LOVIN' OUR FIRST P-DAY

What a great day! We loved getting a letter and pictures from our sweet elder! Doesn't get any better than this!

Flight of Faith

Bonjour everybody!!

This was one of the most stressful, long, most spiritual weeks of my life. The MTC is definitely a place where you get to work learning. I am in classes for a lot of the day learning french, or learning how to become a better missionary. We get to play soccer 2 hours a day and it is so fun, the africans are soo good at soccer its ridiculous. I eat alot of rice every meal, every plate is piled full of the stuff and then we will have a few pieces of meat on the side. I was selected to be district leader and that has been such an awesome experience. I share a room with 5 other elders and that has been very fun. Africa is so beautiful and at the same time very sad to see. There is so much color in the clothes that the people wear and in the buildings, but there is trash everywhere you see. We had a chance to go through accra again today and all the american elders were pretty quiet. Everyone was looking around outside. It made me so happy and sad to be here all at the same time. We got to go to the Accra temple and it is now my favorite. It is soo beautiful inside and out, I definitely had a great experience going there today. My companion is elder miller and he is pretty great, he is the one that keeps our district laughing. My french is coming along, but it is quite difficult to speak to the africans. in french you already dont pronounce alot, but in africa they choose not to say a third of the words, so thats a bit frustrating, but I have made some friends with some elders from cote divoire who are learning Englisand we made a deal that we would help eachother and practice whenever we see eachother. The diversity of this place is truly incredible, and i have really enjoyed being able to get to know these Elders from all over Africa who all have very crazy stories.

One awesome thing that we got to do this weekend was watch all the sessions of conference. It was such an awesome experience for me because I got to listen with the desire to learn whatever I could to become a better missionary. I was not disappointed. Something that I thought alot about on the plane ride over here was faith. Faith is something that I was always curious about, and definitely something that I wanted to increase in myself. Just my luck it seemed that every other talk in conference was about how we can strengthen our faith. I loved Elder Neil L. Anderson's talk especially when he spoke how faith was a choice. I took that to heart and I thought about it alot. Faith is us acting even when we dont necessarily know what will happen, what we do know is that Heavenly Father is right there with us waiting for us to act on our faith so that he can bless us. Getting on that plane to New York was one of the weirdest moments of my life. My mission was actually beginning, I had just said goodbye to my crying family for 2 WHOLE YEARS. That's along time. I was going to serve a people that i had never met and going to a place that I hardly know anything about, but I had faith. I knew that all i needed to do was act on my faith, to board that plane, and Heavenly Father would make everything alright. And he did. Minutes after arriving in JFK we went to the terminal for our Ghana flight and us 4 american elders were met with the smiling faces of a lot of Ghanains. One elder and I talked to this incredibly kind grandmother who was born and raised in Ghana for nearly an hour. She was so impressed by all of us 18-19 year old men going to Africa to serve the lord for two years. (you should have seen the look on her face when the Elders from Utah showed up). It wasn't a very huge blessing, but Heavenly father gave me a glimpse of the happy, loving people that I would be going to teach. He gave me peace and comfort because of my Faith. I pray every day for chances to increase my faith. As I act on my Faith more and more it becomes stronger and stronger. It has been less than a week, and I can not wait for these next two years of my life. Je suis un missionaire de l'eglise de Jesus-Christ des Saints des Derniers Jours. The church is true and makes me so happy and I cant wait to share that with the people in my mission.

love you guys!!

Elder Scoffield