Reiss Mission Ghana Kumasi Africa: Our first branch visit

The Kumasi area seems to be a little worse that some other places, such as Accra, Sunyani and Tamale, as for as handling of sewage and garbage and the condition of the roads. One thing about here is the electronics. Everyone seems to have an iphone or ipod. Most do their wash by hand. There seems to be plenty of water. There are big poly tanks and pumps, so water is o.k. except that it is contaminated. We have a water cooler and the mission home furnishes the water jugs. We also have 3 filters on our kitchen tap. We use that to rinse our fruits, fresh vegetable and dishes after we Clorox them for 2 minutes. We visited our first branch on Sunday. There is a couple of stakes here and several districts with functioning district presidencies. Right now there are 5 branches that we are responsible for leadership training and auditing. They are not in a district yet. We go to a different branch each Sunday. On fast Sunday, we attend our own ward. We visited the two Obuasi branches. I’m not sure how far it is to Obuasi, but it took us about an hour and a half to get there. We rode with the mission president. He is a very aggressive driver. Obuasi is a gold mining town. It doesn’t look like anyone is getting rich. The chapel building is pretty nice. The church rents the buildings and goes in and remodels them. The cleanliness and upkeep is up to the branch presidents. Some of the branch presidents have been in the church for a few years and the branches are functioning pretty well. Some of them are not. In one of the branches we visited the primary is struggling, but the relief society is doing really well. In the other no one in the primary showed up and when we went in the tiny little room, there was a young boy, maybe 10 or so, teaching the entire primary (about 9 children) about being a child of God. The people are very friendly and happy. They love the gospel and when they speak. The church is in the process of renting another building for the 2^nd branch. The present building does not have enough space for both branches. We went to look at the building. It was on the other side of town and up on the mountain side. It was like going up a washed out mountain road. Most of the people walk to church so it will be a challenge for the older members.
These are some random pictures of what we see as we drive around.