19-25 December 2016

Our friends, the Brobbey's from the Netherlands  They invited us over for a wonderful day full of visiting with their 3 beautiful daughters and a delicious Dutch meal.  Victor is from Ghana but lived most of his life in the Netherlands.  He brought his family back to Ghana to experience life here.  We had a wonderful visit with them.  It had been 6 years since we'd seen them on our previous mission.

This is a sister from Sierra Leone who was sealed
to her parents.  We were proxy for them and she was
very emotional and happy.

We're all in our MTC tee shirts for our service activity with the primary kids on the day before Christmas. The goal was to teac them things they my need to know as a missionary.

One activity was teaching kids how to learn how to
tie a tie - they call it "fixing a tie" here.  First, the
sisters had to learn to do it themselves, then teach
the kids.  This little boy didn't really get it.

A cute African primary kid.

Another activity was teaching kids how to sew on
a button. Of course, we had to teach the missionaries
how to thread a needle and the correct way to sew on a button. 

Another was teaching them to lace and tie their shoes.

And how to polish their shoes - even if they're
sandals!

Cyril was Santa - I felt so sorry for him in this hot Santa suit in Africa.  He was a real trooper.  Many of these primary kids were from his ward where he's the bishop.

We had some fun relay games - carrying
limes on spoons.  These little girls just
held their limes on the spoons as they ran.

Our French Congo and Cote d'Voire missionaries had a great
time singing, dancing, and chanting their
country's soccer team song.  They were
pretty wild!

Our whole group - it's a small one this time.
Only 57 missionaries.

Downtown Accra - you have to look closely, but there were two goats on top of this big truck as we went driving by.  You see it all here.

We made gift bags with the Brubakers
one night for the staff here - we made about
48 of them with things we each had brought.
Thanks to Matt for all his Altoids, Starbursts,
and lifesaver mints!  The Brubakers added a
can of hot green chilis, some almonds and
red licorice.  

Here's our finished product.

A close-up.  Of course, Sis Brubaker had the nice
gift bag and cool ties and tags to attach.

This is our gardner with his gift bag.  He was so happy to receive it.

The kitchen staff with their gift bags.  They don't
do too much for Christmas here and the way they
were so happy to receive these, you'd think we'd
given then keys to a new car.  They were so sweet.
It was really very heart-warming as we really
wondered if for some, this might have been their
only gift.   

A couple of our teachers who wanted
to take a selfie with us.  We look kind of washed out.

One of our French elders is a pastry chef so he made
some cakes for us to eat on Christmas day.

The finished product.

Aba outdid herself for our Christmas
buffet.  It was incredible with her staff
all dressed up.

They re-arranged all the tables, put on
tablecloths and centerpieces and made it
a very beautiful, delicious, enjoyable lunch.
We sat with Elder and Sister Stanfill, along
with the Brubakers, the Obengs and Acquayes at the end.  

Christmas Eve we had a nativity program with
the missionaries acting out the nativity, some
scriptures and lots of songs.  The costumes and
props were contributed by many!

Christmas Day was a spiritual feast with a 3 hour meeting with the Elder and Sister Stanfill from the Area presidency.  We were all in tears at the end as he gave a beautiful blessing.  I hadn't felt like I had experienced much of Christmas before this, but Christmas Day in the Ghana MTC was really a beautiful, spiritual experience and one I will always remember.

12-18 December 2016

Here's a Christmas tree lot in Ghana - all fake!
Not many choices either.

Our fake tree with decorations in the
lobby of the MTC.

The Brubaker's little Christmas tree
on their coffee table with their pretty
Christmas Kente runner. And bead decorations.

Saying good-bye to Sister Stutz.
They're home in Orem now.

I met this sister outside the temple.
She had recently returned from
serving a mission at Temple
Square.

Notice the instructions for this laundry soap.  Use
your hand to measure it and use a washing bowl
for washing by hand.  Notice that there are no
instructions for a washing machine. Most people
don't have one.

This is probably the extent of my Christmas baking.  Sugarless banana muffins - with a few chocolate chips and coconut on top!

Bernece has a shop in Accra - she's very involved
with the Days for Girls project and does so
much good, traveling all over Ghana.

Eating lunch with some missionaries in the cafeteria.  These are our zone leaders and our sister leaders.

We taught the sisters how to make these little
cloth covered notebooks/journals.  They loved
it.  We mainly used my scraps from dresses I
had made.

5-11 December 2016

The MTC was closed for 5 days for the elections and so we took a break and drove to the coast, 7 hours drive away, with the Brubakers and the Peines.  After driving about 5 hours, we were stopped at a police barricade and told we had a low tire.  There was a little tire shack right nearby and this guy found a huge bolt in our tire.  It was really a miracle as it could have been disastrous if we hadn't have caught it right away.  

Here's the bolt.  This guy worked for an hour, fixing
it and charged us $2.00  We gave him a little more
as well as some chocolate chip cookies I had made
for the trip.  We also gave some to the police who
stopped us.  We felt very watched over.

We finally arrived at the turnoff for the resort and had to drive 7 kilometers on a very bad dirt road through the jungle, and past little villages.

The jungle off to the side of the road.

A village near the resort.

We arrived at the Lou Moon Lodge - it turned out
to be incredibly beautiful, well-kept, and well
run.

At the entrance to the resort.

This is the pool attached to the Brubakers house.

The question we kept asking ourselves was, "Is this really Ghana?"

We spent a lot of enjoyable hours in this pool.

The grounds - very pretty landscaping on our own
little island.  There were 4 houses on the island
and we had 3 of them.  The whole resort only has
11 rooms and while we were there, there may have
been one other couple in the entire resort.

Visiting with Louise Peine one morning after a
walk on the adjoining beach.  Her husband loved
taking pictures and swimming in the ocean - they
had lived in Kauai for 4 years and so we shared
our love for Hawaii.  This little island resort
really felt a lot like Hawaii.

Swimming in our private bay with the Peines.
We actually preferred the ocean side after swimming
in the bay and so swam in the ocean after this,
sometimes fighting the current and the waves for
hours while talking.

I couldn't resist a wonderful massage
right on the beach.

These big, colorful lizards are the only thing
that told you this wasn't Hawaii, but Africa!
They were everywhere!  Very harmless.

This was our little island.

One day we walked for a mile along the
adjoining beach.  We met this man digging
for crabs.  As soon as he'd catch one, he'd pull
off all the legs and use the main section for
fish bait.

Very pretty beach.

Many, many picture opportunities.

Ghanaian fishing boat.  We would see them coming
back to the village in the early afternoon. We found out
that they go out at 3 am and then come in mid-morning
to the harbor at Axim to sell their catch.  That puts them
home in the early afternoon.

The lodge restaurant was outstanding.  This is
Sis. Brubaker's lobster dinner one night.

Every morning we had fresh fruit along with
hot chocolate, crepes, omelettes, orange juice and fresh bread.

We spent a lot of time around this table visiting as we waited for our meals.  This resort is owned by a Belgium and we experienced the European style of 3 hour meals!

Walking outside the resort to go through the
little villages to the main beach. There are three
villages in about a mile.  The largest is next to
the resort.

Notice how clean this little village is, right next to the resort.

Fishing boats, etc. in front of the little villages on
the beach.

Another photo op.

And another.  Notice the pink leaves on the tree.
The huts are mud and we wondered if they stack
the bamboo to get some protection from the heavy
rains.

They love color on their boats.

We loved taking pictures of the
African kids.

These little kids were carrying trash to the rubbish
dump, which was right on the beach.

They are paid by a British group and these were the
cleanest beaches we've seen in Ghana. 

A cute 11 year old girl named Patience we met on the beach as we walked.

More cute African kids.

These people were out sweeping the beach, making sure it was nice and clean.  It's a never ending job because there's so much trash in the ocean. This was election day.

We saw these vultures hanging around
wherever there was fish.

One of the little villages makes these concrete
blocks used for building. The resort hires help
from these villages and this village provides the
block required.

A view on our walk along the beach.

One morning we drove to the nearest town of Axim, about 30 mins away.  These boats and flags were very colorful, but the town itself was the dirtiest, stinkiest town I've ever seen.  The manager of the resort agreed with me.  I didn't last too long as it was very hot, too.  It made us definitely appreciate the resort.

Colorful lighthouse on the island.

The trash was everywhere, especially between all the boats.

Smoked fish for sale.  They smoke everything.

This is a pan of objects for sale to a fetish priest
(witch doctor). If you look closely there's a couple
of tortoise shells and a dried lizard right in front.
(The long, thin gray thing.)

Trash all over the streets.

A little polling booth where people could vote.  We were happy the opposition party won!  Now we hope for better things in Ghana in the future, as does everyone who lives here.

More boats.  There doesn't seem to be any particular
reason for the flags. There are national flags, football (soccer)
flags and others.

In Axim - some kind of an old fortress. Probably built by
the British as a refuge and to protect the port.

You can see how we had to walk from the main
resort across to our island.  When the tide was up,
it would be covered with water.

Our rooms were beautiful with huge windows all around.
It was impressive during a heavy thunderstorm.

We wimped out and used the A/C, so we didn't
need the mosquito net.  But it looks cool.

Our bathroom was spacious and even had rocks
built into the floor and an outside shower.

One of the workers carrying our luggage.

A huge truck we noticed on our drive home,
carrying huge tires and completely blocking the traffic both ways.
The white truck is pulling a trailer carrying a truck the size
of those used at the Kennecott mine.  The tire was taller
than our car when we passed - and we were driving a
Toyota 4-wheel drive SUV.  

These blue blocks of food are sold at individual
stands with the people's names on them - many
of them in a row, all selling this same African food
made from corn maize.  These are near Cape Coast
and talking to people who live here, they have their
favorite stand and always buy from that person.

 We loved our little vacation on the island resort.  It was a very nice break and made us all grateful to have experienced such a beautiful part of Ghana.  

We returned to the MTC to greet our second to the last group of missionaries to work with before going home in January.  This group feels very special to me - maybe partly because it's small - only 57 with only 11 sisters, so I can really get to know them individually.  These missionaries will become our family as we're all away from home for the Christmas holidays.  I was eating breakfast with some of the sisters this morning and asked them if it would be hard for them to be away from their families at Christmas.  They said yes.  Then I said, "But it will be a very special Christmas for all of us here in the Ghana MTC.  It will be one we will always remember."  They all nodded emphatically and said, "Yes, we will never forget this Christmas in the Ghana MTC." 

This is the last group that we'll go all the way through with.  We'll leave before the next group departs.