Email from Aug 25, 2014:

Dear Family and Friends,

                This week was a little bit down from the last few.  K is turning out to be the disappointment of the year. He has SO much potential but he's just choosing to be too busy. Giving excuses every time we see him, he's not coming to church, or reading the Book of Mormon.  I just feel so letdown now when we see him.  So please keep him in your prayers.

                In other news, we've finally been able to see A again. She's about 20 years old; her whole family is [of another faith].  I don't think I've mentioned her before but when I first came to the area we gave her a date for the beginning of August, but after we gave it she never had time so see us yada yada yada. We needed to help here through the repentance process and she never allowed us time.  She was a referral from the stake president, so he's been putting tons of pressure on us to baptize her.   She's giving us time again, but we still don't really know what to do.  She has the desire to be baptized, but she's not being open and honest with us.  So we've arranged for President Stevenson to come and do her interview this week.  She's a bit out of our hands; she had some major problems with the commandments. We're hoping that goes thru.

                 In addition, Pres. Stevenson is coming to also hopefully settle a dispute between two influential members of the church who have had a falling out.  Because of the dispute, one man is worshiping in our ward, not his own ward. We're teaching two boys in his home, because they've been coming to our ward, but they're not supposed to.  So they can't be baptized into our ward as they're in the other ward boundaries.  The stake president has tried to reconcile the men, but to no avail. He asked Pres. Stevenson to step in.  We're really praying that President will have the Spirit with him this coming Wednesday.

                We have met with the pastor again a few times. Once this week we took a ward missionary,  B, with us.  He's a convert of just over a year, about 24 years old, and very mature.  He's a great guy with lots of vim for the gospel.  B attended the pastor’s church before he converted, and his sister married the pastor’s son.  It's a strange connection; nevertheless they know each other very well.

                We finally relented to give him a Book of Mormon.  I'm always afraid to give them to pastors because they might just go preach out of them, leaving the congregation 'ever learning, but never coming to a knowledge of the truth'.  He was still trying to understand how Peter, James, and John were resurrected; he was confused that we called them 'angels', because his crazy apostate doctrine strictly classifies angels as psychedelic cherubim and seraphim.  Really in English it just means, 'heavenly beings' haha.  Anyhow we mopped up that mess.

                B was so powerful though! He was testifying to his former pastor/in-law! He was bringing Bible quotations and everything; he even caught him in a snare haha. It was so incredible. Everything remained cordial of course.  I really admire Ghanaians for that; those with strong convicted testimonies are not afraid to bear them.  B is so awesome though, we need more members like him.  I need to be like him when I go home.  He's preparing his mission papers and he'll be such a stud out in the field!

Love,

Elder Doggett