Life in Ghana

Life has been very busy for the past three weeks.  We have had many visitors from the church here in Ghana and we have moved again and we have been surprised at how fast the month has gone by.  I am hoping that this blog will bring you up to date on our activities.

We had a Doctor here from Alpine, Utah named David Scott.  They were asked to transfer to Burundi and so we have had a new doctor arrive.  We went to dinner with the Scott's and some of their friends to say goodbye.

This is the Sister Scripture Study Group, we meet each Monday morning at 10:00
We take turn teaching the lesson, this year we are doing the Old Testament.

Every Monday Morning the Sisters meet for a scripture study class
this is Sister Scott and Sister Sitati - wishing her goodbye!

Kent telling them a story before he presented them with their Kente Cloths
Every missionary is presented with a Kente Cloth before they leave the mission.
These are woven here in Ghana and considered important

The Kente Cloths have your name, the name of the Mission and the time you served.

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In Tema, which is about 35 Kilometers from Accra is the the Missionary Training Center
Kent and I went to church there and had dinner with the Missionaries

Above is President and Sister Stephen Graham.  They live in Provo and have worked at the MTC in Provo for many years.  We knew them when we served at the MTC - they were extremely gracious.  We had a wonderful lunch with them and the missionaries. 

Kent in front of the MTC - it is a wonderful facility.  However, they are building a new one on the
grounds of the temple.  They need a larger MTC because of the increase of missionaries.
They will also be teaching French.  Many of the missionaries are not endowed when they come to the MTC
so they have to plan a day to come to Accra so the missionaries can take out their endowments.

The people in Ghana are extremely religious.  On Sundays they put on their best clothes and go to church.  Many of the stores are closed and people respect the sabbath.  As you drive down the street, you can't help to notice the sayings on the back of the Tro-Tro's and the taxi's.

When the new doctor arrived, Kent and I picked them up from the airport and got them settled in their new apartment.  On the following Sunday, we picked them up for Church.  The ward we attended was celebrating the Relief Society Birthday.  They had the Relief Society President speak and they had a Women's choir.  They also asked all the Relief Society Sisters in attendance to sing.  One of the things that I noticed was that most of the were wearing white.  The explained that when you wear white, it means that you are happy.

They love to Sing - they put us to shame.

Check out the fabric that her dress is made from

After church they asked if we would take our picture with some of them.  The other white girl was from Holland, she spoke perfect English and was doing an internship at one of the hospitals here.

During the week, we had a visit from Matt Heiss and Scott Christensen.  They are from the History Department of the church and they are over Africa.  Since I write the area history for this area, I had some meetings with them.

Scott Christensen, Brother Sono-Koree and Matt Heiss ( I don't know the other ones name)

I though I would include a few pictures of the awesome trees and flowers that we see here in Ghana.

Amid all of the brown dirt, there are some really very beautiful flowers.

Every Monday Morning we have an employee devotional.  As we were sitting waiting for the devotional to begin, who walked in, but our friend and neighbor Paul Hansen.  He was visiting for the Church.  We loved seeing him.  We had a wonderful dinner with him at the Movenpick Hotel and we took some pictures in front of the temple.

This little girl is named Aba, she is seven years old and would love to have a pen-pal if any of you would
like to write to her.  She is the daughter of Awo.  Her mother is below.  We work with her.

This is Awo - we work quite closely with her when we are getting apartments ready for a new couple.

Pictures of the Apartment at Maxwell Court:   I decided you would like to see where we have been living.

This is what our building looked like.  We would drive through a gate to court.

This was the door that led to or apartment.

This was across the street, just outside our gate - it is a Nursery - it great flowers.

There was also two schools on the street.  They had great paintings on the walls.

This was our gate keeper - each time came home or left - he would open and close the gate.

This was looking down the street - check out how narrow it is.  People were always sitting outside.

This was the narrow way that led to the gate - I think the gate keeper slept inside the little place with the chair!!

Oh!  What a surprise we had - President Dickson called us into his office and asked if we would like to move into the new Condo that was just finished for the Presidency.  Now who could turn down an offer like that??   The condo has six apartments in it.  There are five large ones and one small one that was built for visiting authorities.  We got the small one, but it is awesome - clean!!!  Bright!!! and full of conveniences.

This is the outside of the building - it is just in back and to the side of the Temple complex - so we can
go through a back gate and walk to work.

This is the front door. - You should see the locks and security on the doors.
You turn and knob and about five locks secure the door.

This is the living room - we have not hung any pictures yet.  We used furniture that was left
from the Area President.  Their Condo's are not quite as large as the homes they were living in.

A very nice dining area and chairs that are actually comfortable to sit on.

This kitchen has that wonderful gas and electric stove, a dishwasher and a full size refrigerator and
a water filter and hot water, so you don't have to bleach your dishes.

The King Size Bed with a real mattress -- amazing what you miss, when you don't have it anymore.  It needs a quilt!

The bedroom has a dresser with a plug for a hair dryer and curling iron - real luxury.

Real built in closets!

This bathroom has both a shower and and bath tub.

The apartment also has a very nice study with a hook-up for two computers.  Two large windows & light.

At the other end of the room is a bookshelf  - it is lovely.

The Building has a gym - we haven't really exercised since we left.

Looking out of our window, we see the gate house or security that keeps the gate.

We also look onto the pool.  We went swimming before work today and it was awesome.
How lucky we feel.   I also have  a full size freezer.

Sister Dunn gave us this original Oil painting to hang.  I really loved it.  When everything is
finished, it will really be nice.  How blessed we feel.

We want to wish everyone a very Happy Easter - we have a four-day holiday here.  They go to church Friday, Saturday and Sunday and then have fun on Monday.  We hope you do the same.

Sunday March 3, 2013

Hi Everyone, I can't believe we have reached March.  This has been a very busy week at work.  We have had several Wards and Stakes, especially in the Cote d'Ivoire and Liberia, request to make new wards, branches and stakes.  It means that everyone needs new maps for boundaries and new leadership positions filled.  This means lots of work for Kent and me.  We have not been getting home from the office until after 6:00 at night.  That is a very long day.  We have also had a very interesting week.

Monday

We went to the Makola Market.  The Makola Market is one of the most renowned markets in the world.  It was constructed in 1924 and was the main wholesale and retail market in Accra.  It is filled with so many people and pathways that it is extremely easy to get lost.

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Can you imagine shopping in this!

Brother Sono-Koree is the area Family History person.  I work with him, when I work on the Area History.  His wife owns a material shop at the Makola Market.  He has wanted me to visit her shop - but we needed a time when he could come with us and show us how to get to her shop.  So on Monday, Sister Curtis, and Sister Sitati and myself went with Elder Sono-Koree to Makola Market.  Kent drove us.

This is Sister Sono-Koree, she has owned this small shop for 32 years.

This is Kent and Elder Sono-Koree

Me with Sister Sono=Koree, Sister Sitati and Sister Curtis
check out on the brightly colored fabric.  We had fun picking out  pieces that we liked.

While we were picking out he Fabric, Kent stepped outside and took a picture of the path we followed.
We past hundreds of pairs of shoes, on the way out, I bought a pair.

The blue fabric is one of the pieces that I bought.  Several of the ladies are having skirts or dresses made.  A seamtress
here will charge you $10.00 for a lined skirt and $20.00 for a dress or a skirt and top.
The material was also quite inexpensive.  I am going to have a skirt made from that piece of fabric.
It was a very day - I still don't think we could find the shop again and parking is another story!

On Wednesday of this week, when we went out to go to work, a little girl that lives here wanted me to take her picture.  Her name is Josie.  I took her picture, then I bought her a coloring book and crayons and gave them to her.  She was very excited.

This is Josie, it was taken in the Courtyard of where we live.

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Thursday of this week, we had a whole group of people come from Monrovia, Liberia to attend the temple. The church actually paid their airfare for them to get to Accra.  These people come with their families, so that they can be sealed or go through the temple for the first time.  They bring all of their own food with them and sometimes they sleep in the Stake Center.  They NO MONEY.

I have been helping Brother and Sister Houssian with some family history.  Trying to train people on Sunday's how to teach the Family History class.  They have developed and real hands on program, but
people have very little access to computers and even the ones at the stake center are hardly used, because they do not know how to work them.

Thus, they often come into the office building to get help, so that they can get the names entered, so that they can get the cards made at the temple to do the work.  On Thursday of this week, Sister Houssian was so busy, whe asked if I would ehlp a man from Liberia.  His name was Henry Himie Nagbe.  When he came to my office, I helped him enter the names of his children and wife.  He looked old, but the children were really young. I asked him if I could come and take a picture of his family.

This is the story:  He is 62 years old and his wife died and he has several children that are grown and married.  He had a good friend that was going to die, the one thing she wanted him to do, was to take care of her adopted daughter that had some medical issues.  She knew if she died, the girl would be cast out to the streets and that because of the medical condition, no one would marry her.  He married the girl and gave her a home and has taken care of her.  They have had these three children.  They came to be sealed.

I decided to make a copy of these pictures and give them to him.  It was very touching.  You would have thought that I had given him the world.  He was going to laminate the pictures and he kept saying, now we have something to take back to show our friends.  It does touch your heart.  It is hard to think that we have so much and they have so little.

Saturday - the Shai Animal Reserve

Dad and I decided to take a ride to the Shai Animal Reserve which is just North of Tema.  It is always so interesting to go through these little towns.  One of the towns that we past through had bread, up and down the street everyone was selling bread.  I suppose there is a bread factory close by.

I haven't figured out which one I would stop at, since they all look alike and sell the same thing!!!

Check out the name of this store - most businesses are named using a phrase from the scriptures.
They are also written on the back of all the taxies and tro-tro"s.

I loved this stand with Mango's and onions.  You never know what you will see.

After driving for a couple of hours, we finally arrived at the Reserve.  I can't say it was the best place I have ever been, but it was interesting.

This was at the front gate.  It is where we bought our ticket and got a guide.  They have you drive your own
car and the guide gets into the car with you, to show you where to go.

The Shai Reserve consists of a very striking and attractive range of rocky hills set in the middle of expansive open and wooded grassland plains.  At present, it has 31 species of mamals, more thant 175 species of birds and 13 reptile species.  It is very hard to think that it has that much, since you really see very little of them.
The first animal that we saw were some ostriches - They imported them from South Africa.

This is the Female - they are keeping them behind a fence until they can fix the reserve.

This was our guide.

The Black one is the male.  He is much prettier.

We drove over grasslands to see the Antelope.  The road were awful, they were dusty, dry and bumpy.  If it had been the rainy season, it would all be MUD.

If this looks black, it is.  They have burned a large area of grassland, so that during the rainy
season they will get fresh grass for the Antelope

They may have large herds of Antelope, but we did not see very many.

They can run very fast

One of the more fascinating things in the park were the caves.  The Shai tribe, who drifted over to Ghana from Nigeria many years ago, settled into these caves and surrounding hill tops.  The tribes were territorial in nature and therefore defense was an important issue.  These caves were very unique because they could only be entered at one certain point.  They could easily defend that entrance.  We hiked up to one of the caves.

This was entrance to hike the rest of the way up to the cave.
You had to duck to get through it.

Kent at the Entrance

When you got through the entrance, there was a shear rock wall, they could block the entrance with rocks
and they could also throw rocks from the top down on the people below.  You still
had to hike quite far up to get to the cave.

I stopped and Kent continued up to go into the cave.

Kent took a picture of me when he was in the cave - looking out!

Once inside the cave, you can climb the ladder to get to the top of the hill.

This was an exit that led to another cave, where they sent the women and children, when someone
was attacking them.  Inside the cave are hundreds of bats.  The ground surface was very
soft,  The guide said that they were walking on bat droppings.

At the top you could look out over the plains

Kent at the top - When the British came the Shai tribes recreated all kinds of problems.  The British decided to
remove them from the caves so that they could be controlled.  It took a great deal of time and loss of
life to accomplish this.  They finally did it and now the Shai tribe lives on the plains below.

We then drove over to see the Baboons.  They would come close enough to you, so that you could feed

them banana's.  I loved them.

We came home HOT, TIRED and in need of a SHOWER
BUT we enjoyed the day.  We wish all of you a good week ahead.

Love Kent & Judy