Week of 18 September 2017

Whew!  What a fantastic week!  And a lot more traveling with President and Sister Hillam.  Love it.
Since it's transfers next week, all of the new trainers (22 of them) were called by the President on Tuesday.

Wednesday was meeting with the missionaries that will be going home in December.  "Finishers Wanted" is what he is calling it.  The missionaries make goals for baptisms individually and together as a group.

Here's the group!

Elders Chipapala, Rugundana, Maumau, Bills, Goodsell and Masame.

Sisters Sekgetho, Aruoma, Tembo, Akintoke and Mawasha.

On Friday we got all of the new trainers together to train them.  Big group!

Saturday evening was dinner at our house and then calling everyone about transfers.  It is a fun time.

I made Sloppy Joes.  Elder's Masame first time for sloppy joes.  Said he liked it a lot.

At about 10:00 pm, sister Hillam called and asked if we wanted to go to Ntiamoah with them in the morning.  It is a small village outside of Praso that they are forming a new group.  We said yes.  Talk about the bush - we were way out is the jungle and traveling on wagon trails.

When we finally arrived, Sister Hillam and I had to really go to the bathroom.  Of course there is no such thing here in Ghana, but we did locate this place.  And yes, we used it.

Very interesting.  And this is how they washed their hands.

Here we are waiting for church to start.  He thinks he's cute!

Sister Hillam and I went into the Primary to teach and sing.  There were 23 children.  None of them baptized.  

Sister Hillam teaching them "Do As I'm Doing"

We also watched a video on baptism.

While we were in Primary, the Priesthood met outside.

After church, the children were given the task of putting the chairs away.  Everything goes on the head.

Then we made our way to Kenkause to see the chapel there.  Kenkause is a village with no electricty, so the chapel has to keep all the windows and doors open during church.

More dirt roads.

We followed the Sorensens so we wouldn't get lost!

This is the chapel.  Very nice.

And these are all the men around the baptismal font, which is never filled, because there is no running water.

We also walked a little ways from the chapel to see the cocoa farm and got to taste a raw cocoa bean.

They're slimy and really sweet.

This is a cocoa tree

We also saw two chickens fighting over lunch.  There is a mouse there that they had just killed.  I didn't know chickens were carnivorous.

Sunday afternoon in Kenkause.

When we were leaving the village, a storm came in.  The roads got really muddy and bumpy.

When we got back to the Cape, we had to run out to Komenda to pick up some luggage from a missionary that will be going home and take some things to the apartment there.  The road to their apartment is so tricky.  Trying to get through trees and around buildings.

And this is the missionary's apartment.

And one last picture - Cape Coast has a "London Bridge" also.

Love you and miss you all.

Week of 11 September 2017

Another great week!  We are busy trying to complete everything for transfers and help President Hillam.

President and Sister Hillam were gone most of the week.  They were in Takoradi for interviews and Stake Conference.  Here is a picture of all of our Sisters that are in the Takoradi Zone.  Beautiful young ladies.

When we got home from the office on Monday, we decided to take a little walk.  I have talked about the ants that are here in Ghana before and how the larger ants build a protective wall for the smaller ants to get them from one place to another.  Well we saw a huge line of ants.  We didn't even want to walk over them so we turned around.

This is where they were going to.  Just ants everywhere.

And this is the trail.  You can see that some of the smaller ants have left the trail.  Reminds us of the tree of life.

Anyway, the President called us from Takoradi and asked us to visit the Komenda Branch on Sunday.  They are small and need some guidance.  Hopefully, we can help.  We will probably go there until we come home.  They meet in a school room.

Those seats were so hard.  There were about 30 people that finally came.  Lots of kids.

Elder Knecht is at the sacrament table and his companion, Elder Park was outside playing some kind of game with the kids.  One of the Branch President's daughters led the music and did a wonderful job.

We inspected 3 apartments this week.  I am simply amazed at the young elders and sisters and how well they adapt to their living conditions.  I am very, very happy for the home we are in.  I don't think I would have made it if we had to live in some of the apartments the young missionaries live in.  There is always something breaking.  Or they have no water or electricity.  They have to take showers with these little sachets of water.  And drink also.

So that's all this week.

We love you and miss you all.

Week of 4 September 2017

Another crazy and tiring week.

Sometime in August, Wayne had a tooth lose its filling.  At the same time the President learned that one of our Sister's parents were being sealed in the Accra temple on the 5th of September.  So the President asked us if we would be able to take Sister Stanley into Accra and he could visit the dentist at the same time. The appointment at the temple was at 2:30 pm so we made an appointment for 1:00 pm.  On Friday the 1st, we learned that the sealing had been changed to November.  So we called the President and asked him if he wanted us to cancel the dental appointment.  No use in going to Accra for that.  But he told us to wait because he may have someone else that needs to go into Accra.  So we ended up taking 3 missionaries with us.  Two Elders went home (one had only been here since July 26th) and one Sister had to go see the Area Office Medical missionary.
We left at 7:00 am and got home at 7:30 pm.  We brought the sister back with us.  It was lucky that she didn't go home too.   It's a very long and stressful drive

President Hillam is making sure that these missionaries pay the consequences associated with the decisions they make, especially when they don't obey.
This is the sun setting when we traveled home.

Wednesday was MLC.  I was really good.  President talked about integrity and how he needs to be able to trust his leaders in the mission.  He asked them right out, if he could trust each one of them.

It was interesting to watch their faces.

On Friday we had the trainers and their new trainees to a "follow-up" meeting.  The President wants to know how the training is going and how much the new missionaries have learned.  During their 12 week training, they are suppose to teach from Preach My Gospel every day and for 30 mins.  They played a game of Jeopardy and all the questions were from Preach My Gospel.  It was very interesting to see how much they didn't know.  

Here's the group:

Saturday, Elder and sister Clements came over to celebrate Elder Clements birthday.  We all finally went to the castle.  This was a military fortress originally and then they turned into a slave prison.  This is where they would sell the slaves and they would leave by ship to where ever the slaves were needed.

This is the inner courtyard where troops were presented when it was a fortress.  Then the slaves were presented to prospective buyers.

These are the canyons

This is one of the rooms where they held the slaves.  Those 3 windows was the only ventilation they had.  The head sculptures on the floor showed the difference in hair cuts.  Besides branding them they cut their hair a certain way to know where they would be going.

This s how thick the walls were.  I took almost forty years for the British to build the castle.

It was depressing to learn how the these slaves were treated.  And most of it was for money gain only. 

On Sunday, we traveled with President and Sister Hillam to Assin Foso for Stake Conference.  It was wonderful.  They have one of the biggest buildings and it was packed.  There are 17 units in the Stake.  It will probably be split soon.

There were people in four other smaller rooms also. 

The Stake President - President Fokua - asked Wayne and I to bear our testimonies.  That part I didn't like.  But we could understand everything.  |It was awesome!

That's it for now.

Love you and miss you all.

Week of 28 August 2017

We had 3 Zone Conferences this week plus the president did lots of interviews.

Mpintsin Zone

Tarkwa Zone

And. . . .

Takoradi Zone

Sister Hillam tried to carry some water on her head.  She had to hold it

Sister Johnny was showing her how it was done.

This is a suitcase full of clothes.

Saturday in Cape Coast was a regional holiday.  All of the tribal chiefs were carried during a parade and people within those tribes all dressed up in their tribal colors and danced and played instruments all along the route.  We decided to go down to the Cape to see and feel the excitement.  And it was that!

We came home hot and sweaty and very tired.  Here's some pictures of the parade.

 Tribal Chief's harem

People were everywhere.

That's a guy!!!!

We were across the street from Elder Young who took all the pictures.

We love you and miss you all.