October 1, 2011

Oct. 1 , 2011

  On Saturday evening, I was washing dishes and cleaning the kitchen, just like I do most evenings.  I was wiping done the counters, when the thought popped in my head, “you’d better wipe them good, you might not come back”.  This was just a really strange thought to have, I am not a person who usually has morbid thoughts like this.  So it rather got my attention!  The following day we were going to be doing some traveling to a village about 3 hours away to find a little boy who has a heart defect.  Anytime you go on the roads here can be a deadly experience so I thought maybe I was being given a small ‘heads up’ so to speak.  Needless to say, I spent the next few hours seeing how I felt about this possibility.  I came to the conclusion that I was surprisingly ok with this!  I was ok personally with the way I had lived my life, I had no real regrets or things that I needed to change.  My children were my main source of concern.  But there too, I came to the conclusion, that they would be just fine.  We had raised them right and taught them what they needed to know.  They were good, solid great people who had great potential, yes, I would miss all my grandbabies, but I have a box at home that’s full of baby stuff that I’ve been collecting .  So in a way, I could still be there for my girls in a small way. 

Then I thought, what would I tell my children, if I could say one last thing to them?  It came very surely,  I would tell them only:  Remember the Plan of Happiness.  That’s it.  That would encompass everything I would like for them to remember.  It would tell them about eternal marriage, the plan of salvation and that families are forever.  If they could remember that, they could truly  have Happiness.  What more could I wish for them, then for them to be happy? 

I almost wrote this message in my little red book, but I thought I was being a little over dramatic and silly and I couldn’t quite do it.  I wish I would have. 

The next morning I woke up, and I was amazed at the feelings of peace that I felt.  Life was good!  I had no worries about anything.  We went on our trip and had a really wonderful experience.  The traveling was enjoyable, we met little Andy and his family and joined them for church.  It was a great meeting and we really enjoyed rubbing shoulders with the Saints there.  We had an enjoyable and relaxing trip home and I was very surprised when I walked back in the door that evening!   Strange, huh? 

So I have been thinking for the last couple of weeks, about this strange experience.  And what I keep coming back to I sthis;  what would you tell your children, and why don’t you?  Why does life have to be coming to an end before you tell your children what you really want them to know? 

So Parker, Kelsey, Brooke, Jordan and Miguel:  I KNOW that my Savior & Heavenly Father loves me, beyond a doubt he loves me and knows ME.  That I am his beloved daughter, just like you are my beloved daughters and sons.  This knowledge gives me strength to live my life the way I know he would want me to live it.

REMEMBER THE PLAN OF HAPPINESS!!  Families are Forever and I am so looking forward to spending eternity right with all of you!  I have been so blessed to have been your mother and your friend.  Remember also that you can have an eternal companion.  There has not been a bigger blessing in my life than your father.  He makes my life.  And he will make my eternity.  I can’t wait!  Search after the good things in life and BE HAPPY! 

This is what I want you to know.  If you have happiness in life, that is all I can ask for.  You all are my pride and my joy.  I am blessed!     

October 5, 2011

Lost in Translation Funny:  I’m taking the garbage out tonight and notice one of the guards at the gate is new, so I go up to him and introduce myself; “Hi!  I’m Sister Fife”  he looks at me kinda funny for a long minute then replies; “I’m 44”  I was rather puzzled for a minute until I realized he thought I had said 65 and not Sister Fife!  I had a pretty good chuckle over that one-  #1, do I LOOK 65?  And #2, do American’s really seem that strange to them that we would introduce ourselves with our age?  Probably!

October 7, 2011

We finally got to go to Nigeria!  We have been trying to do this trip for a couple of months, but things kept popping up and getting in the way.  But persistence paid off and off to Nigeria we flew. Everytime someone would hear we were going to Nigeria they would start in on the horror stories (kind of like first time pregnant people)  they just can’t help themselves!  So we heard all about how Nigerians are famous for their kidnappings , most especially white people.  We had instructions from security that as long as we went from the airport to the mission home then back to the airport, we would be fine.  But we weren’t to go anywhere else. 

We land in Lagos and are looking for the driver that was supposed to pick us up from the mission home and we don’t see anybody at all.  But this cab driver comes up to us and says “I know your church, you should come with me!”  We politely refuse and then continue to refuse every other cab driver at the airport who wants to assist us.  Eventually this cab driver returns holding out the phone:  “this is for you”.  Perplexed, Todd takes the phone and says hello, and the guy (African) on the other end, says “you should go with this man.”  We are assuming it’s President Karkari, but it seriously could have been anyone!  So we  get in this guys cab, thinking:  “This is the last time anyone’s going to see us alive!”  But we managed to end up at the mission home completely unscathed!  (Deep sigh)

Our stay in Nigeria was very enjoyable, we saw lots and lots of missionaries during the day and had a great time socializing over dinners in the evenings with the senior couples and President & Sister Karkari.  It was definitely a worthwhile trip, although I can’t really tell you what Nigeria was like at all!

September, 2011

September 6, 2011

I know, I’m slacking!  But the last couple of weeks have been rather great.  While I wouldn’t call them slow, they have been rather boring, which surprisingly was a nice change! 

Today we finally made it out to the Deseret Hospital.   This has been on our list for a while, but something always gets in the way and we don’t make it.  The Deseret Hospital was built and is owned by a member, Dr. Kissi.  He was one of the first members of the church here in Ghana and has written a book called “Footprints in the Sand” which is the story of the church’s beginning here.  I am about half-way through it and am finding it very fascinating! 

The reason for our visit started about a month ago, when we got a message from a sister in Utah.  Her stake is doing a fund-raiser and they want the money to go to Dr. Kissi and his hospital and they needed a go-between.  We were more than happy to accept!  How fun and what a great opportunity to do some good with the community. 

We had a dot on our map where the hospital was supposed to be, but it was in the middle of a very populated area and none of the streets had names, just many, many roads going every direction.  We did great though, drove right to it!  Thank you Holy Ghost?  The hospital is very, very busy and more of a clinic than a hospital.  They have Dr. Kissi and his wife, Sister Kissi who see patients and then a small lab and pharmacy.  Then in the back part of the hospital they have the child clinic.  They do maternity care and baby check-ups and boy was it busy!  Babies, babies and more babies-  most of them nursing, so lots and lots of breasts!  (The Ghanians are not shy about nursing, not in the least.  One friend jokingly states that he goes to a topless church, which somedays it feels like!)  The babies here are soooo cute!  Just completely adorable.  In the center of this room is a large hanging meat scale.  I figured that that was how they weighed the babies, but I was stumped as to how they actually accomplished it.  So I asked and they were more than happy to demonstrate!  They strip the baby naked, then slip him into this little set-up, kind of like a johny-jump up with a long loop at the top.  Then they hang the loop on the large scale hook and viola!  It was pretty ingenious.  They take what they got and make it work!

It was a pretty great trip, we saw lots and lots of needs.  We just need to know about how much money we are dealing with before we decide where it would be most beneficial. 

September 9, 2011

Things have been rather quiet here (thankfully and knock on wood!)  and Todd and I have developed a new favorite to our routine.  We head off to the office really early to avoid the traffic and we usually are done at the office about 2 to again, avoid the traffic.  So this puts us home about 2-3 in the afternoon, which is the perfect time to go swimming.  We have a pool in our complex and we very much enjoy a little 10-15 dip in the afternoon!  Just enough to cool off and unwind.  We have such a rough life! 

September 14, 2011

We officially have a KFC in Accra!  It just opened this last weekend and we were so excited.  Just a chance for a little taste of home.  So today we got together with some friends and headed over to try it out!  We did a temple session first, and Sister Froerer said she had a hard time staying focused, all she could think about was the chicken!  Todd and I had a few reservations, because most things down here and close, but they are always just a little off.  Would the Cornels chicken be the same?  We arrived and found the big red bucket and it sure looks like a KFC!  And boy did it smell like a KFC!  The menu was a little disappointing-  you have your choice of chicken (original or spicy) and your choice of coleslaw or French-fries.  But it was still very exciting.  And the chicken actually tasted like real KFC chicken!  It was hot and tender and juicy and very, very good!  They apparently import all the chicken, because the chicken here is, well, just a little bit off.  Very tough and chewy.  I missed the biscuits but over-all very much enjoyed having a little taste of home!

August 18, 2011

Sorry, I though I had posted this one weeks ago, but apparently not!

August 18, 2011

We got to travel this week into the Ghana Accra Mission field.  Our first stop was at Kofiridua where we met the Bakers who are the senior couple in this region.  They took us to their missionaries weekly zone meeting.  They have 6 missionaries in this area.  We talked to them for a bit about malaria and other things and then got to watch as they had their meeting.  They pulled out the white board and a  couple of missionaries got up and starting writing names on the board, these were the names of those who are committed to baptism and are finishing up their discussions and setting dates.  They wrote about 10-12 names on the board then proceeded to talk about each one and their problems and challenges and they had a great discussion on how best to meet their needs.  We were very impressed that with only 6 missionaries they had that many people awaiting baptism!  Then they sat down and 2 more missionaries got up, erased the board and started writing another long list of names!  The first list was only for that companionship!  The other companionships had at least that many people waiting for baptism as well!  The field here is truly white and ready to harvest!

The Bakers took us to a couple of their hospitals and  we did our evaluations on them, they have a couple of fairly decent hospitals in this area which is always a relief.  Afterward, they took us to their market area which is completely different what what we have in Accra.  They have shop after shop of clothes, both used and new and I was in heaven!  I could have spent hours there, but still managed to buy a couple of new shirts, which is sooo nice!  With a very limited wardrobe I was getting so tired of the same old things.  Shopping is something that I just love to do anyway, it makes me happy.  So this was a very happy day for me!  I told Todd we will probably need to come every month or so, just to feed my shoppers heart! 

The next day we got to go into the ‘bush’ so to speak, to visit a little village called Abomisu.  This is the village that had all the flooding a few weeks ago and we wanted to go check things out and make sure our missionaries were ok in this area.  We met the Daltons, who are the senior couple in this area.  We actually got to fly into Africa with the Daltons, so it was great to see them again!  They have a much tougher mission call then we do!  They really live in the wilds of Africa, we get to live in the city.  We saw a lot of small mud homes that just got demolished with the flood waters.  They will tear them down and just start over.  Which I think in the long run, would just be easier then what the good people of Minot are up against.  They will just make more mud bricks and start from scratch.  A few of their crops were completely destroyed, but they have all just pulled together as a community and shared with their neighbors. 

We did a fireside with one of the wards that evening, they had a great turn-out and Elder Fife did a great job reinforcing the basics of sanitation and staying healthy.   We had to have an interpreter, because they mostly speak Twi.  It was kind of funny,  Todd would speak for like 60 seconds, then this good brother would speak for like 5 minutes, with lots of hand signals and the crowd would laugh at things when Todd hadn’t said anything that was in anyway funny.  I would have been nice to hear what he actually translated, because I think it was totally different then what Todd said!   Afterward he did mini-consults for quite a few of the members, it was a great time.  We usually don’t get to meet with the members, it was a nice change of pace.

The next day we got to see the local health clinic.  It was small and in passable condition, but very busy.  Lots of people needing help and amazing people who have given up their personal lives to give it!  They give the best help they can with the very basics.  The ‘Dr.’ there is a PA who basically has a stethoscope.  He would love to have an otoscope so he could check kids ears and maybe a blood-glucose monitor so he could check a blood sugar occasionally.  Right now, he does the best he can.  We are going to see about getting those for him.  He can run 2 labs, he can check for malaria or pregnancy and his pharmacy is very limited as well.  This is truly bush medicine but it is very inspiring.  They also have a mid-wife who works round the clock with no breaks-  ever!  She was amazing as well.

In the afternoon, we got to go to another village that was close by and see some members.  There is a sister over there that Elder Dalton wanted Todd to see.  She has a large goiter on her neck and it embarrasses her, she doesn’t like to come to church because she is sure everybody is staring at her.  What a sweet lady, and she was watching her little granddaughter who so totally adorable!  I got to hold her while the ‘adults’ conversed.  Her goiter could be removed, but it would be an expensive and risky surgery here in Africa.  And because it won’t hurt her, Todd strongly recommended that she do nothing but learn to live with it.  He and Elder Dalton did some more counseling with her and hopefully it will help.  That’s pretty tough, poor thing!

We then visited another family who has a cocoa farm.  Cocoa is the only ‘cash’ crop here in Ghana, which means they raise and process the cocoa, and the government pays them cash for the beans.  So lots of people do cocoa.  But I have never seen them process it which I found totally fascinating!  They take the cocoa beans from the shell, which looks like a white, slimey brain and they make a big pile inside a bunch of banana leaves.  Then they let it sit in the sun for weeks.  As it ferments and rots (yes, the smell was rather strong!)  the white slime breaks down and turns black.  They then spread it out on reed mats and using a rake, break it up and let it dry some more in the sun.  Eventually, they are mostly down to the cocoa beans with bits of dried black stuff on the outside which they pick off by hand and viola!  Cocoa beans!  Pretty cool.

Later that night we got to go over to the Dalton’s neighbors, a very nice family and branch member.  She showed us how to make fofo.  She already had the cassavas and plantains boiled and mashed, then she takes a clump of each and puts it in her fofo bowl, a large wooden bowl which was very pretty in its own right!  Her son then takes the fofo stick, a 6 foot stick with the flatten end, and he starts pounding the clumps.  She gets her hands wet, then between his pounds, she snakes in the turns the dough.  It’s a fast process and a little nerve racking to watch for the first few pounds!  But eventually you get the rhythm and see the intricate dance between pounds and flips.  I even got brave enough to give it a try, it was actually a lot of fun!  I suppose it loses it’s ‘funness’ rather quickly, but I had a great time!  And I didn’t get my fingers smashed once!  He pounded at a little slower rhythm for me though- thank you!  Todd even took a turn at the pounding.  Though they didn’t offer to let me flip while Todd pounded, which was probably a good thing!  Haha

The husband was going to try to catch a grass-cutter for us, but he couldn’t find one that day.  Which was a little bit disappointing and a little bit of a relief!  I want to try the grass-cutter-  I have heard over and over it’s by far the best meat in Ghana.  But on the other hand, it is just a really big rat!  They sell them on the road side, but I am not a big enough person to take the whole thing home with me, gut it, skin it, butcher it and then cook it.  I grew up on a farm yes, but this is more than I can do right now.  Give me a few more months in Africa and maybe?  Probably not!  Anyway, they made us goat soup instead.  So we got to eat fofo with goat soup at the neighbors-  how cool is that, huh?  We did get our own bowls, which I was thankful for, usually they just eat out of a large communal bowl.  Which wouldn’t be so bad, but utensils are not part of the Ghanian culture!  It’s all about becoming one with the food and that means nothing but fingers! 

So this is how you eat fofo.  First you wash your hands (good!)  then you twist off a small piece fofo with your fingers, swish it in the soup, then pop it in your mouth.  No chewing is allowed, you swallow it whole.  Which, I have to tell you, takes a bit of getting used to!  I’m not used to swallowing a large chunk of dough and I tend to be a gagger.  The goat chunks are floating in your soup, so those you just pick up and break off chunks of meat from the bones (real Ghanians eat the bones too, but I’m not that hungry yet J ).  It was actually very good, and the soup was tomato based and she was very careful to keep the ‘pepe’ small-small.  It was still pretty spicey!  It was a very fun evening and it was great to try some real Ghanian food.  But I’m glad it’s not what we are eating every day!

August 1

Aug 1, 2011

For the past two weeks we have been watching out the window of our office as they have built intricut scaffolding up the tower of the temple.  They are going to replace the angle Moroni with another one.  Apparently the large turkey vultures here really like to roost on his poor head and their rather acidic ‘droppings’ are eating away the gold-plated finish!  Poor Moroni L  They can’t bring a crane in, which is what they usually do because their isn’t enough room for the size they would need (it’s a fairly tall temple) and they think the weight of it would just collapse the concert.  Apparently they’ve learned that by experience J  So they are left with the scaffolding option.  The church had the scaffolding and Moroni shipped in last summer, but they didn’t plan on Africa and it’s noteable problems with shipping anything and they finally got it out of customs weeks after it scheduled appointment.  So Brother Garrett (from SLC) whose full time job  is to oversee this process arrived a few weeks ago for the second attempt.  They had to spend days having the scaffolding de-rusted (because it sat out in the rain for a whole year waiting) before they could even start.  Then the poor man came down with malaria.  I don’t think he will EVER come back to Africa! 

So they finally starting putting up the scaffolding and it was a really slow process, what was supposed to take like 3 days took 2 weeks.  We kept hearing, “they’re going to be changing him out on Monday!”  Monday would come and we could see they weren’t even close.  Then we heard Wednesday, Thursday, then Friday.  Each day we would come to work anxious to see if today was the day!  We were afraid they would do if after we left for the day and we would miss it!

 On Friday afternoon they uncrated the new Moroni! So we grabbed our cameras and headed out to the parking lot.  It was pretty awesome!  He’s huge!  And very shiny and gold!  I got to even touch him.  Way cool!  They said that Monday was the day.  (yeah-  heard that one before!)

Monday morning we get to work and there is a lot of activity going on.  They are actually going to do it!  So we head down to the parking lot to watch the process.  First they need to get the new Moroni up to the temple roof.  They have 2 towers of scaffolding set up with ropes running through the top bars then hooked to Moroni’s post and head hook.  They had about 5 guys on the ground on each rope.  It was a very slow painful process to watch!  He was obviously very heavy and they had a really hard time hoisting him up, plus everytime they ‘heaved’ his arm would swing and smack into the temple wall!  I kept expecting either his arm to break or a large hole to appear in the temple!  They finally get him up high enough only he’s like 6 feet from the temple roof and they can’t figure out how to get him over!  So they slide a couple of boards under him so all 600 pounds of him is resting on 2 little boards.  But they decide his feet need to come up a bit more, so they move all the rope pullers to the ‘foot’ rope except for 2 and they start heaving him up some more.  What most of us didn’t see was that every time they pulled on his feet, his head moved a few inches until it was right on the edge of it’s board.  Luckily a few people did see it right before it fell 30 feet where it probably would have killed a number of people!  There was lots of screaming from those few and major pandemonium for a bit.  But eventually Moroni was on the roof and safe!

Then they started the process of removing the old Moroni.  They had this HUGE scaffolding system set up that was like 15 feet higher than the angel with a boom arm and a hand crank set up.  So they start cranking the crank and the angel starts rising!  It was pretty exciting and I’m snapping pictures and it was a lot of fun.  He sits on like a 6 foot pole that runs into the tower so they have to raise him up high enough to get him all the way out and it looked to me like they were almost there but they were running out of head room!  Sure enough, they stop cranking and the workers start doing a lot of pointing and talking.  I though they hadn’t built the scaffolding high enough and they were going to have to stop and add a few more feet then try it again!  Todd saw what really was happening though.  He said as they raised him up, the boom arm started bending!  So that there wasn’t enough room to pull it all the way out, but they were also worried about it holding it they did manage to get him all the way out!  So after a lot of ‘pow-wowing’ they reversed the crank and set him back down. 

Todd and I went back to the office wondering what they would figure out as I’m sure their busy little minds were throwing all sorts of ideas around.  We had lots of discussing going on with lots of people with OUR suggestions, but I don’t think any of us guessed correctly!  About 4 hours later we see activity on the scaffolding again and so we headed to the window to see the big master plan.  It was a bucket of soapy water and a rag!  They proceeded to give him a very nice bath and then spent the next week taking down the scaffolding. 

All I could think of, is that I’m glad my dad wasn’t here.  I think he probably would have had a coronary watching all of this!  Actually maybe he should have been here, he would have been right up there with the work crew telling them exactly how to do it and how to solve the problems and it probably would have gotten accomplished!   As it was, poor Brother Garrett finally got to go home to his family 3 weeks later then planned and with a mummified Angel Moroni still sitting on the temple roof.  Maybe he’ll be back next year?

August 4, 2011

Today we threw caution to the wind and went on holiday!  Chris Owens (the guy with the merry-go-rounds) wanted to take us up to Kofiridua and show us a few sites and another school.  So we grabbed some friends and loaded up a van and off we went!  It was such a great day.

We started at the bead market.  Beads are a huge thing here, and while I don’t have anything against them, neither do they make me all excited!  The locals make a bunch of different types of beads, from pottery down to crushed glass.  It was fun just wandering around and looking, I didn’t buy much though.

Next we went to Boti Falls which was completely amazing!  It’s 2 very large waterfalls that fall into this beautiful pool in a very pretty jungle like setting.  It looks like something you would find in a Hollywood movie.  The sound of the falls is deafening and the mist coming off the water has you soaked within minutes and I was actually chilled for the first time in Africa! It was great!  I would have loved to gone swimming but the dang parasites just take all the fun out of things-  I have no desire for some little critter to swim up my woo-whoo and take up residence.  No thanks!

We then walked to this little village to see Chris’s school.  It sits on top of a hill basically in the middle of a jungle.  It has no running water or electricity which was why it was chosen in the first place.  We had to hike down into the valley, across a few streams and then up the other side to get to the village.  Dad-  you would have been so impressed with these villagers.  They take a chainsaw and cut the dead trees into lumber that they sell.  They can cut a pretty impressive 2 X 12 X 12 with nothing but a chainsaw!  Plus we saw them making their own cement bricks, (which consist more of mud the cement) but when you don’t have a Menards handy they make it themselves!  Pretty impressive.

The school was a mostly outdoor thing with a roof over head and a dirt floor.  No chairs, no nothing.  They have taken a piece of plywood and spray-painted it black for the chalkboard.  We just have no idea how spoiled we really are sometimes, you know?  But the kids were awesome, they are so happy all the time.  Being around them is such an uplifting time, I wish I could spend every day with the kids!  I tried to teach a few of them how to play jacks with a bunch of rocks, but mostly they didn’t get it.  It was still fun.  

On the way home we were laughing and joking in the van as we swerved all over these little windy roads dodging potholes and other tro-tros.  We were following another tro-tro who had it’s back doors tied shut around a pretty big load when out of the back a goat fell out!  Landed right in the road in front of us, Isaac (the guy driving) had to do some very fast dodging to miss the poor thing who had a rather stunned look on his poor little face!  I’ve heard of falling rocks, but not falling goats!  Only in Africa J

August 5, 2011

We were assigned a ward finally!  Well, actually it’s a branch.  It meets at the chapel on the temple complex so that is very convienent for us.  Some people have been assigned wards that are an hour away.  The down side to this assignment is that they just lost their organist.  Sister Brown was a PEF missionary and they just went home.  I haven’t been asked yet, and I am not an organist.  I can play the piano passably as long as no one is singing with me.  As soon as they sing with me I get all freaked out about the timing and it usually isn’t very pretty.  They asked me to cover for them a few weeks ago while Sister Brown was away, I had asked for the hymns in advance so I could practice, but they forgot.  So it wasn’t very pretty but we muddled through.  This week I got a call on Friday night asking if I would play again and they did give me the hymns which was greatly appreciated.   They probably remembered my playing from before!  This is so far out of my comfort zone!

Anyway, sacrament went fairly well.  I managed to make it through most of my songs.  It was also fast and testimony meeting which is always such a treat here.  These people might be very poor and repressed but some of their testimonies totally wow me!  Sunday School I didn’t hear a word of, the teacher didn’t have a mic and the fans were all blowing, so I missed most of what was said there.  Then for the third meeting we had a combined meeting to plan for an All Africa Service Day that we have coming up.  We are going to be working at a small clinic in one of their neighborhoods,  we are very excited to see it and to help make it better.   They don’t really have a plan though on what needs to be done, they are just going to show up and wing it, it sounds like!  We were told to bring cleaning supplies and rakes.  It should be a lot of fun.  But they did have me play the opening hymn off the cuff-  and I even did fine.  But afterwards, they wanted to practice their songs for their ward conference coming up next month.  The first one, I stumbled through ok, the second I totally mangled and the third I didn’t even know!  So they pulled out a tape player and used that.  It worked much better.

I left feeling rather stressed.  This is not a talent that I am good at or comfortable with.  I guess we don’t grow if it doesn’t hurt, the ‘no pain, no gain’ theory.  But I am already dreading next Sunday.  He promised to call with the hymns for next week so I can practice, hopefully he’ll call before Friday night so I can practice a bit.

August 11, 2011

Today we headed back to the Cape Coast Mission, all business this time though, no more playing around!  We still managed to quite a bit of fun.  We had a great drive over and made good time, met up with President Shulz and his wife and headed off to Takeradi which is about an hour away. 

We had a great fireside with the missionaries there and had a lot of fun hanging out with them afterwards while everyone lined up to visit with the doctor.  I’d love to say I’m getting used to the heat, but I still feel very wilted after 2-3 hours in a full, non-airconditioned chapel! 

We enjoyed a wonderful dinner on the beach with the Shulz and then played some games at their house, where we stayed, in the evening.  It was a very enjoyable day!

The next day we spent the morning doing another fireside for the missionaries in the Cape Coast area.  Another really great time, every time we get to hang out with the missionaries I feel so rejuvenated!  They have such a great spirit about them, I feel like a sponge and just enjoy soaking it!  It would be an awesome thing to be a procelyting missionary, maybe next time around, huh?

July 13, 2011

July 13, 2011

Today we started our first road trip into the other mission in Ghana, called the Cape Coast Mission.  Naturally Cape Coast was our main destination.  We spent about 3 hours getting there, but it took us over an hour to just get out of Accra.  They have major road construction going on it was such a mess!  But the ride was very delightful and entertaining just watching life in Africa out the window.  We drove through countless little villages and they were all fun to try and figure out what they were selling either on their heads or in their little street stand.  It seems like each little village had a theme, they sold pretty much the same thing in each little stand, without much variety, (like watermelons, or flour or snails)  then the next village would be ‘specializing’ in something else.  Some we never did figure out what it was!  The snails down here are huge!  They are about the size of racket ball- don’t know how brave I am on that front yet J  Talking about things I’m not quite ready for—we saw 3 or 4 young men selling very large rats on the side of the road.  They call them grass-cutters down here and the locals love the meat.  They think it is very tasty and tender.  One guy had his kind of flayed open between 2 sticks, it kind of looked like a tennis racket.  Yum!  They will even cook it for you right there on the side of the road!  Is that considered fast food? 

We got to Cape Coast with no real problems and made it to our hotel with relative ease as well and we were feeling pretty proud of ourselves as there is no such thing as good directions here!  But the hotel didn’t have a reservation for us and we were very confused until we called the guy that made the reservations for us and it turned out we were in the wrong hotel.  We were at Elimina Resort, not Elimina Bay.  He told to go back out to the main road and just follow the signs (which is how we ended here in the first place)  the receptionist gave us completely different directions.  So we followed Daniels advice and headed back to the main road (which could have been any of about 3 by the way) street names are hard to find in Ghana.  We did manage to find a road sign for the right hotel and off we went.  The signs eventually had us turn off the main road which looked like it was heading way off the beaten path, the road took us way back into some little tiny villages and then headed off into the bush.  It became this little tiny dirt road with amazing potholes intermingled with large water holes.  We are thinking this can’t possibly be right!  But ahead of us was a taxi with a white man in it and it just kept going, so we kept going.  We did finally find our hotel but I’m not sure we would have if there hadn’t been a taxi in front of us!  And it was a beautiful hotel, it’s right on the ocean.  Our room has a little balcony which looks right over the water and the huge crashing waves.  Very impressive.  The restaurant sits outside next to the ocean, so we had like a great pizza that night in the dark sitting on the beach listening to waves.  Very awesome.

Part of our job is to find good hospitals to take our missionaries to when they get sick.  So we went out to find a couple of hospitals that afternoon  Which is not easy when there are no phone books with addresses and phone numbers.  So we headed off with general directions from the bar tender to the closest one.  Turned out it wasn’t even a hospital, but they were able to give us directions to a couple that were.  The first one was pretty small and while not in great shape, better then some we have seen.  The second one we found looked more promising, I happened to be on the phone when we pulled up and Todd jumps out of the car saying “I gotta go talk to this guy”.  I finished my phone call, then got out expecting to find Todd talking to this guy we had stopped by.  I was rather surprised to find him no where in sight!  I wandered around a bit and took a couple of photos to add to our report, then visited with a local for a while.  Eventually Todd showed up back totally animated and excited.  He introduced me to Dr. Kennedy (the guy he had met by the car).  Turns out he knew when we pulled up that he had to talk to this guy.  So he jumped right out to catch him before he left.  Turns out he was exactly the man we needed to meet.  (the Lord is amazing sometimes, isn’t he?)  Todd got a great tour of the facilities and we now have a personal contact to call if we ever have any problems.  This just reinforced to us that this is God’s work, and he’ll make sure it’s done right.

The story would be great if it ended there, but it doesn’t!  While Todd was on his tour he was stopped by a man who noticed his name tag, he was in the bishopric in one of the wards there and his wife was very ill and he wanted Todd to help him give her a blessing.  So we headed back into the hospital to find them, while we were wandering around trying to find to this gentleman, a local stops us and points behind us.  There is a white women running down the hallway towards us.  She comes panting up to us almost in tears.  She is down here volunteering at an orphanage and they have a very sick little boy who is in the hospital.  She saw us walk by with our name tag and knew that we were an answer to her prayer!  She is a member of the church as well and wanted to know if we would give this little boy a blessing.  So we followed her and found little baby Francis sleeping in his crib.  Totally adorable!  Todd gave him a blessing and the woman seemed much more in control when we left.  We then found the gentleman we originally set out to find and met his lovely wife and gave her a blessing as well.  It was a very sweet experience and we knew without a doubt we were where the Lord wanted us to be. 

July 14, 2011

We got to be tourist today!  We went to Kukum National Forest this morning and did the canopy walk.  It was totally amazing.  It’s a rope bridge that they have built about 120 feet up in the top of the rainforest.  The bridge runs from tree to tree with a wooden walking platform that’s about a foot wide with ropes running up the sides for support.  The height didn’t bother me at all, which was good.  Some people were deathly afraid of the height.  But even without that fear, the bridge wobbles and sways quite a bit.  There are two iron cables that run under the wood planking and then tended to tip you either one way or the other.  It took both hands on the ropes just to keep your balance.  But the views were spectacular!  You could see for miles above the tree tops then what seemed like miles below you.  The trees where huge.  The jungle sounds were impressive.  It was a lot to take in all at once.  Almost sensory overload.  We got a bunch of pictures that just don’t do it justice. Very cool experience!

We stopped down the road a bit on the way home at an animal sanctuary.  It’s run by a Dutchman who takes endangered animals and keeps them until they can be set back in the wild.  So we got to see some local wildlife.  They were mostly in cages so it was more like a zoo, but we did get to see a few monkeys on leashes, tied up out in the yard.  Not really the way I wanted to see the local wildlife, but it was ok.

That afternoon we went to the slave castle.  This was a totally sobering experience.  Our tour guide took us to the male holding rooms first.  It’s a series of 5 interconnecting chambers that are underground.  Each one is about 30 feet by 75 feet with stone walls and a stone floor with a gutter that runs through all five rooms. The only light and ventilation comes from 2 small openings on one side of each room.  Each room was made to hold between 100-200 men.  The gutter is for the human waste.  But it’s not very deep and our guide said it would ‘plug up’ very quickly leaving 4-6 inches of excrement on the floor.  The slaves spent an average of 2-3 MONTHS in these holding cells before they were loading onto slave ships with even worse conditions if that could be possible.  The death rates were staggering!  On average, if 500 slaves were captured, about half of them survived the trip to the castle, out of that 250, only about 125 made if out of the holding cells alive, then another 50% were lost in the ocean voyage leaving only about 75 of the original 500 to be actual slaves.  Totally depressing.  The punishment rooms were nothing more then suffocation chambers. 

By the time we were done I was totally depressed.  It was something to see once I guess, but I don’t have any desire to ever go again.  We went with some friends on the tour, and at the end we all took each others pictures in front of the ‘Door of No Return’.  The guy taking the picture said ‘smile’ and one of the women said very adaptly, it just doesn’t feel right to smile in here.  Which is exactly how I felt.

July 15, 2011

This morning we went and checked out one last hospital and planned on meeting the mission president and his wife, President & Sister Shulz, for a small meeting.  We were supposed to meet them at a nearby chapel and we got there about a half hour early.  The beach was right across the road, which some cool fishing canoes on the shore so we thought we’d walk down and get some pictures while we were waiting.  On the walk down, we started to hear singing and before long we saw about 15 young men pulling on this long rope that ran out into the ocean and they were all singing some kind of a cool descant song.  So we just got in line and starting pulling with them!  They seemed a little surprised at first but pretty soon they were all smiles and laughing at our feeble attempts to help.  We must of pulled for most of our half hour and my hands were sore!  The rope running into the ocean didn’t look any different then when we had started, they said it takes most of the day to pull the fish in.  What a lot of work!  But it was a lot of fun, I’m glad we got to be locals for a little bit.  I’m also glad we didn’t have to do it all day and got to go sit in a nicely air-conditioned car instead!!

July 16, 2011

We drove to Kumasi yesterday afternoon on the worst roads we have seen yet in Africa!  We spent the morning meeting the senior couple in this area, Elder and Sister Zoll.  They are a great couple who have a lot of energy.  This is a great thing out here,  they have about 50 missionaries in their area. 

I made my first local angry today; it was a little scary actually.  We were at another hospital checking things out, my job to take a couple of pictures of the outside of the buildings so they can be used in our reports.  We thought seeing a picture of the buildings might help as directions are not always that helpful.  So I was doing my thing and taking a few pictures while Todd was talking to a guard at the front door telling him what we were looking for.  He saw me taking the pictures and started doing a lot of hollering and yelling, telling me that I can’t just take pictures without asking first!  He wasn’t angry that I was taking pictures of the hospital; he thought I was taking pictures of him.  We had heard that a lot of the locals don’t like you to just take pictures of them, they are a proud people and I think sometimes they feel like people take pictures like they would at the zoo.  I totally understand this concept and have been very careful not to treat people like that.  So Todd apologized profusely and I looked through my pictures and sure enough, there was one where he was in the bottom corner.  I apologized again and deleted the picture immediately.  This seemed to satisfy him and he took us on a tour of the hospital.  Well, he took Todd on a tour of the hospital, I was still obviously in the dog house!  Towards the end of the tour, he turns to me all smiles and asks if I will take a picture of him and Todd (his new best friend apparently!)  So I smile back and take of picture of both of them!  What a strange man.

In the afternoon we met with all 50 of the missionaries and did a heath lecture.  It was our first one of these, I think we will be doing this a lot.  It was a success I think.  We hit doxy and nets really hard. Todd made some really great points. We started off with having a little fun with the song ‘Called to Serve’ and compared to them to the 2000 stripling warriors, then Todd talked to them about obedience with exactness.   He then talked a bit about why they don’t take their doxy or use their nets, listed a whole bunch of excuses.  Then read a scripture in Alma about no excuses.   So no excuses and obedience with exactness was the challenge of the day.  He did it in such a great way that the missionaries were very fired up when he was done.  We’ll see if we get long term results. 

July 17, 2011

Today we left Kumasi and headed up to Sunyani.  We didn’t even know there was a town by that name when we left on Wednesday, let alone missionaries up there!  We got a call on Thursday I think from an Elder Bennett saying he heard we were coming to Kumasi to talk to the missionaries and could we come up to Sunyani too?  So we extended our trip another day and off to Sunyani we went!  We are slowly figuring what we were are doing, but mostly we are just flying by the seat of our pants.  Well, actually it’s becoming very plain to us that the Lord is in the driver’s seat and we are just along for the ride!

Sunyani was an amazing experience.  9 months ago the church was not in this area.  The mission president at that time, President Sabey, felt impressed to open up the area.   So he purchased 4 buildings, had them renovated with chapels in the front and small apartments in the back and then sent in the missionaries.  He sent in Elder & Sister Bennett along with 10 missionaries.  They were told to go and find people to bring to church.   So they did!  9 months later, they have about 50 people coming to church every week in each of the 4 buildings.  They are baptizing people every week.  3 of the 4 have the numbers to become branches, but they are having problems coming up with a map of the area so they can create boundaries.  Who needs maps in the bush in Africa?  

The missionaries here are incredible.  They have brought the people to church like they are supposed to, but once there, they have had to do everything from conduct the meeting, to administering the sacrament, to doing all the talks, to teaching all the lessons.  They have to do it all, because there hasn’t been any members.  Now they are in the process of teaching the members how to do these things, but they still don’t have anyone higher than the aaronic priesthood.  It’s just a slow process.  Anyway, they give a whole new definition to the term ‘seasoned’ missionaries.  We felt a little like children talking to the adults saying “now, take you doxy and sleep under your nets!”  But their heath is important to continue this great work.  They seemed very receptive to the instruction.  I hope so.  It’s important.  The thought of losing any of these missionaries to malaria makes me just sick.  We know first hand that it can happen. 

July 18, 2011

We headed home today!  We left about 6 this morning hoping to miss some of the traffic, but only managed to hit the major traffic in Kumasi right at 8.  Plus it rained all morning long and most of the night.  We finally made through Kumasi traffic and out the other side. 

Driving is very slow.  There are rumble strips and speed bumps all along the way that the locals put on the roads to keep the speed of the traffic in check as there are no policeman who do this.  There are little villages all along the way, like literally every 5 minutes!  Someone told us there are 63 villages between Kumasi and Accra, (that’s a lot of speed bumps).  It’s about 280 kilometers and it took us almost 9 hours to make it home if that gives you any idea!  The rain also caused some flooding on the roads that we had to drive through.  One was actually very deep, we probably shouldn’t have driven through it, but there wasn’t another way to get home.  The current was very strong and we were afraid it was going to pull us off the road, but we made it through.  Then we continued through about 30 kilometers of some really terrible roads.  It makes our road to Seeley Lake this spring look like a cake walk!  We will never complain about the roads in the States again! 

Nine hours later we were home!  It was so wonderful to walk into our clean, nice, air-conditioned apartment!  We are very happy to be home.

July 6

July 6, 2011,

I had the priveledge of going to the temple today with the missionaries from the MTC, last week I went with the English speaking group so I thought this week I would go with the French speaking group.  The missionaries seem to love seeing people they know in the temple, and it is a neat experience to see people all dressed in white in this unique setting.  So I rather figured that I was going to support the missionaries.  It turned out that the Lord wanted me to go, not for them, but for me.  I had a very sweet, very spiritual experience that the Lord wants and needs me to learn to speak this language.  I KNOW I can do it.  I have been really struggeling with this language.  It is not an easy language to learn, or maybe I just don’t have the talent it takes to learn languages easily.  I also really wanted to learn Spanish, not French, so I had this back mindset that French is stupid.  Lots of excuses, and not very good progress.  (duh, I wonder why?) 

Then this last group of missionaries came into the MTC and half of them only speak French.  I found it very frustrating to not be able to communicate with their sweet spirits past “hello” and “how are you”.  So I determined to start studying my French again.  Then I had this sweet experience in the temple today, and I remember what President Greenhalgh told me in my blessing when he set me apart as a missionary.  He blessed me I would be able to communicate with these people.  I just have such a sense today that my Heavenly Father is mindful of my limiting factors and he is letting me know that I won’t be doing this alone!  With God all things are possible.  Even me learning to speak this language!  So hold on to your hats cowboys, cuz “J’suis parle Fransai”!  (now, if only I knew how to say, “I’m gonna learn to speak French”!)

July 9, 2011

Thursday morning we got into our office at our regular time about 7, with a full list of things we wanted to do for the day but the phone rang right off the bat.  There’s a conference call from Salt Lake and can Todd join them?  At the end of the call, Todd tells me rather stunned, that one of our missionaries had just died in Nigeria.  Our job was to find out how and why and report back as soon as possible.  We didn’t even know we had a seriously ill missionary in Nigeria!  So we had a rather frantic morning trying to call the Mission President over there, the phones are tricky here with all the different codes you have to add to the numbers when dialing and then the phone system itself isn’t that great so half of the time it doesn’t work.  So you don’t know if it’s because you aren’t dialing it right, or if the call just didn’t go through!  When we finally got a call to go through to the mission home, we are informed that that number had been disconnected.  Frustrating to say the least, when we are really feeling already behind in the game!  Hours later, we have finally gotten a hold of the Mission President, spoken to the attending physician and have a report written and sent off to Salt Lake.  In a nutshell, he got malaria, the medication wasn’t working so they admitted him to the hospital.  After trying a number of different meds, it looked like he was getting better finally, then bamm, he wakes up, hollers and dies.  They are doing an autopsy and I’m sure Todd and the big wigs in SLC will figure it out, most likely it was cardiac problems caused by the malaria.

Two days later I still think I am in shock.  One of our missionaries died?  How does that happen?  I feel so deeply for his family, his parents, his companions, his mission president, etc..  Mostly my prayers concern comfort for them, I am so sad and I didn’t even know him!  Yesterday we were invited by the Stake President to join them in meeting with the family members so we could help explain maybe the why.  We met with 3 of the uncles, they gather all the information and then will take it back and inform the family.  They were amazing, they are not LDS, and so our beliefs are strange to them, but they have a very strong testimony of God.  The elder uncle said to us a few things that I am still marveling over.  He said he was proud of his nephew, and honored that he had died while on his mission.  (This surprised me)  He said that this young man had died as a soldier for the Cross, as a warrior for Christ.  He wishes that his death could be so honorable.  What faith and wonderful insight!  These people and their faith are amazing and I am so glad I have the privilege to be here and associate and learn from them.  To be proud and honored at the death of a loved one, how inspiring,  how comforting. 

So can we take this very, very sad thing and use it?  I feel a little guilty but that’s what I want to do.  Malaria is preventable!  We know it comes from a certain mosquito who only comes out at night, sleeping under a mosquito net cuts your chances of being bit by over half, taking your Doxy (anti-malaria medication) takes care of the other half.  The problem is that Africans have lived with malaria all their life, they know when you get sick, you take the medication and it makes you better.  They get malaria like the rest of the world gets the common cold.  Only malaria is much easier to fix.  The problem is that they take the medication so often (every time they get sick, whether it’s malaria or not) they are developing an immunity to the medication and sometimes it doesn’t work and people die.  I read somewhere last week that the leading killer of children in Africa is malaria.  I might not be able to fix the whole country, but by dang it! My missionaries are going to start taking their doxy and sleeping under their nets!

Today I woke up feeling very blessed and comforted, how does that happen in a time like this?  I think my Savior is once again touching my life.  (This is becoming a daily thing here)  I hope those who are mourning feel this way as well, but for me I feel very much at peace this morning. 

June 24

June 24, 2011

We are sort of getting a day time routine down.  We head off to the office at 6:45 so we can miss most of the traffic which can be pretty awful some mornings, although it doesn’t necessarily mean we always miss it.  This morning took us almost 40 minutes when it usually takes us about 10 and we left the same time we usually do.  Go figure. 

We then spend the day trying to get as much work done as we can, then head home about 2 or 3 to beat the traffic then.  But the afternoon still usually takes us about an hour.

This morning we worked on taking inventory of which medications we have in the office and what they are used for and if we needed more of anything.  We then did our first trip to the pharmacy by ourselves!  We have a map with the pharmacy marked, but none of the streets are marked so it makes it a little difficult.  So you try to count streets, but then some of the streets aren’t on the map!  So it makes it pretty interesting.  My job was navigating and Todd’s was to avoid being hit.  I thought at first that I knew where we were on the map, then suddenly we were on a major road that wasn’t on the map and I was totally lost and confused!  We were starting to maybe panic a bit but then we drove by the temple!(which is where we had started) We can come a complete circle and didn’t even know it!  I was SO not where I thought we were on the map!  So we tried it again and again got completely lost! I’d think I might know where we were and then no, I didn’t, so we just kept driving around thinking we might know where we were occasionally then we turned a corner and BAMM!  There was the pharmacy!  We were not even close to it on the map by the way!  There was definitely some Divine intervention going on today, that is the only explanation!  But we managed to get all the medications we needed AND make it back to the office.  What a red letter day!

We also had quite a few people stopping by the office today to see the Dr. Including one asthma attack that was pretty severe, but we got her all fixed up and back on her way.  So it turned out to be quite a busy but fulfilling day. 

June 25, 2011

We took the Pages out with us to the MTC today to meet the new group of missionaries.  There are 46 in this group and about half don’t speak English so it was an interesting experience and my French is not holding up past “hello and how are you?”  very pathetic!  If I had more time, I’d work on it, but as of right now we are pretty dang busy just trying to keep our head above water!

We had an idea to try out for immunizations today and it worked like a charm!  We discovered last time that they LOVE to have their picture taken, they call them snaps.  You pull out a camera and instantly you have 10 missionaries all huddled in a group wanting their picture taken.  So we decided to run a contest to see who had the bested and worstest faces while getting their shots.  Turns out they are so focused on getting their picture taken they mostly ignore the shot!  It worked really well, I think we may be onto something!  Sister Page did the polio drops, Brother Page ran the camera and Todd and I did shots, it worked out pretty smoothly. 

After the MTC the Pages took us to what it called the Pit.  Mostly it’s a large crater that is filled with tons of the little hut kiosts.  So we spent a few hours wandering from shop to shop looking at all the pretty stuff for sale.  Lots and lots of carvings, all of them hand-done.  We got a little bowl, that is probably my favorite right now, it’s got a little carved giraffe drinking out of it, it’s so cute!

June 28, 2011

We spent Sunday and Monday frantically trying to get our MTC health lecture ready to go for today.  We are doing a power-point presentation, which is good.  And we had 3 or 4 previous power-points to kind of pick and choose from, which is good as well.  It’s just took us some time to decide what we want and which one of us was going to do what.  But we finally got it all put together late last night.

Our presentation went really well I think, we might change a few things here and there but for the most part it went well.  Todd put together a personal introduction at the beginning that showed a bunch of pictures of North Dakota in the winter, as most of them have never seen snow.  They found that part pretty entertaining I think!

The second set of shots went really good as well, we are slowing coming up with a system to seems to work.  This time we didn’t have the Pages, so we used missionaries.  We had one running the camera and another running the paperwork, which worked out really well.  Last time we had a missionary get two of the same shot, one from me and then one from Todd, he didn’t want to miss out on anything and didn’t understand that we were both giving the same shot!  Poor kid.  So this time we had a missionary in charge of making sure each one got what he needed but no more!  Again the pictures worked like a charm,  what a simple solution! 

June 29, 2011

Today we went with a humanitarian volunteer to visit one of his schools.  We weren’t really sure where or what we were doing, but thought it sounded like fun.  And it really was!  Chris is a graduate student from BYU and he works with this company called Empower that takes merry-go-rounds and swing sets and sets them up in very rural schools that don’t have power.  The equipment is set up with windmill generators that create electricity!  It’s an awesome concept! 

So we drove for like 2 hours then stopped in this little village, which we walked through to get to the beach.  We then got into a boat and drove about 15 minutes up-river to what they call an island village.  The boat ride was very beautiful.  The villages main economy is clams.  They take like rota-tiller motors and hook them to like a garden hose somehow then use the hoses to breathe underwater while they are hunting for clams.  We saw lots of clam diver boats on the river, very creative! 

We got to this little village finally, and I’d tell you it’s name but I can’t pronounce it quite yet, let alone spell it!  They took us on a tour of the hospital there first.  And the one word Todd and I both came up with afterward is APPALLING!  I was expecting very basic what we saw should have been condemned 5 years ago.  The roof was literally falling in, in most of the rooms.  It was very dirty.  The patient rooms had a couple of metal bunks with two inch mattresses which were very filthy and nothing else.  The maternity rooms had a bed with a wooden crib, with no mattress at all.  Just plywood.  I could not imagine giving birth in these rooms and having anything survive!  Our little brains are whirling trying to figure out how to help. 

We then got to visit the school and it was so fun!  There are about 200 kids in this school and we got to see the elementary part of it.  The classrooms were very simple, a chalkboard, and student desks, but it was very clean and such a relief to see after the hospital!  The children there were very excited and happy to see us, especially after Todd pulled out his camera!  They LOVE to have their picture taken and they especially love to see it afterward.  So we got lots and lots of great pictures that Todd will have to blog for everyone.  We had a lot of fun with the kids and got to see the merry-go-round and swing set which were pretty cool.  Then back into the boat and back to the mainland.

We stopped for lunch on the way home and I tried the bangko.  Which is very similar to the foofoo.  They make bangko mostly out of corn.  They boil then mash it into some kind of sticky, white, hot dough.  You take a pinch and dip it into different sauces, pop it into your mouth and swallow it whole.  No chewing allowed!  So you learn to take smaller blobs, the bigger ones get harder to swallow.  The bangko itself is fairly flavorless, they use it as a filler, the stuff hits your stomach and sits there like a ton of bricks for the rest of the day.  That way they can just eat once a day and feel full for the rest of it.  Hey-  I bet it would be a great way to lose weight!  It wasn’t bad, but I think I want to try some different sauces, (they call them stews) I had a tomatoey one and a fishy one.  Chris, our tour guide for the day, says his favorite is one they make out of the local peanuts. 

All in all, it was a great day!  We really enjoyed getting out of the city and seeing the real Africa.  Looking forward to doing more of that in the coming months.