Sun Valley

*****************Read the last email first, then this post.

As Ryan said in his email, most of our best memories are from time with family. Our extended family is very close. Last summer, some of us went up to Sun Valley for a few days. It was a blast. The highlight was when we went ice-skating. Ryan is one of the most athletic people that I have ever met. He is good at pretty much any sport, or game. However, He can’t ice skate to save his life. We thought it would be funny to play tag. Ryan always seemed to be it. Watching him try to get us was one of the funniest things I have ever seen. He had everybody in the restaurant laughing. People stayed after they were done eating just to watch him skate. The videos don’t really do it justice, but here is one. Ryan asked that we post it on facebook too.

December 26

Dear Mom,

It was awesome getting to talk to you yesterday, it felt like I haven’t talked to you in years. I’m sure time will start to pick up shortly, well hopefully!! All is well here. I heard you didn’t by any presents this year? I’m glad I didn’t miss out. You can start buying again in 2013. haha. Thank you for the Christmas money Mom, you didn’t need to do that, but thank you so much. I found the speakers, so I’m pumped about that. It’s nice to get to listen to some music. Last night after we went to the Opongs for Christmas, we brought them a bunch of bottles of pop and a bunch of food. They were sooo excited. It is so awesome to see how grateful they were for just little simple things. Then we started to pass them to everyone in the compound, and everyone was so happpy. It was sweet to do stuff for other people for Christmas, I’m excited to be Santaaa. Then we just sat around at their house for a while and talked with them and celebrated Christmas with them. She fed us fufu for dinner.  Now she wants us to come back today for dinner haha. She is too nice. WE are going to take a picture with them all this week so I’ll send that over to America next week.  I’m glad that I only have one more Christmas away from home though. I have to realize, that I’m here for a great purpose, and the Lord needs me ,so he can guide me to those people who are ready to accept the true gospel. I read today in a book about temples and it really taught me a lot. It’s awesome to know that our family can live together for eternity. God has a perfect plan for us if we do the things here on earth as we are preparing to meet God. I am helping those people to have the same knowledge we do. I think how difficult it must be to not know for sure why we are here and where we are going, and all of the promised blessings we receive if we do what we are supposed to do here on earth. I love you and the family so much, and its such a blessing to have you guys. Have a great week. Love Elder Francom

Peay family,

Thank you for the packages, and everything i opened them all yesterday and they were so good. I will enjoy my food for a long time its nice to eat some normal food every so often haha. So thank you a million. I found the speakers, I didnt know they were hidden but I got those. I got the cds too. I hope you guys had a merry christmas, and that everyone had a good time spending time with there family. You don’t realize how much you love and enjoy the time you spend with your family until you leave on a mission. My best memories come from spending time with all of you. One of my favorite things I did before I left was going to Sun Valley. It was such a blast I always remember those good times that we all had. I love you all so much. love, Elder Francom

December 19

Helllo Family,

I’m doing awesome here. I have started to adjust to everything, kind of. Well not everything, but I’m doing a little bit better.  Yeah we have been teaching so much more, and contacting a ton. I just started talking to everyone cause I hate just walking around and doing nothing. The traffic here is just crazy! It’s unbelieveable, like its ridiculous haha.  Mom I must say that you would love Africa maybe we should move here after I get back. Every thing here is so cheap. I can buy a bunch of lunch like ALOT! for only 1 cd which is comparable to about 40 cents back at home haha. We get a ride in a taxi and drive for about an hour and it cost like less then 20 cents haha.  I tried something new food wise this week. This lady we eat over at a lot fed us chicken the other week, and since we didn’t eat everything (The bone) she thought we didn’t like it!!! So now I eat the chicken bone and everything! You should try it. It’s not that bad. We have four baptisms coming up, we are hoping to  get a couple more for the baptism too, so that is pretty exciting. We have this one family, they are the Opongs. They are honestly the nicest people ever. They treat us so nicely. We go over there to visit, and they will just spoil us with stuff every time. We go and eat there at least once a week. They are awesome! we are going to celebrate Christmas with them. The crazy thing is that they’re not members and we don’t even teach them either… they just love us. I don’t have to much to say this week. I am excited to get to call you on Christmas. So I love you and have an awesome week.

Greetings from Africa

Greeting from Africa,

Wellllllllll im am doing fine here, but I must say it  is a lot different here, and I am still trying to adjust. The work here is just really frustrating no one is serious, we were supposed to have a ton of investigators come to church this week, and then everyone just bails and makes up excuses. Yesterday was really frustrating and hard cause we worked so hard ths week, we taught 30 lessons, then no one showed up. I need to keep trying and workin my hardest cause I know the Lord will bless us.  I went on splits with Elder Wheeler this week he is from Woods Cross I have been to a dance, in his group, and golfed with him before. He is a sweet man and an awesome missionary.  The baptism went good, except for the person that we baptized showed up 1 hour 50 minutes late haha. WE were about to start the baptism, but luckily she came right when we were about to start. I received a lot of envelopes so thank you how many packages are coming?? This week went really well except for yesterday we have a ton of new investigators, and we taught a ton of lessons. This week was pretty crazy, remember those rat things that Bishop Christensen showed us? Well i definitely had to eat one of those things.  I thought I was gonna die for sure. My stomach wasn’t too happy with me either after that. I had to eat it there is nothing I can do about it haha. I wish you could understand what it is like here, there are millions of people trying to get taxis and vans to get home, and we had to get from lets say ogden to centerville something like that distance. Well we waited for a van for about 40 minutes and we couldn’t get one. It’s late at night so this water truck pulls up, and and a bunch of people hop in the back of it for a ride home.  Then guy gets mad at us for getting in there, cause its illegal for him. Then he sees that we are white, so he says that we can take us if we wanna jump in the back. Everyone just loved us in the truck! They said the only reason that we would be able to do this is cause were American ahah. It was pretty crazy! We drove all the way home on these dirt roads in the back of the pick up truck. hahaha. I probably shouldn’t of told you this but I just did so i’m sorry! I love you! have a good week

Elder Francom and Elder Wheeler from Woods Cross! 

His Washing machine

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Antwe is like my favorite investigator so far, I love the guy. He is so awesome, and loves God so much. We teach him about every night, we are introducing the Book of Mormon tonight, so will see how that goes. Its what gets the investigators to come to our church. We meet at like a house, its actually connected to our apartment. I don’t understand anything so I just read the scriptures or study twi. The power has been out about everyday this week. I have had to shower with bags of water, and buckets of water. They don’t know how to keep the power going. I’m doing good this week was rough but I’m alright. We met an new investigator that some one introduced to us, so we went and taught him on Monday. We start by getting to know them, so we did that and then we asked if he had any questions for us. Well when we asked that he pulled out about 50 papers and it was all about things just ripping on our church. He is Jehovah’s Witness and he wasn’t there to learn. He just wanted to contend with us.  He is like a 35 year old school teacher, and one of our members  who is 16, is his student. She heard our lesson with him and then was telling her sister how she believed the guy. So we went to the girls house to teach her and tell her what he was saying was all false. Then we found out that the Jehovah’s Witness guy is her boyfriend. He is 35 and She is 16! This Africa place is nuts.] and people just believe anything anyone says. On the bright side of this week we did get two baptismal dates, we are baptizing our investigator Daniel and Grace this Saturday! I’m pretty excited about that! Daniel is 18 and he’s a cool kid I have taught him about 5 times. Grace only speaks Twi so I don’t know her to well we have to have a translator when we teach her. It was funny these girls came up to us this week, and said they wanted to hear our message. I knew they weren’t serious, so I kinda walked away. My companion talked to them and gave them our number to call us if they wanted us to teach them. Well they call us about 4 times a day now and want to know where we live and stuff!! They are Crazy! I love you all so much. I’m healthy just so you know. If I don’t email you one Monday it’s cause the power is out so don’t worry. I will email you as soon as it gets back on

FIrst post

Ryan is doing well in Africa. He got a package and a couple of other things that we had sent to him today! He got them earlier then we had expected! Here’s a little bit of his email this week. We are hoping to get some pictures from him soon!

“The people here are really so nice, I already am starting to love them. The kids are so cool, and we walk around like we’re celebrities. Everyone looks at us and wants to talk to us. We have seen one white person, she was from orem they are going back soon. I think she is gonna call you, so watch out for that. She is very nice.  We have ate at two houses now. The first one they served us these potatoe yam things, and you dip them in cabbage soup with fish in there. It was alright, but last night was nast. We had rice with fish soup over it, and then there was a fish head and the rest of the fish that we had to eat some kinda tounge and liver or something, but we stashed that and threw it away. Every meal they feed us its not just a little bit its a ton of food I almost threw up at the members house. “