Week of 29 August 2016

So transfers are coming up and so is the receiving of 16 new missionaries and the departing of 9 missionaries.  And this is how it all should work.  Tuesday afternoon all of the new missionaries that have spent three weeks in the MTC in Accra come to the mission home in Cape Coast.  They spend the night at the mission home, the AP's apartment and our house.  We will get all of the sister missionaries.  The next morning the new missionaries will be assigned and meet their trainer.  Then they leave the mission home.  Then we will start receiving the departing missionaries in the afternoon.  They will get their luggage weighed, their last fufu meal and testimony meeting.  They will all spend the night in the mission home, the AP's apartment and the sisters will stay with us.  Then we leave on Thursday morning for Accra and go to the temple and eat lunch.  Then all should fly out that night.  Pretty easy if all goes as planned.   

So this transfer things aren't going that well.  Out of the 16 new missionaries, only 7 of them have been at the MTC in Accra and they have to leave Tuesday morning.  The other 9 are coming in from the Provo MTC and they won't be arriving until Wednesday morning.  And we have one missionary from Tonga that will fly out on Wednesday night instead of Thursday and one sister that will fly out on Friday morning.  The president is really trying hard to figure out what to do besides trying to decide on trainers and transfers.  Hopefully we will know next Monday what he is going to do.

We had the Yamoransa Zone Conference on Wednesday.  The President talked to the missionaries about being a "Zion" mission.  One of the ways is not to be contentious.  Here President called up Elder Adams pretending they were companions.  Pres. told Elder Adams that he thought his tie was not appropriate and he should take it off.

Elder Adams told him that he thought it was okay, but he would go and change it.  Everyone laughed.

Then he had the sisters come up and he started talking badly about another sister.  And instead of stopping him, they just let him go on and on.  Finally he said, how long are you going to let me say bad things about Sister Newton?  So they tried it again and stopped him before he really said something bad.  All the sisters had the same material made into a piece of clothing.  Neat, huh?

The Pres. then talked about getting rid of our bad habits.  So we all went outside and burned ours.

We had lunch (chicken and spicy rice)

and then Wayne and I had to get back to the office.  But this was waiting out in the parking lot for us.

One lonely goat.

It rained all day Thursday, so our road up to the house was mud and puddles.  We had to put the truck in 4-wheel drive to make it up.  Wayne wanted to show you how steep our driveway is.

It still doesn't do it justice.

Sunday Sacrament meeting was very interesting.  We were being serenaded by a rooster right outside the door.  One of the guys tried to shoo it away, but it just kept coming back and then the church across the street started banging it's drums. 

We decided to go for a walk on Sunday.  This is the jungle outside our backyard.  The two trees have monkeys in them, but of course, not today. 

Here's a yellow bird that we see all of the time.  It's tail is twice as long as the body and it has a beautiful song.  Love to listen to this bird in the mornings.

This is for Kameron.  This was out in our backyard.  It's four different colors.

And this is one of the snails we watch every morning climbing up our wall.  They are pretty big.

This is the city of Nkanfoa.  It is where our missionaries from the office tract.

As we came to the other side of the town we saw this sign.  I guess they still believe in their tribal doctors.

On Saturday, the President didn't want anyone to go to the city.  They were celebrating "Fetu Afahye" which means "adorning of new clothes".  The tribal chiefs are all carried in on the large chairs which the traditional warriors carry on their shoulders.  And everyone is dressed in very colorful clothing.  So there were parades and singing and dancing in the streets and of course a lot of people drinking.  Maybe next year we'll try to get some pictures.

Well, that's it for this week.  Love you all and miss you.