Ghana Stories

On Tuesday Terry and I headed out at 6:00 A.M.  to Asamankese it takes about 2 1/2 to 3 hours to get there. The Elders apartment was pretty clean but this is NOT how you upkeep your water filter. 

They have clean filters, schedules of when they are to change them. Almost every Zone Conference, Terry has a little demo how to change filters and upkeep them. Do Not show this picture to Water Tech People.

We then drove to Kade, the Elders were happy to see us, they are about an hour further away, and not very many people come to see them, they were probably especially happy to see their mail. Terry fixed an important outlet to the water pump that was shorting out. Teach your boys to change electrical outlets, it will be important to know some time in their lives. We then drove on to Oda in a very heavy rainstorm. The Elders there were doing well, except for water, even the well that was dug is dry. We were glad to see the rain, that means the dry season is over and the rainy season is starting. This country needs a good rainy season.

In case you do not know what this building is for (they may not because this is only the 2nd public toilet that I have seen) here is a picture!!

These cute girls all dressed up, someone's ward in the U.S wanted to make pillowcase dresses for these girls, they all wear very nice dresses that are 2nd hand from the U.S. or Europe, but they are very very nice and some of very fancy. the older girls have their's made by a mother, aunt or "Taylor" . They told me they wanted white skin, I told them, that most people like Chocolate, better than Vanilla and they had lovely chocolate skin and I had plain old vanilla.

Here is cute  Michelle she used to be in the nursery now she is too old, but she still gives me hugs all the time.

This is funny event a couple told in our group therapy session ( Sunday night dinner with several missionary couples) They were just sitting in church starting to sing the opening hymn, when a van stopped outside the church and a group of 10 men jumped out , they all had on matching orange T-shirts. They came right into the chapel and started to lift and take the organ away. The T-shirts read - Gaa committee for noise Abatement.  We found out the Gaa's who are a tribe here, have a month that they think there should be silence . The Bishop paid them off and they left the Organ. I hope they are safe this week. We all had to laugh because, there are Muslim churches all over that yell over their loud speakers at least 5 times a day. And then at the makets, there is yelling or "singing" over microphones. And of course all the Pentecostals are playing drums, singing and clapping.    

Now if they had this guy in their congregation, I could see their point. -Shadrak with new sunglasses

This is the Branch President of the new Branch in Nsawam - Aduagyiri  sounds like atta-jury.

He told me last week how he became a member of the church. When he was 8 years old he and his parents were members of the Anglican church, his little sister who was 5 was going to the LDS church with some of their parents friends. When she came home, she told him, everyone got bread for the sacrament, he is a young man that likes his food and he decided that he would go with his sister to church so he would get some bread. So he started going, when he was a teenager, his Mom started going to church with them also, because her boy was such a good boy and was going to go on a Mission.Now many years later his Dad is joining the church. 

The rainy season is supposed to be the coolest time of the year?? Good time for a visit to Accra ! 

New Teeth

Above is our newest group of missionaries (14)  They all look fresh and excited to be here!! We are excited to have them here. What is this, some new kind of super hero - wearing a bike helmet and swim googles? What should we call him?
 We are at a zone conference and Elder Wall is trying to make the subject of wearing a bike helmet every time you get on a bike sound exiting. That talk is followed by how to clean your apartment, especially your bathroom is even more exciting.
Of course Sister Wall gave an exciting talk about following up on referrals and filling out baptism records correctly.

We had a Stake Conference a couple of weeks ago, it was great. There were too many people to have it at the Tesano Stake Center, so we had it at the Christenborg Stake Center. There were lots of people there, our Stake is only 2 years old. We were reminded that 1/3 of all the units created in the church this last year were in West Africa. The conference had some media people invited and they even had the whole conference broadcast on TV.

These are our assistants to the President , one is from South Africa, and the other is from Kenya. They are both going home soon and we will miss them. They take Terry to some missionaries lessons, he likes to go last week, we went to a baptism of a gentleman he taught.

These are our Office Elders. Both of these tall young men are both from Australia. They crash the Aussie breakfast at the Embassy  and they have a Aussie flag hanging up in the van they drive. They do talk a little funny until you get used to words like "bloke" and "shelia". They help us and the President take care of those 140 Elders.

I have Terry sideways - does anyone know how to rotate a picture once it is on the blog. I cannot take it off and start over again, because it took me 4 hours to download 8 picture. Yes our internet is very slow. We are sad because we have not been able to Skype our children and grandchildren this week. Terry took 5 broken fans and made 3 good fans out of them. All the missionaries have to have a fan, it is so hot and they do not have air conditioning.When there is "lights out" then they do not even have a fan.


But Charles does have new teeth! He is very happy with them, the Doctor told him he could eat anything!

Missionary Work

It has been a month since our last blog, partly due to being busy with trips to the hospital for a ward missionary serving full time in one of the mission areas.  He did not wear his helmet and had a serious bike accident, knocking out 4 front teeth and breaking his pallet. He spent almost two weeks with us, Heidi trying to figure out what he could eat and blending or mushing everything for him while regulating his pain medicine and for the first night waking him for medication and observation for a possible concussion.  Thank heaven he is on the mend and is home.  I do not know about Heidi but I for one am still very tired.  We do have a new poster in his honor: "Charles says; wear your bike helmet".  This week we had a day without bikes to reinforce the need to wear helmets and be safe with safety equipment.  We hope the missionaries will respond.  The Lord is good and merciful as we had two other bike accidents this week, one involving a Trotro.  Nothing major, like Charles, just scrapped arm and banged-up shoulder. and we are so very grateful.

Our Saturdays( Preparation day) have been full with Branch activities, and we have had some wonderful teaching opportunities.  I have been teaching in the evenings with our Assistants to the President, a wonderful brother Steven Kwaku, he is planning on becoming a member of the Church on the 10th of May.  He is about 62 years old and is so very open to the gospel teachings.  He reads his bible faithfully, attends to his family that all live in a compound, with 3 dogs, 12 cats (no mice) some rabbits and chickens and as near as I can count 6 grandchildren.  We teach in the confines of the compound sitting around in 4 plastic chairs.  His wife is often found doing the dishes in a baby bath bucket just outside their door.  I am sure because of so many feet in the compound it is void of anything green growing, except happy and sweet grandchildren.  Their home and his 3 children's homes, attached to one another, are built out of lap wood siding with the wall of the compound being one of the walls, the roofs being corrugated tin. The compound walls here are made of a cinder block.  Bro. Kwaku is a plumber and has the broadest smile but no front teeth, he lost them when he fell 4 stories and the platform boards he was standing on fell on his head.  I called him Abraham as he is a man of faith.  When taught the Word of Wisdom and challenged to live it, he responded yes, my wife doesn't want me to drink anyway.  Because of his love for others and being anxious to share his happiness he went to the bar where his friends meet and told them drinking alcohol was not good for them, they of course ridiculed him but that slid off his back.   Last night when taught about eternal marriage, he simply ask about Adam and Eve's marriage, and pondered on the blessing of family forever together. He asked about taking multiple wives, a practice common here, and then answered his own question by stating two wives bring twice the headaches and laughed. He is a man who loves people.

On Thursday Heidi and I had the blessing of sharing a gospel message and answering questions for Hannah, one of the temporary guards here at Coco Palms.  Elder and sister Curtis had taken her to church and shared gospel teachings, when she was a full time guard here.  She had wonderful questions and we were happy to share the story of the restoration of the gospel with her.  We are arranging for the missionaries in the Accra Mission to take her to church.  It is obvious that she reads the bible.          

   I thought I would mention that Charles will be back this week as he is getting a bridge made.

You Know Your Are in Ghana When....

When all around you and on the street there is a walking Wal-mart and people taking naps. You can get anything  from a bag of water to an i-pad cover ( where you can get the i-pad that is a different story). I wanted to show you this because this lady has Plantain chips. They are thinly sliced plantains that are fried in Palm Oil and salted. They are Terry's favorite, I really do not eat them too much as they do not agree with my stomach.

But we do both like the peanut candy lady, it tastes like really good peanut brittle. Those are the only two things we buy and eat off the street.

 When all the ladies wear beautiful bright dresses to church, many times with a matching head scarf they they wrap around their head. All the designs are so individual and unique, except many times friends or family have matching material. Beside the ladies is Shadrack, he is always hanging around with Terry or I

.

A couple of weeks ago, Shadrack told Terry and I that his Grandmother had died. We were shocked and worried for Shadrack, because his Grandmother is the one that he lives with. I told the Relief Society Pres. and was really worried about him. I was a little suspicious when later he told me that now he could come and live with us and go to the US with us. I did ask the missionary that knew where Shadrack lived. The missionary called a member that lived near Shadracks house and knew the Grandmother. The Grandmother was just fine, Shadrack had just made it up. We had a little talk to him about lying. He is happy this week, because our 2 oldest grandkids  sent him some gifts (shoes,tie and a book) that I wrapped up and gave to him.

This is the Nsawam Branch Primary, the Branch was just split and we now have a lot fewer children.

I can't rotate Terry's picture, but here he is putting up curtains for the Sisters , they just moved into an apartment that used to have Elders in it. The Elders  did not mind the no curtains windows.  We have lots of different jobs then just the office, on Friday we took a couple of young men that live in the area to the Tema MTC, they were both going on missions.

An almost healed bike accident. it looks like it hurt! But it least it is not Malaria!!!!

In January our Mission had the most reported incidents of Malaria in all of the West Africa Area. At our zone meeting the first week in Feb. we handed out Malaria test kits to all the missionaries, they were to call and then test and see if they had Malaria. We did not have one missionary have a positive test for the last 2 months. There were plenty of sick ones that thought they had Malaria,but they tested negative, but they all felt better up the next day, which they would not have done if it had been Malaria. Last week we saw a missionary that was so sick but had a negative Malaria test, but we found out that he had been invited to come to a wedding  the day before, where all the food is set out in the nice Hot sun for 3 or 4 hours. Terry fixed their water pump, and I got him a big bottle of Sprite. The next morning when I called he was having breakfast and feeling much better.

The best fresh pineapple and mango juice in the world!!!

A little village on the Volta River

A little village on the Volta River

This last Saturday we went with about 15 other Senior couples on a day trip to the Volta River.  Saturday is one of the best traffic days, so it only took us 2 hours to get to Peace a little town on the Volta River. There we met with some river guides and they took us out in these old big canoe  boats.  They did have a putt putt engine so we did not have to row, but we did have to bail since the boat leaked a bit. 

It was a very beautiful day, we had fun people to go with and there was a breeze from the ocean so it was great!!!!  The Volta is a huge river that comes from the north all the way south to Atlantic Ocean, the area we were on was right by the ocean. We went to the mouth and  there was a big sand bar between us and the ocean.

We were on the way to a little village that is on the river .

At this village they have a playground, with a merry-go-round and seesaw swing put in by a non-profit agency that  powers electricity in the local school  and also the students lamps so they can read in the evening (it gets dark at 6:00 -6:30 all year round). These are some BYU students that started this idea and this non-profit. Our Branch President works for them and puts in the Merry-go-rounds. The company is called Empower Playgrounds. Another company was bringing solar power to the village.

                                                    This is how you get to the village

See the box on the top right side of the swing, that collects the electricity from the seesaw horse. This collects as much or more than the Merry go round , especially if you have some older ladies that are not pushing!

On the way back we saw fishing boats and villages, it was a great day.

Moving in Ghana

our old office, almost ready to go

Moving Day!!!

As you know we have been enjoying living in Alema Court with our office next door. We knew it was a temporary fix, as they were working on the Mission Home and Office in Tesano. Well they are have some troubles there, just slow going and the city is requiring the Church to put in another entrance/exit which may or may not happen on a busy street with the compound surrounded by other buildings. The builders are not going forward and the area office (who own the 2 apartments in Alema Court) are having a few more missionary couples come. So it is time for us to go! Luckily for us there is a house available 2 doors from where President Hill lives. It is a big house where the Area Presidency used to live, before they built apartments for them at the Temple Site. So we have moved to #3 Coco Palms, we have the office downstairs on the main floor and our rooms are upstairs. It was hard to move and have our office in an uproar and not be able to connect to the internet for a week. We had brand new office missionaries that could  not drive,  and one of our AP's is leaving and his head is in the clouds and he goes around singing.  Elder Wall and I packed everything, see above, and carefully labeled all of the boxes. Problem was the movers who were hired to do the actual moving did not know how to read and they were a little rough on the furniture. You know you have moved, however this was not even Ghana Good !!!!                   

This is the front door of our new office and house, it is very nice, we even have a little fenced in yard. There are about 30 houses in this compound, we do have guards to open and close the gates. They always have different guards here, whereas at the other place, we knew all 7 of the guards and gardeners.  

Below is a picture of when we were moving in. Our office area is almost twice as big. When they were wiring it for the computers and taking the wire along the ceiling, the technicians were risking their lives, as the ladder was too short for the 12 feet they had to reach and they tied it together with wire!
This is taken from the top of the stair going to our bedroom. It is all organized and the internet is working and looks very nice now. I will have to take another picture.

Yesterday we drove out to Kasoa for a district meeting, and we pass by the roadside markets all of the time. This is where most of the people buy all the necessities of life. You can see shoes belts clothes. Most of the casual clothes that the men and children wear every day t-shirts pants are bought from used clothing dealers. Most of these clothes I am sure have been donated, I have seen lots of t-shirts with city names on advertising a  the name of a 5K or another race or events from the U.S. Of course advertising with soccer clubs from US or baseball, football or food or drink. The other day someone came to our office and was wearing a polo shirt with Angie on it. It was from Logan, Utah.  I recognized how it was written, just like the restaurant there. So keep on giving to Good Will or Deseret Industries, these clothes are being put to good use.

 Ghana is moving also, this is a very big mall they are putting up on the way to Kasoa. They already have the Accra Mall, but this mall  looks like it will be 2 or 3 times as big. One of these days the umbrella stands and the metal boxes will slowly dwindle as they put up these malls.

 Since we are moving, this last week was also our Hump Day (1/2 way through our mission) Terry  and I walk 2-3 miles every morning and my shoes were worn down. I saved the 2nd pair I brought for our Hump Day, so I switched and am now wearing my new walking shoes.  Terry only brought one pair and he wishes he had brought two. We might have to have our kids send him a pair.

We love you all, thanks for keeping up with us, and thanks for your little notes and prayers, they work!

Goofy Missionaries

Sometimes our missionaries make us laugh, sometimes we are in awe of them and sometimes we just shake our head, sometimes I have to remind Terry just how mature we were or NOT at 19 and 20 years old. It is always lots of work and most of the time lots of fun. At the end of January we had Elder Bednar and Elder Clayton come and visit West Africa. We were able to have Elder Bednar and Susan talk just to the 350 missionaries of the Ghana Accra Mission and the Ghana Accra West Mission. We had our missionaries from the Bush come in and stay overnight and then we fed them breakfast. Then we were all sitting waiting for the 8:00 meeting at 7:30, even the Sisters who are usually 2 hours late for Zone conference were on time. About 15 minutes before it started we were beckoned to come out of our meeting, I thought oh no, something has happened to one of our missionaries. No, the Bednars wanted to greet us before the meeting because they had to catch a plane right after. It was fun to be remembered and given a hug by friends, from long ago even when you are far away in Africa.  Elder Bednar's instructions were wonderful, it was more a question and learning session for three hours. The missionaries were asked thought provoking questions and they answered questions and discussed answered more questions. Elder Bednar is really a master teacher and this forum of teaching, the teaching and learning model, which you would think would be impossible with 350 young people.. was wonderful, the 3 hours flew by.   

                                  This is a picture of  our whole mission - Ghana Accra West

We went to an Art Gallery last weekend and we just had to laugh at this picture. This is just the tip of the traffic problem add about 20 more cars to this space and you have Accra traffic. I told you I would not talk about the traffic anymore, but I lied. We have to be in it every day and just drives us crazy, especially Terry.
This week , Ben ( our facility man for our mission) was just stopped by a traffic jam and a big truck with a load of concrete blocks came and crashed into the back of some cars. The domino effect was 13 cars and Ben was car number five. His truck was only 2 months old (they cost about twice as much in US dollars here as at home because of taxes) His front and back need to be repaired 2 weeks to 3,4 months depending if they have to order parts.

We had to shift vehicles, so Ben could keep on fixing apartments. So we drove the van this weekend, at present Terry is the only one who knows how to drive a stick shift, hopefully a problem that will be solved this week. After church it started raining, an older couple asked as if we could drop them off  about 5 miles down the road we were going home on, we said OK, and suddenly while we were helping the missionaries all the seats filled up and we were a tro-tro, well can't drive that car to church again.(definitely against the rules)

I got some tomato seeds from my daughter and planted them. They are about 4 feet tall now and no little yellow flowers. Maybe they will be tomato trees. I hope so, good eating tomatoes are about 55 CD's per Kilo , that is about 14 dollars per pound!

This is one of our AP's he is doing some calling and had to type also, so he put his tie to good use!

                                          This is our other AP, he is just chilling out.