Elder Spencer Hair: A Very Full Week!

WOW Amanda!!! You will be a teenager in 3 days!!! That's incredible. I remember walking into Mom's hospital room in Spokane. You had just been born and were chillin with Mom in the hospital bed. I then remember getting the chance to hold you and feeling scared because I didn't want to make you cry, and I wanted you to love me. Remember to take lots of pictures so you can always look back and see how you have grown.

Now that we are finally back in the mission home after a week of craziness, I can’t wait to tell you what’s been going through my mind. At the beginning of last week we picked up the new senior couple and took them to Sunyani with the mission president to get them settled in. It was quite an experience to return again to Sunyani and see all of those amazing people and feel the spirit in that wonderful city. We then traveled all the way back to Cape Coast. As we pulled into the mission home at around 3 pm, we went right to work again preparing for the visit of Elder John B. Dickson, President of the Africa West Area. He and Sister Dickson would be coming the following afternoon. We helped the guards clean the cars and change a tire on our truck which had a slow leak. Then we cleaned our apartment so well you could even eat off the floor. The next morning, we met the Dicksons, said a prayer, and headed off to the Abura chapel in Cape Coast where we would meet for a mission tour with six zones. The meeting was amazing. We truly felt the spirit, and we were able to learn a lot from someone who has given so much of his life in service to the Lord. I really admire Elder Dickson. During the mission tour he talked about the importance of many things, but one lesson he taught us was how to be escalator missionaries and not elevator ones. An elevator has to be pushed by a button to go up or down and often makes stops at every floor, while an escalator moves continually until nighttime when everyone is sleeping, then it is turned off to rest until the morning. He also reminded the missionaries how important it is to be very very careful with the sacred funds of the Church and how we need to know where the money truly comes from.

On Monday, Elder Dickson pulled me and my companion in and interviewed us individually. He talked with me about the missionaries and our great mission president. I have grown more and more each day to love Pres and Sis Shulz. He asked me if I was worthy to go to the temple, and if I am keeping the mission rules, and about the overall obedience of the mission. He told me about the plans to divide our mission and create the new Ghana Kumasi Mission, and asked me how I felt about that. He finished with this advice, “when you get home and get married, marry in the temple and treat her like an angel from heaven."

The following day, we traveled up to Kumasi to continue the mission tour. Elder Dickson told us that they would not have opened the area of Sunyani if they did not first envision a stake there. The week prior he was in a meeting with Elder Holland, where they talked about Sunyani for some time. I'm glad Elder Omini and I could be two of those early missionaries in that area.

We met with some people from the Area office at the soon to be new mission home for the Kumasi mission. Elder Dickson’s iPad had the layout of the house, and we took a tour and discussed how we thought it should be organized. That was fun.

This week Elder Marimira and I went on splits with the other Elders in our branch. Elder Reid and I taught a former librarian that was well read and already reading the Book of Mormon. We taught him the intro to the Plan of Salvation and then he asked us some good questions. We ended with our testimonies. It was a simple lesson but we really felt good about it. He asked us if there were more books in our church libraries that he could read. We told him that there were but that the Book of Mormon he was holding in his hand will become his favorite book. He laughed and accepted our challenge to read it all.

Today we made some homemade burritos.