"A Change of Heart"

cute little monkey - Kade's favorite animal

The beautiful countryside of Ho and Kpando

June 16, 2014

Family,

Well this birthday week was probably one of the greatest birthday week's ever! Of course it had its ups and downs but it was fantastic! So I will try and explain everything starting from Monday to Sunday. So last Monday once we finished our cafe' (internet) we started on our little mission trip to the Ho zone which is quite a journey. We first stopped at Tsito to spend the night and right when we were joking about lights going out, it did! For me being in a place with a generator and not experiencing light off for 2 months, it was quite the bummer! Tsito is in the bush and the mountains it is very cold at night, so we decided that we would sleep outside. It was so awesome! The last time I slept outside because of light off was in Kaneshie my training grounds. The next morning consisted of us driving with the elders to Ho for their Zone Training Meeting. After the meeting, which was great, we took the Kpando elders back to Kpando, and that is about 1 hour 15 mins north of Ho and it was the most beautiful drive I have ever been on! We were going through the mountains and small villages on top of the mountains and seeing beautiful things! It once again reminded me of how beautiful Africa was! So much green! We also passed by a Monkey Sanctuary, which I will come back to :) We arrived in Kpando and went straight to work. My companion and me went with different set of missionaries and started to proselyte. Kpando is a new group that has just opened and they have been facing a lot of struggles in the last few months, and so it was awesome to get a fill of how everything was going there and meeting with the missionaries’ investigators. They are starting to turn things around there and I’m excited to see the future for Kpando and even the future in the northern part of the Volta Region. Our next goal is to get a Branch/Group in Hohoe, but we will see how that goes. The following morning (My birthday, Wednesday) we woke up and got dressed and started to head back to Ho, but because it was my birthday I wanted to celebrate a little so we decided to stop at the monkey sanctuary! It’s in a small little village just outside of Kpando where most of the income comes from tourists viewing the Sanctuary and also farmers. It cost us both 11 GHC to enter the Sanctuary. The man told us that they had run out of all the bananas that they fed to the monkeys so we had to drive to a near by village to get some more. So we started to walk into the thick jungle when all of a sudden a huge Gorilla popped out of the trees and started to make a really loud noise!!! Haha I’m just kidding but we were walking out to the deep jungle and the tour guy started to make these monkey noises and before we knew it we were surrounded by a ton of moneys! They were running on the ground, flying through the air from one tree to another, and they were all coming for our bananas! So what we do is we hold the banana out and the monkeys will come running over right in front of us and start to peel the banana and eat it right there!! It was the coolest thing ever, and soon after that we had monkeys start to jump on our arms and sit their while they are eating the bananas! Don’t worry mom I have a lot of pics and videos that I will send you! It was the coolest thing ever, and it felt so awesome to have a small little monkey on my arm or shoulder! (Kade has always loved monkeys) So that right there made my week and 20th Birthday!

But I will continue with my week; we left the monkey sanctuary and started our way back to Ho. Once we arrived in Ho we went out on exchanges with other missionaries and even though being with the monkeys were super awesome to celebrate my birthday an even more rewarding opportunity happened when I was able work with a companionship who all their appointments fell through during the day so the whole day we contacted and met some super awesome investigators! I tried to help them be more open and free with people and not make everything so dull and boring…I mean come on, we have the true and everlasting gospel we have to be contacting with a huge smile and upbeat attitude! We spent the night in Ho and then made our journey back to Accra! It was a great and rewarding trip but I was so tired once everything was finished and we pulled into the mission home. I think we drove a total of 600 KM which isn’t very much but it is when the road are so crappy and you are dodging every pot hole that could destroy your tire and run you off the road haha but it was cool! Friday was a normal day where we worked with president Judd for the first half of the day and then went teaching the rest of the day! Saturday came along and it was a nice full day of teaching and at night time to celebrate my birthday concerning the food way me and my comp went to KFC and I bought us a big bucket of chicken for 55 GHC haha that is over a quarter of our subsistence lol for 18 pieces and it was so worth it!!! The chicken is amazing but we can only go there for special occasions!

Sunday was a little stressful because we were scheduled to have a baptism and we had only seen our candidate once the whole week and that was for the baptismal interview, but we knew that we were doing our part and the Lord would do his part as we sacrificed our time and attention to a different zone the Lord would reward us for our efforts and he did! Brother Kofi came to church and was baptized by a RC name Ernest so I will be sending a picture of that. It was a great example of a mighty change of heart in my eyes! The first time I met brother Kofi he was completely drunk and didn’t know what was going on. We tried to sit him down to talk with him but he wasn't having a sober mind and so what ever we taught him it didn’t stick at all, so we decided to see him a little later in the week. He slowly progressed in his repentance but would just fall back into drinking. At one point we were teaching him and we were preparing to drop him, but something just changed inside of him and he started to get more serious with reading and coming to church. After that point it was a totally different Kofi. He was sober and the way he presented himself was a huge change. He had finally found what he had been looking for and changed his ways to be baptized. It was a great blessing to see bro Kofi’s change of heart and help strengthen my testimony of that anyone can change. We are now working with his daughter as well. He was so happy after his baptism!

This morning we had a great game of football and also the World cup is going on right now and everyone is going crazy here! The love for football is so crazy; we have hard time teaching people because the games are always playing! But Ghana plays USA tonight so I pray Ghana wins! And whenever someone tries to talk crap I will just say I’m German haha but it’s all cool! Well family, I love you all and I’m so grateful for all that you do.  My 20th birthday was awesome and I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else at this time and stage of my life! I hope you all have a great week! The church is true! Continue to send your prayers. Much love,

Elder Kade Eppich

Kofi's baptism