June

The mission is growing rapidly.  A new area was opened up in Techiman.  It is about a 2 1/2 hour drive from here.  Elder Reiss has been up there a few times with Cooper looking at apartments.  We now have 8 elders serving there.  They had 9 baptisms last Sunday and more scheduled for the coming weeks.

Techiman

Techiman Medical Center

Street going into Techiman 

Bicycles are popular

Watermelons

One session of zone conference was held at Techiman.  Sunyani, Tamale and Techiman attended.  These are some pictures of the conference.

We are picking up the food from the caterer for the conference.  We had chicken and rice.  What a surprise.  At least it was chicken and it was good. Elder Hopkins ordered the food and Sister Elmer, the area dr.'s wife wanted to see a little of Techiman so she went with us.

May Highlights

We have fallen into a routine now, so we mainly have just a few highlights and special things that we have done.  The first part of May was transfers.  We had 8 missionaries go home and 13 come in.  It was a very busy 2 days.  We did a lot of traveling and shuffling missionaries.  We got to take a group to the airport and see them off.  It is such an exciting time for them.  Then we went back to the airport to pick-up the new ones coming in.  It is fun to see their enthusiasm and their reaction as they arrive.

Waiting to go to the airport

Missionaries going home

We went to Tamale for the first time since the new area was opened up.  It is about a 5 hour drive.  There are 8 elders up there.  I'd heard that it was hotter there because it was closer to the Sahara.  I envisioned desert and camels and elephants.  So as we are driving I kept watching for the desert.  It really isn't that close to the Sahara.  The terrain is much flatter and the trees are much shorter, more like bushes.  It was somewhat warmer.  The streets are wide and it seemed cleaner.  There are no tro-tros just a few taxis and a million motor scooters.  We didn't get a very good picture of the motor scooters, but EVERYONE including the women in their dresses with babies on their backs ride motor scooters.  There are also a lot of bicycles.  No camels or elephants.   As far as missionary work there, it is a challenge.  It is predominately Muslim and a lot people go to Tamale to work, but are not there permanately.  We stayed in a pretty nice hotel.  We were glad to get back to Kumasi.

Not sure the what river this is

Petroleum bulk plant

Lots of these interesting little thatched-roof huts

Termite hill

Kind of a scary plant

Our room

Some highlights

Last month we went to Accra.  It is a very big and modern city.  We went to the temple and to the mall.  We ate at the food court at the mall.  It was just like being home.  The trip was fun, we met lots of other senior couples and President and Sister Judd of the Accra mission. Accra is very pretty but we were glad to be back home in Kumasi.

Ancillary building on the temple grounds where we stayed.

View from our window

The BYU-I collegiate choir came to Ghana.  They spent a couple of days in Kumasi.  We went to both performances.  It was really fun to visit with them and talk about home and people that we know.  Even if they were from areas other than Rexburg, everyone seems to know where Mud Lake is.

Getting off the bus

Guest Ghanian Choir

Trying out the stage, but decided to perform in front of the stage

Brother and Sister Page from BYU-I

The quarterly zone conference was held in April.  It is a 3-day conference to accommodate all the  missionaries.  We helped arrange for the meals and did some setting up and clean-up.  It was a little stressful and we were tired when it was over, but it turned out very well.

Mmmm, chicken and rice

Hanging out in our office

3 months

Time is going fast.  Things continue to fall into place.   Our testimonies are growing by being around the members of the church.  They have very strong testimonies.  We spend a lot of time with the missionaries going to their district meetings, zone activities, giving them rides and sitting in on their investigator lessons.  They work hard and are very dedicated.  We can feel their spirit as they give their lessons and teach.  I feel like we are learning far more than we are helping, but we are beginning to realize why we were sent here. We have not made it to the Central Market where they weave the Kente cloth, however on the way to one of the apartments, we past some people weaving Kente.  We stopped and they let us take a picture of them.  Of course, still pictures do not give it justice.  We traveled to Bibiani one day.  It is a very nice drive and a good road.  This is a picture of the elders apt. who are serving in that area.  It is one of the nicest apts in the mission.

Weaving Kente cloth

Apartment in Bibiani 

View from the step

 

For one of the zone activities they toured the Everpure bottled water plant.  There are a lot of bottled water plants here.  Most are filtering systems set up in a little building.  They bottle water in bottles and in the little plastic bags that they call sachets.  The sachets are the most popular.  They are everywhere.  The problem is everyone throws the bags on the ground when they are finished with them.  It causes a big mess.  Everpure is run by the counselor in the mission presidency.  The plant is big and there is more than one.  They use reverse osmosis to purify their water.  The plant is very modern and impressive.  Here are some pictures that we took before we found out that we weren’t supposed to take pictures inside.

In the ward we attended the week of the Relief Society birthday, some of the women in the ward talked in sacrament meeting.  The day before they all got together and made blue and gold dresses.

Two Months Anniversary

We have been out for over 2 months.  I suppose the time has gone by fast, but in some ways it seems like we have been here forever.  I would like to talk about a few of the things we have learned in our first 2 months.  Some of the things many of you will laugh at because they are simple things that many of you already know.  We learned that it isn’t such a big deal to be at an international airport, board a plane and fly across the ocean.  We flew to Hawaii several years ago, but it seemed simpler back then.  We had to learn all about missions, like what district meetings, zone meetings, zone councils, zone activities, and zone conferences are all about.  We learned about the driving in Ghana, the food, shopping for food.  Shopping for food is just like a big farmers market.  It is every day in Kumasi, only once or twice a week in other areas.  We have learned where to get what we need.  We learned that the people are very happy, friendly and considerate and we love them for that.  We are still trying to learn to understand their accent better.  Elder Reiss is better at it than I am and that surprised me because I was sure I would do better.  We learned to buy our power with a power card.  We know what “lights out” means.  We kept saying the power is off, but it is simply “lights out”.  We had to get used to the hawkers at the stop lights.  Now it doesn’t bother us.  Sometimes we even buy a thing or two from them.  We learned what President Holmes expects of us, so we are continually working on that.  We have got the apartment stuff worked out and we are working on the leadership training.  We have found the clinics and hospitals and are working with sick missionaries on a regular basis.  I have got the management of the internet referrals figured out and we almost have the recent convert tracker up and running.  A lot of our assignments, even the apartment visit schedules are on spread sheets or tables, so we learned the difference between a spread sheet and table.  We are getting pretty good at setting them up, but still have a really long way to go on that.  Both of us have learned to text.  The missionaries use texting a lot, so we had to learn.  We loved meeting the Area President, Elder Dickson.  The zone conference was inspiring and a lot of fun.  Even though we have had a lot to learn, we are very grateful for the opportunity to serve here.