January 14 - 20

This has been a very busy week, but mostly doing office work.  On Friday Elder Grow and his wife arrived from Salt Lake.  They are here for about ten days.  They had a special meeting with the auditors and on Saturday he was meeting with the seven Area Authorities in out Mission.  We also had a dinner for everyone and their wives on Friday night.

Elder and Sister Grow are from Meridian Idaho.  The have eight children that still live in that area.
They also have about 48 Grandchildren.  After the meetings they will do a Mission Tour in
some of the other countries and then come back to Ghana.

Elder and Sister Sitati having lunch on Saturday.

The Area Council  Meeting - Kent had to take minutes for the Meeting
It lasted for most of the day 

The Area Authorities also arrived on Friday.  There are three of them Nigeria and four of them Ghana and they are over the different countries and areas in our Mission.  They are very interesting men and quite impressive.  Kent was involved in picking them up and taking them to the airport and taking minutes at the meeting.

While the men were involved with meetings, the women decided to take a trip to the TK Bead Factory.  This is a place that makes beads.  It is only about 50 kilometers, but it took us over two hours to get there.  The road that we suppose to turn on, was closed and we had to go a little further than we planned.  However, it took us by a school the Shannon Dunn is involved in, so we stopped to see it.  Shannon Dunn is here with her husband, who works for the Church.  He is in charge of all facilities.  She began helping this school with Money, supplies, paint and anything else that it needs.  Many of the couples get involved with helping people, schools and good causes.

Starting at my end is Sister Smith ( Her husband works for the church and they are from England)
Next is Sister Slater (Her Husband is the Legal Attorney for the Church in Ghana)
Me and next to me is Sister Warner ( Missionary Couple from Provo over Public Relations)
Shannon Dunn has her hand on Sister Warners shoulder, her husband works for the church.
Nest is Sister Scott, her husband is the Dr. and they are from Alpine
Then Sister Graham, she and her husband are from Provo and they are the MTC President in Tema

  

This is the School - it doesn't look like much, but it has five or six classrooms, desks, chairs and the
walls are painted.  Think how often we have complained, how would you like to work in these
conditions.  How spoiled we are!!

This man was the driving force behind the school, he wanted his children to be educated.  He has been working with
Sister Dunn and watching over the school.  Sister Dunn is on one side and Sister Scott on the other side.

The latest thing they have done for the school is build a Latrene.  The pictures are to instruct the children on how to use it.
This is a luxury, to have running water and a place to go to the bathroom.  Only about half the people that work for
the church have running water and probably none have hot water.  How much do you appreciate America!!

You can see that we finally made it to the Bead Factory.
They had so many to chose from.  They have some made into necklaces and bracelets and
then tables and walls with all kinds of beads that you can buy and make your own.

It was Sister Warner's Birthday and she was so happy to be shopping.  She loves
buying the beads and she makes the necklaces for all of her girls and granddaughters.

It is hard to see just what a variety there is.  They say that Chico's buy many of their beads from Africa.
All the beads that you see here are glass and are made on the premises in a very crude way.  I saw
a man making clay from scratch in a big pot with a large stick.

We took a long time at the Bead factory, especially Sister Scott - who spent the most!

On the way home, I couldn't resist taking a picture of the Chicken Coop - I thought it might bring back some memories!!

We also stopped to buy some, Mango's, Avacado's and Pineapples - the Fruit is great.

We hope you have a great week and we want to say Congratulations to Matt, who received his mission call this week to the Dominican Republic.  I am sure we will be eating some of the same kinds of food.  He leaves in June - We love Him.