One of these things is not like the other...

Hello from Tamale, dearest friends and family. This has been a crazy week!

First off... It was election week in Ghana. #yaypatriotism The people here are very passionate about politics. They campaign by riding their motorcycles very fast and burning their engines very loudly down the street as they wear gear for their party and sometimes wear masks and stuff. Pretty interesting and pretty scary sometimes. #gladthatsover We spent pretty much every evening sheltered in our apartment this week because of all the big public demonstrations and violent threats if their candidate didn't win. So basically we didn't do a ton of proselyting this week. I am happy to report however that our shelter in place was purely cautionary and nothing ever got out of hand... at least not in Tamale. And luckily elections are only every four years so I will not be seeing anything like this again for the rest of my mission.

Also, Elder Effiong returned with his new greenie! Elder Woplah, from Liberia. So if you put two and two together... I am now the only white guy in our apartment. #minority

Also, this week we met Pastor Nat. Allow me to enlighten you on the background of Pastor Nat... He was baptized a member of the church in 1997 and has been inactive ever since. Missionaries have been trying to reactivate him for 17 years. The man has since become the Pastor of a local church here in Tamale hence his name, Pastor Nat. Every now and then though he will come to church out of his own free will so that he can meet with the missionaries. He showed up last Sunday and we introduced ourselves and offered to meet with him not knowing that he was a member. But we figured he was serious because he fully participated in church that day and had an extensive knowledge of our doctrines. When we met with him we got this background and he told us he loves the LDS church and the missionaries because of our devotion to our faith, but he just disagrees with a few pieces of doctrine. He then proceeded to start a heated argument on how our church doctrines contradict what is in the Bible. Basically he was trapping us. I wasn't too happy about that. We are however, going to meet with him again to see if we can help him understand that this draw he feels to the missionaries is the spirit testifying the truth of our message. And that the proof of the true doctrines of Jesus Christ is not found in the Bible, but the proof is in fact the Book of Mormon. But with 17 years of missionary experience, I doubt he will be open enough to the spirit to accept that as an answer. It's definitely worth a shot though.

In other news we've got water! Had it all week. The problem was that because we are in the dry season, the city water doesn't have enough pressure to travel up the pipe into our water tank. So my main man Brother Abraham (with the help of Brother Renfroe) brought 4 55 gallon drums full of water and are refilling the tank every few days now, so we should have consistent water for the rest of our time here... hopefully. #knockonwood

That's all for this week! Pictures should be coming in just a few minutes! Love you all! 

Elder Henderson