Sunday's Adventure

Sunday we went to church with Elder and Sr. Bingham. This is in a ward where they are doing some experimentation under the authority of the Brethern.

Sunday School was divided into two classes, as well as the investigator class and the Literacy class (learning English). The ward has been divided into "pods" (I think they have another name for it) - these are neighborhood groups. At home it would be like organizing groups by the street you live on. These groups have a leader - a ward mission leader who works with the people in his area. He visits them regularly, gets to know them well, helps them with any needs, invites them to FHE, encourages them to do their family history work, and become worthy to attend the temple. So in Sunday School, one group of "pods" was sent to the RS Room and the other stayed in the chapel. We elected to watch this process and stayed in the chapel. The class consisted of families and was taught by the Bishop. I'm assuming the other class was taught by his counselor (his only counselor).

The Bishop was a great teacher. In school the ghanian people I was told after church are taught to learn by rote - so when he or someone else said something important the Bishop had everyone repeat it. I have seen this on TV with some ministers (so I kind of chuckled inside - not knowing at the time that this was how the people learn over here). Our lesson was on 2nd Nephi 26-29. The Bishop told of getting a wedding invitation and how honored he was. He then compared it to the Book of Mormon which he said was an invitation given to us to Come Unto Christ. We used 2nd Nephi 26:24-33. The twenty-fifth verse reads: "Behold doth he cry unto any saying Depart from me? Behold I say unto you Nay; but he saith Come unto me all ye ends of the earth, buy milk and honey, without money and without price.....He hath given it free for all men; and he hath commanded his people that they should persuade all men to repentance. ...all men are privileged the one like unto the other, and none are forbidden." They felt they were literally a fulfillment of this scripture. He then talked about laboring for Zion and not for money. He pulled out some tithing envelopes from his pocket that he had received that day. He said, "Do I labor for these?" "No these are not for me." "These are for Zion...I labor for Zion not for money." The Bishop in our church (in fact no one who labors in the ward) receives any wages or compensation --only spiritual blessings. All have regular jobs that support their family.

Some of the youth participated, but most of the children just listened - I did notice many of the children marking their scriptures as points were made. I asked several of the youth afterward if they liked having SS class with their family or if they wished they could have it with their friends who were their same age. Everyone of them said "We like it with our family best."
I think its interesting because they get to hear the opinions of their parents and others in the class. How often do we talk in depth about our feelings of the gospel to our children. I remember when I was old enough to attend gospel doctrine with my parents and I discovered my father was a great scriptorian and loved to talk about the scriptures. He never talked to us at home about them. Hopefully we have scripture reading with our children daily and talk a little about how we feel.

After SS I attended Young Women. All of girls 12-17 are combined for class. They are beautiful girls. They radiate the Spirit of the Lord. I told my grandsons the other night on Skype that it is hard to tell the girls from the boys when they are little as their hair is very short and they look alike except the girls have pierced earings. Usually when the girls graduate from school they grow their hair out. You can see in the picture that some of them have elected to grow it out before graduation. The second picture is of two in class (I think there was another girl) who were in Ghanian dress.

In class we talked about the fact that they were choice Children of God and we spoke of how we need to live for Christ by obeying His commandemnts. They were asked what is hard for them. Not unlike the youth in US, what was hard was dressing modestly when invited to parties and keeping the word of wisdom when all their friends and some of their relatives drink and do not understand why they do not. It again re-affirmed to me that we are not that different.