Faith, Ho-pe and Charity

Well we are a little late, but this has been another memorable week and a half that began with the trip to Kpando we mentioned last time and then the weekend was a special baptism.  Our friend Faith (official name is Monyo Akpene Faith with Monyo being her surname) was baptized along with 2 other young single adults. 

The other 2 are Ama and Hanson.  All have had to overcome many things and make sacrifices to accept the Restored Gospel, but have done that with great hope and recognition of the Holy Ghost in their lives.  Hanson is a young man who is very bright and seems to absorb everything he reads or is taught.  He will sit in a lesson with others and teach and answer questions from his own study.  He sings with a group of 3-4 other young men and has many talents. Ama is a beautiful young women who is starting to pursue additional schooling and has also learned much on her own and has accepted invitations from the missionaries to read and pray and humbly follow the path of faith, repentance and baptism

All have had to overcome many things and make sacrifices to accept the Restored Gospel, but have done that with great hope and recognition of the Holy Ghost in their lives.  Hanson is a young man who is very bright and seems to absorb everything he reads or is taught.  He will sit in a lesson with others and teach and answer questions from his own study.  He sings with a group of 3-4 other young men and has many talents. Ama is a beautiful young women who is starting to pursue additional schooling and has also learned much on her own and has accepted invitations from the missionaries to read and pray and humbly follow the path of faith, repentance and baptism.  Faith, as we have mentioned before, is a very sweet and somewhat  inexperienced as to the world, young woman whom we met at a roadside fruit stand near our home.  She has had to endure opposition from friends and from her previous pastor who shared untruths with her in an effort to dissuade her from reading the Book of Mormon.  Despite  those efforts she was strong , continued to be taught, and wanted to be baptized. We admire these wonderful, humble people who have such a strong desire to follow Christ.

The baptismal font is a little different than the one on the Highland Utah Stake (see Elders Jenkins and Johnson filling it before the service). And members like Valentina and Shantel come early to clean the grounds and the church for the service The missionaries had another zone activity.  So instead of spaghetti  that I fixed last time, I fixed Ho haystacks. That is Hawaiian (or Chinese) haystacks without the cheese, celery, mandarin oranges, olives, or maraschino cherries. Or course rice is everywhere and a zillion different kinds, and it is easy to find chicken. The soup was a little tricky, and I found a version of Chinese noodles that aren’t too bad. You would think coconut would be easy to find seeing as there is coconut being sold on every corner, but that is fresh. If I had thought ahead I would have tried to dry some which would have been a little difficult in the humidity. Oh well, the missionaries loved it and ate 5Kg of rice!!

Mike continues to be my knight in shining armor when it comes to going after the dragons… well, maybe geckos would be more accurate. We have had 3 small ones find their way into the house-2 we found dead and one disappeared into the ceiling fan switch never to be seen again. But the other day there was a “daddy” one in the living room-not good. So he covered it with a wastebasket to try to get it back outside, but unfortunately for the gecko he cut off part of the tail which continued to move back and forth for quite awhile. It was pretty creepy. I am surprised that there aren’t more bugs or critters. I guess the chickens take care of that. Every once in awhile we see a dead bug in the house, but very few. We did have a snake on our front porch a week or so ago, but it took off, and I haven’t seen one since.

One thing here that is very amusing are the names of the little shops and businesses. I have written down some and my list is getting pretty long. Here are just a few of the typical ones:

Millionaire Haircuts, Digital Clock Fast Foods, Trust Jesus Salon, Thy Grace Canteen, God Knows Chemical Shop, Loving Kindness Food and Drinking Bar, Give Thanks Undertaking Enterprise,  Anointed Construction, Best Brain Academy,  Hilarious Services, God’s Grace Alignment, Elohim Computers and  Divine Plumbing Works.

Those are just a few. Maybe we can include more with the other blogs. They are pretty fun.

We celebrated our 2 months in Ghana today. We are starting to feel like we know how things work here---maybe. I am getting better at knowing where I am and how I got there. We have survived some interesting food experiences, and have enjoyed the rainy season. There are many things we are grateful for. We are grateful for ceiling fans, a comfortable bed, a truck that will go anywhere,  water that tastes good, and being able to buy some familiar foods in the market. But most of all we are grateful for computers and internet that connect us with our family, for the wonderful people here who are so kind and loving, for friends and family and great children and their spouses and grandchildren who remember us and support us and pray for us,, and for a loving Heavenly Father that continues to bless us and strengthen us. We are truly blessed.

A few of the other scenes hat we have loved included the Aksombo Dam across the Volta River

We have taken time to enjoy some of the local foods such as this fried Yam with Elders Jenkins and Jones at the roadside shop Noah's Ark!









And we found the HO version of Cate and Carsyn....this is Jessica and Jacinta. They are 12 and live near us and attend the Ho 2nd Branch

And this is Faith's mom Bless breaking up rocks to sell to people who will use them for construction around their homes.  Bless these sweet people who will do whatever they can to earn a few peswaws (pennies) for food or transportation.