No sight seeing lately. Just lots of interesting and ordinary tidbits of life in Accra, Ghana.

Another windshield picture, Pray More and Talk Less. Good advice.

This is Elaine Youngberg, Kathy Knowles and me. Kathy started the NGO library 30 years ago. She runs her foundation from Canada. She comes to Ghana twice a year to check on things and happened to be there one day when we showed up. It was nice to put a face to someone who started a great work. She's our age.

This is the inside of the little library. It's colorful and inviting with lots of books and puzzles which the kids love. The young kids below don't even speak English yet so reading doesn't really work. I can read a story in English, then one of their teachers translates into their Twi or Ga or Fanti dialect. They will then repeat some of the main English words to add to their vocabulary. They sit outdoors in the breeze-way between two buildings to catch the breeze.

This is our keyboard lesson every Sunday after our two hour block. They bring their keyboards back and forth from home. They set them up on chairs and then I go around giving a short individual lesson because they are all at different levels. They practice while I take turns teaching. We have the louver windows and a fan. When the hour is over I am hot and exhausted.

We don't have enough keyboards or room for more students, so I give a few lessons at 8am before church starts at 9. Below is Adam who is 11. He desperately wants to learn so I told him if he came at 8 we could have a lesson. On Sunday he was there before we were, carried my books in, set up the keyboard and cleaned it off. Everything is always covered with dust. He also attends Steve's conducting class, sits by us and holds down the pages from blowing while I play for the singing. Have you noticed that every young man wears a neatly pressed white shirt and tie to church? They are all impeccably dressed. After church they walk or take taxis or ubers back to their homes.  One week Dennis and Joshua played for the opening and closing songs in church. They play from the simplified hymnbook and did a great job. I had to remind them if they make a mistake, just keep going and catch up with the singers.

Steve enjoyed drumming at the DuBois market. Sorry, these handmade drums won't be coming home with us.

These beautiful folks were taking pictures outside the Temple. They gave me permission to take their picture.

This is Brent Belnap, the West Africa Area legal counsel. He taught a graduate class on Comparative Religion years ago regarding Islam and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He has a wealth of knowledge about the Islamic and the Jewish Religions. Remember he put on the Seder dinner for us at Passover. It's interesting how similar our religions are in so many ways. His class was a whole semester but he reduced it down to 1 1/2 hours on three consecutive nights. Most fascinating.

A local African gal was putting on a 'tupper ware type' party only with dresses. Many she had made, others came from Indonesia. So a bunch of us tried on dresses over our clothes. This is L-R Cricket Parry (communications missionary), Karen Shepherd (Humanitarian missionary), me and Zoe Weston (Young Single Adult missionary). Did you know the Africans compliment you if you are on the larger side?  You have enough money to eat well. If you're thin, you are too poor to eat and probably can't have lots of babies:) Funny thing, Zoe has 10 children. The rest of us have 5 each.

This intersection has dozens of street vendors.

Grilled chicken, jollof rice and salad. Jollof rice is a local very spicy rice which I love.

I took a picture of this beautiful quote from a zoom meeting.

These men are both crippled and always on our corner. The corners are full of handicapped folks being pushed around in wheel chairs, moving themselves on skateboards (with both legs missing) walking with crutches and a missing leg, I would bet many accidents are from motorcycles and scooters that know no traffic laws. They go on red lights, against traffic and in and out just tempting an accident to happen. They know our car or white shirt and always zoom over to us, we're happy to give.

 My new favorite painting. This hangs in the Mission Training Center which will re-open at the end of June. When couples go home, they are given a kente cloth banner with their names and date of service. This is Zoe and Mike Weston, I'm so sad to see them head home to Logan, Utah. He's the wheat farmer, they have 10 children.

We were fortunate to hold this get together in the MTC. With no missionaries presently there was plenty of room for about 17 senior missionary couples and the area presidency. Below are Chis and Karen Shepherd the humanitarian aid missionaries. They head home to their chicken farm in American Fork.

Often we see these Muslim ladies on our early morning walk. It's difficult to see their beautiful dark faces no matter the direction of the sun.

Another windshield picture of the Jubilee House or King's palace. I think it's more of a working building than living.

This gal has her fire going to begin whatever rice meal she prepares every morning to sell. She is across the street from a very upscale market where I buy our bread. 

I found this fellow out early on our walk. He's an itinerate seamstress. He takes his sewing machine around to mend clothes for folks. He was mending several pairs of pants for the fellow in the orange shirt.

This is one of the gutters along the streets. They don't always have water in them. The more homeless are known to bathe in them. They can be 1-4 feet wide and 2-3 feet deep, often smelly. We've had missionaries fall into them or crash their bikes in them. Don't take the corner too tight in the car either.

This is James who washes our car twice a week. He's the landscaper in our complex with a side gig of washing tenants' cars. He does a great job but it always seems to sprinkle on Monday and Thursday, car wash day. He charges $2 each wash.

One night these local folks came and taught dance lessons to us sister missionaries. The beat was loud with lots of gyrations. We met in a large room in the area offices. It was more fun just to watch them.

Saturday morning we joined the Westons at the launching of one of the Gathering places they have been working on for the past six months. This is a 'gathering' in the local stake center where young single adults can come to mingle, take English/French classes, Self-Reliance classes, learn how to start a business, take Pathway educational classes, learn typing, take Institute classes, have fun and eat. One of the greatest needs is consistent wifi and computers.

TIDBITS:

A very sad and tragic thing happened this week. There is a senior missionary couple serving in Sierra Leone as an office couple. He is a physician's assistant and came to be the mission doctor. (We don't have to have licenses because we are volunteers). They were out for their morning walk and she tripped and hit her head on a cement curb and died. She was gone before they could get any help at all. I walk every morning with three other gals and Steve and I walk in the evening. So this hits close to home as it could happen to any of us anywhere and anytime. They had only been out about 3 months and were on our monthly health council zoom meeting with the Sierra Leone mission president and wife. This has been difficult on Pres. & Sister Harper because they also lost a missionary last year to Malaria. We spoke with him on a zoom meeting this week and because of all the different tender mercies, the husband felt it was her time to go and he was ??? with that. None of their eight children had a passport so the area medical doctor will travel home with him and take her body.

I am really tired of grocery shopping for anything familiar.  The stores stock so much that we don't use. The traffic is so awful trying to get anywhere. We go up and down the aisles trying to find items that we can concoct into a meal. Sorry to complain. We do have chicken and pasta and veggie meals. One reason I love eating out is because we bring home our leftovers and make two more evening meals from it by adding a salad, etc. Silly how we love our plain jello, it's just so refreshing. We miss ice cream from home also. I think we have an ice milk type of ice cream. Oh well, it's refreshing also.

I miss my homemade bread. Sometimes I just need a slice of homemade toast to take care of my hunger. We also miss chocolate milk from home.

My work with the Young Single Adult program has been put on hold. They are still working on the details. Now I'm helping another couple who travel the whole West Africa area creating a videography of the history of church members, especially the early members. Remember the Church is only 43 years old here so many older members have fascinating stories on how they joined the church. I watch the videos and pull out key words so they can be cataloged and used. It's really fun to listen to the stories.

The Accra, Ghana Temple has opened for proxy work! We're very excited. We have to make appointments and there is very limited seating but it's nice to be back. The Mission Training Center will also open by the end of June. They will start with only 50 new missionaries from Africa, no one coming from the US yet. This may open up new places of service with the intake of missionaries and helping them with their English skills. 

I thought we'd have lots of rain here. In our four months here we've only had a few hours of rain. Our rainy season has brought nothing. We're in a drought like so many places in the US and the world. With the dusty harmattan season over, we have lots of blue skies and white fluffy clouds.

It's a great feeling to know our way around while driving. We have found the best ways to get to and from the area offices. We still use GPS when needed. How did we ever survive without this technology? If you avoid the large roads and intersections there are fewer vendors, crippled folks and begging children. We always keep our car full of pre-wrapped cookies for the children and cedis for the crippled. I bought a beautiful white, battenberg tablecloth from one street vendor for $6 US.

We have several new missionary couples that have come recently. The Eastmans are here with an international organization regarding human dignity that the Church participates in. The Woodbury's are our new humanitarian missionaries when the Shepherds go home to their chicken farm next week. The Burton's are here to replace the Belnaps who have been called back to Salt Lake City to work as an international attorney at church headquarters.

We found the TV show This Old House. We've been enjoying the episodes while we eat lunch or dinner.

We've given out more flip-flops lately. They're a sturdier version of the dollar store type at home. They went to our local banana lady and to a lady that sells water on our street and to a homeless man walking on our street. He truly looked homeless. We see these folks on our street every evening when Steve and I take a quick walk.

Some of the Nigerian missionaries have been told to stay indoors during demonstrations. Not uncommon for Nigeria.

Have you heard about the 2-inch long fish-shaped cast iron ingots? It is used to provide dietary supplementation of iron to those affected by iron-deficiency anemia.  The ingots are placed in a pot of boiling water for soup or rice to leach elemental iron into the water and food. The Church's humanitarian arm is providing them in West Africa because of the great need. When the food is ready to eat, the fish is taken out of the pot, washed and reused the next time. That is such an amazing solution for a very real problem.

We hope you are all staying healthy.