!!! Only 1 cedi Haha and the fruit here is simply amazing!! The mangos are straight from heaven!! I’ve never tasted anything as good as it Haha. They’re only 1 cedi and they peel it for you and you eat it on the way. So our apartment is not very nice. Haha the best thing is we have lots of spiders, mice, and lizards as pets. I sleep in a net and I make sure there is no way in heck anyone of those can get in to bed with me! Today I washed all my clothes by hand and it wasn’t very fun! I dont kmow how people do it all their life, the little washing tool I brought works good, but like the neck area you have to scrub hard to get out because you sweat so much!"

So the electricity works about 50 percent of the time which stinks because no electricity means no water to shower, no fan, and no filter for the water. We had a night when we had no electricity and it honestly felt like a green house except 10 times worse Haha you are just covered in sweat the whole night because there is no air flow, but I love our apartment. And taking a shower with no electricity is easy we just fill up a bucket and then poor it on us with a cup but with the filter not working makes it very hard because we don’t have access to drinking water anywhere except to buy it. There are tons of little store venders on the side of the road that sells "pure water" and it cost 10 cedis but they are just in cute little bags that you bite off the edge and drink it up. We have a baptism on Wednesday for a man name Richard. He is so awesome but he works in a bad shop that deals with the law of chastity but he is trying to find a new job. We commit everyone to baptism the very first lesson but whether they follow through or not we will see, let’s hope so!! We ride bikes and walk about 50/50. One day we walked 10 miles or so. It’s so scary riding the bikes because the car drivers are so crazy here and the roads are so narrow, all the drivers do is honk their horn and we have to move or else we get hit Haha they are literally 6 or so inches from hitting us every once in a while, but we pray before we ride. Haha the thing I don’t like about riding bikes is it kills my bum!! I don't know how people ride their bikes so much. I sweat like crazy!! Today was a killer and my arms got burned crazy bad, but it’s ok cause it will turn to a tan soon :) there is always a nice cool breeze but that sun shows no mercy, I guess during the rainy season it’s always cloudy so that will be nice. I think that starts in April. there are two other Elders in our apartment - Elder Kanu (Nigeria) and Elder Rane (Alabama) both of them are awesome! Ok so one thing I’m craving here is a symphony chocolate bar! I kid you not if someone was holding one in their hand and was taunting me with it I probably take it and run with it. Haha The mission field is so much nicer than the MTC, except the AC Haha the days go by quick here! But I haven’t been here for very long but I’ve learned so much about the gospel and you seriously feel the spirit all the time!! It’s so nuts! I don’t know what I’ll do when I get home and not have that with me constantly! We were teaching an investigator named Diamond and we had a member with us there that referred us to this girl and he had a crazy conversion story......he had a really bad stroke and his left side didn’t work very well, he couldnt lift anything with his hand and someone had to help him walk everywhere he goes, and he started taking the lessons and wanted to be baptized and when he came out of the water he was perfectly normall! He could walk (small limp) hold things in his left hand and even drive!! It was such an awesome experiences to hear that!! The people of Ghana are all a little different, the kids and women all love us especially when we try and speak twi (I have like 10 words down) the men look scary but if you smile and say etsen (how are you) than they smile and say something back, but some of the older men are grumpy (only some not many) we actually got kicked out of a house one time because we were teaching a 20 yr old kid and his dad got really mad. I’m never really scared except at night walking between shacks to get to the roads. The main roads are paved (really bad paving job) and everything else is like red dirt so it gets my nice kicks dirty :) well I hope I’m not forgetting anything but I love everyone and this gospel is so true!

Elder Eppich