No more coconut trees and plantain in the back yard!

(This is Cody's response to his cousin being baptized this week by his uncle)
Wow that's super cool to hear, it makes me happy to hear about that. That gave me a big smile... so cool! Everyone looks super good in that picture too. Zac looks older and like a skater kid. I am happy to see everyone like that.  I wish I could have been there too, looks super nice. 

To answer some of your question. 

1. Every so often I will find a small shop that sells tools and become friends with the owner, and they are always happy to lend me there tape measue, but no I don't think I have grown much.

2.  I got the box on transfer day it was at the mission home waiting for me, but they made me pay 36 gc for it. The scriptures looked super good, and the candies are well needed. Those cards and church stuffs will be useful. I am not 20 minutes away from the temple now and they have a small bookstore there, so I can now get most of that stuff here but the chocolates can keep coming ;)

3. Thank you for sending my Chrismtas packages already

4. I thought about the that family Christmas service idea this week and I had an idea. All of the Sierra Leone missionaries that are serving here could really use a Christmas letter or gift. They dont have it really easy, I think that they would love to have something like that. There are four of them in this mission, I can ask them what they would like if you want?

This week was exciting, stressful and valuable. This has been an odd week, we have been so busy trying to organize the area, sort through our area books, know the members and learn the area. 

So we were transfered to Teshie. The area was previously occupied by sister missionaries, they have been here for the past 4 years according to a member. So we had to start fresh with only a few tools to help us know the area and the investigators. The sisters were not serious at all about keeping there area book up to date, so alot of the investigators are lost for now, until a branch missionary can show us where they live. The sisters would also work in each others areas and outside of our ward boundaries, so everything is a mess. We have spent plenty of time organizing and splitting the area. 

We went first to our ward mission leader, we called him and a few other branch missionaries and also the bishop and told them we have come and that we are ready to help them. We are hoping that if we work well with the members that we will be able to pick up on the work as it was left off and even bring the work to another level. I hope in the future this will pay off. One problem we found with the members is that many of the members don't stay in the boundaries of the ward, but they still attend the ward anyway, there are also members who live in the boundaries of our ward that go to other wards, so it is difficult to work with some of the members on that basis. 

we have been very confused about the boundaries of our areas (Teshie 2a and 2b). We didn't come to find a map and all of the investigators seem to be evenly dispursed through out the ward boundaries, so we had to spend a day learning the area and splitting the area. So we now are feeling a little more organized and able to work more effectively. We have also spent a great deal of time trying to get addresses and phone numbers for half filled out teaching records. So a lot of our time this week was spent trying to organize the area. The area seems pretty small, we can bike the longest distance of our area in about 7 minutes, but there are so many people packed in here that it shouldn't be difficult to find or teach people.

Accra is a crazy place. No more coconut trees and plantain in the back yard, but we do have a beach, but this one seems to be the community dump, and I don't mean just trash....haha!!  Accra is also really hot, I sweat more than ever here. Our district is really fun, its me Elder Garcia, Elder Krofua, and Elder Sibeko. Elder Sibeko and Elder Erofuah are both only 3 months on mission, and boy do I now feel old on mission. I can see the difference from when I first started mission. Elder Sibeko (my companion, from South Africa) turned 18  on his mission, so he is very young, and I am about to turn 20. It will be fun being with him, because he is right out of training. So he will remind me of some fundamentals. He really knows his scriptures too.

Accra is also cool because there are lots of people from other West African countries here, so it only took me a few days to find my first Sierra Leonian and of course I spoke Krio to her, although I am losing it small. I invited her to church and she came. So that was sweet. She said she will prepare kasava leaf for us, which I have missed.

At the misssion home I got to talk to Sister Stevens and Sister Kaillie, they are both from Sierra Leone serving missions  here. I served in both of there branches in Salon before they came out. Sister Stevens in Wellington and Sister Kaillie in New London, my first area. So it was lots of fun talking about there and speaking krio. 

The time is going quick!

love elder beckett