SWEET INVESTIGATOR & OPEN GRAVES

Dear Family and Friends,

             Last week right as we started emailing, the power went out in Takoradi. As well as the water. This past week was just full of power and water problems in our apartment, so much so that I don't care to detail. It really put a damper on our work this week, though. We had to borrow water from the neighbors' wells to even do our wash. I even took a shower in a rainstorm this week. Again, we won't go into detail, but I'll say it was an experience, haha. You have no idea how good you have it in the States.

            Also last Monday, we had a District Activity at the Julanders' place and we watched Ephraim's Rescue. (Sorry Mom, you don't get the pleasure of a grand reveal) It was a powerful movie. I remembered many of the stories of my third great grand-daddy that Mom had told me. I had tears in my eyes multiple times. I was impressed that they were able to make the movie more light-hearted than the previous one, yet retain the severity of what the pioneers went through. In light of our own problems that we've been having, I know that there is a reason I was not an early saint. I will take all the spiritual, mental, and emotional stress over the physical, haha. 

            So something that people do here, and have done in the past, is build villages and things over old graveyards. Mpintsin is a good example of that. While proselyting with a ward missionary this week, we passed along a road and found a hole broken into a cement box in the ground, with big tracks from a truck tire going over it. You could see that the driver was trying to cut a corner, and did so a little too close. I commented, "Well, this one has a head start on the resurrection." I was about to keep moving when our ward missionary said, "Whoa, wait, look." You know how you're supposed to dig graves 6 feet deep? Yeah, they didn't do that for this one. You know how you're supposed to bury someone in a coffin? Yeah, they didn't do that either. It was a very old grave, so we saw nothing TOO gruesome, but it was a tad bit surprising.

            I read the allegory of the olive tree in Jacob chapter 5 sometime this week…..the chapter that everyone despises. But as I read, I realized how perfect it was! It exactly details the history of Israel: scattering, gathering, restoration. After reading the Old Testament, everything in that chapter made so much sense. Actually, EVERYTHING in the gospel makes sense if you've read the Old Testament. It gives you a real solid background on the history of things.

            I have an observation to make about our sweet investigator, I. He is seriously being led by the Spirit. It teaches him more than we do. He often says something along the lines of, "I was reading (or thinking) and a thought came to me that..." then he proceeds to detail some gospel truth that we know, and he's just figured out. It's pretty impressive, really. A few times he has quoted modern-day scripture almost word for word, and he doesn't even know it. We've started reading 1st Nephi with him and he is absolutely loving it. He enjoys history, so he's picking out all these connections to the Bible, like King Zedekiah, Jeremiah, and stuff. He's good at likening scriptures to himself, too. He's progressing swiftly, and has a baptism date for the end of March.

Love,

Elder Doggett

Funny, we actually had a lot of rain this week.... coincidence? [His mom told him she was praying for rain in West Africa!]

 

A Ghanaian wedding