HO-lidays

Another holiday has come and gone and there was hardly a blip on the every-day-life screen. Easter is celebrated here, but it is much like Christmas in that there is minimal decoration or outward indication of the day.  It is mostly a time when families get together. The day after Easter is really the biggest day of the celebration. It is national picnic day Monday and many people, 

Musical chairs at the Easter Monday Picnic

families and churches have a large picnic. That is a fun tradition.

Dancing at the picnic

 We were the recipient of an Easter tradition that was a little disconcerting on the one hand and very touching on the other. Early Easter morning about 6:30 there was a knock at our door. I jumped out of bed and saw that it was Faith and her sister, Rebecca. They come by often because they live nearby, but not at 6:30 in the morning. So I greeted them and Faith walked in and Rebecca stood in the doorway with her hands behind her back. As I looked closer with my somewhat sleepy eyes, I noticed feathers sticking out on each side behind her back……….CHICKENS!!!! I know I wasn’t very composed as I looked at them in complete shock. Faith went on to explain that on Easter it is customary to give a chicken to someone you love and even more so a cock (rooster). Their mother had sent 2 roosters! They can barely eat and yet they gave us 2 roosters. What a kind and wonderful thought, but oh I was not very receptive to their gift. I tried to explain that it was very kind, but that I did not know what to do with them. Faith said that I should kill them and have them for dinner. (Easy for her to say!!!). So they proceeded to tie them up and left them on our porch while we were at church. As I related my story to the other kids at church they were more than happy to come help “kill” the chickens.

   

Donne,Rebecca and Eric begin to prepare the chicken for dinner

 It was no big deal for them, and they all knew exactly how to do it. They will do much better on a survival trip than I would J. So when we got home from church, they took the cocks outside and did the dastardly deed. 

 They then boiled water, 

                  

took off the feathers, brought them in the kitchen, 

Faith says these are sweet to eat

cut them up and Faith fried them, feet and all! I fixed rice and fruit salad to go with it. I hesitatingly ate a small piece of chicken. There was no meat on it. These cocks were so skinny. Faith ate the feet. She says they are “sweet”. This experience ranks right up there with the dried, smoked tilapia. I felt a little unappreciative, but we tried to let her know that it was a very different experience for us, and that we were grateful for the gesture and appreciative that they were understanding and helped us out. It was a very memorable Easter for sure. Mothers Day is “celebrated” here; mostly by mention and not in any other way. Mike did fix me breakfast in bed so he continues to be a thoughtful companion, ie husbandJ. Mothers Day wishes were extended to all the women, but no talks-which was fine, but no treats!! It was good to talk to most of the kids on Mothers Day. We missed Jessie and Cami.  We love all our daughters and daughters-in-law. They are all wonderful mothers.

We passed our “hump day” on the 5^th of May. It is pretty crazy how time goes. Sometimes it seems to drag on, but mostly we are so busy we hardly know what day it is. There is so much to do and so little time to do it. Some of the couples in the area office are leaving and our mission   

Elder and Sister Fitzgerald were the Africa West Area Executive Secretary and now have gone home to Alpine

president is leaving the end of June so pretty soon we will be the old kids on the block. We did get some exciting news last week. There will be a couple coming to our mission in August. They are from Australia. It will be so good to have another couple in the mission. These small branches need the guidance and help from senior couples so much. There are so many new and young members who have no experience on the most part. So we are so grateful

to have them come. We are not sure where they will be assigned.

In August there is an EFY type activity in the mission. It is called FSY (For the Strength of

Youth). It will run for 5 days and will be at a school in a city north of Accra called Akupong.

It is held once every 4 years so it is a real big deal. The youth have to pay 20 cedis (about $9.00) to go. That doesn’t sound like much, but it is almost impossible for most of the youth. So we decided to have them sell popcorn. We supply the popcorn and the small plastic bags.

 We bought a popcorn popper so we could pop it quickly. None of the kids had ever seen one. Anyway, We pop the popcorn, and they come and bag it and then they go out in teams and sell it.

The small bags of popcorn sell for 20 peswas (about 10 cents) so it isn’t much, but hopefully by the time the deadline comes, they will have earned enough money to go to the conference. Some of the boys have done yard work at the missionaries’ place to earn some money as well.

They are so eager to work. They ask us almost every time we see them when we will do popcorn again. We try to do it once a week, but they would do it everyday if they could. Unfortunately, (or fortunately) we have other things we have to do J.  

This past week we had our zone conference and temple trip for our zone. It was the last one with President Judd. We went down on Monday, went to the Temple on Tuesday morning, had lunch, and then the conference. It is a sweet experience to be in the Temple our missionaries. Zone conference was instructive and inspirational. President Judd is a great teacher. (He taught religion at BYU and has written several books). Sister Judd is also a wonderful speaker. Her little saying is, “Nothing feels better than the Holy Ghost”. Which is so true! We were all urged to work harder and work to improve relations with the branch members. At the end they opened it up for questions. The missionaries were very interested in President and Sister Judd’s personal experiences and life’s lessons learned. It made me think of my life and experiences-both good and bad-and what I have learned from them. Hopefully, we can all learn lessons throughout our life because that is what makes this life meaningful and how we grow and become more like what our Heavenly Father wants us to be.

We were excited a few weeks ago to be with our branch president when his first child was born.

I hope in explaining the experience that I am not too critical of the hospitals here. Unfortunately, the people do not know any different. I pray that neither of us ever, ever have to go to a doctor or hospital here. I am quite sure my descriptions are inadequate. Sister Ansah was 3 weeks past here due date. She had finally gone into labor, but was not progressing so they decided they would do a C-section. As we entered the “labor” area there she was right off the hall laying on a gurney. Here husband had not talked to her the whole day. The mother-in-law does all the care. (her mother has passed away). He was very concerned about her. I encouraged him to go into the room and give her a hug and speak to her. He was hesitant he thought he would get in trouble.

Waiting room outside the Ho District Hospital

Preop/postop area at the Ho district Hospital

 I said “Just Go”. He did and that was the first time he had been able to be with her all day. Then we went to the waiting area which is a place outside between the labor and delivery building and where they do the surgery. After a short wait, they wheel her out right through the waiting area and into another building that had no doors. They took her down a corridor that we assumed to a surgery area. We waited and after some time we heard a baby cry! 

Redeemer Mawutor Ansah at 20 minutes of life

They then brought the baby out to the waiting area and showed the baby

 to the dad and to us and almost everyone else who was in the waiting area---pretty crazy.

 

We are now in the rainy season, which means that we get rain probably 5 days out of 7. It usually comes

in the afternoon and lasts for 2-4 hours. It is almost always accompanied by a pretty dramatic lightning show. Every once in awhile we have some wind with the rain. A few weeks ago we were on our way home to get ready for Mutual and out of the blue (literally) the rain started and the wind blew. We felt like we were in a typhoon. Our drive home was pretty scary. There were trees down everywhere. The missionaries had part of their roof blow off which resulted in a significant leak in their house. The roofs are all corrugated tin so they are not very substantial. We called off mutual because it was not very safe to go out. The next night one of our youth showed us a picture of his house. The roof had totally blown away.

 Now his little house is quite ramshackled anyway, but everything inside was soaked. We started to get the Church to help get a new roof put on, but before we could even get started the family and neighbors had it taken care of. They said they didn’t need any help. The people are used to taking care of themselves, which is great.

Calvin and his family after the wind blew away their house

  The countryside is beautiful. It has beautiful trees that bare fruits and some that have bright flowers. When we travel to Kpong we need to cross on the ferry or go over the dam. 

The view of the river is very beautiful from the roadside and from the dam. We miss going over the bridge. The work on it will not be finished before we leave.

The growth of the Church is continuing both in he number of those who are accepting the message of the Restored Gospel and in the depth of conversion of these people.  We were in Kpando for their conference and this little Group that had aout 15 meeting together in January of this year had 96 in attendance with them.  It is quite amazing.  We love being a part of this great work and being with these wonderful people. They truly know that they are children of a loving Heavenly Father and are eager to learn.  It is a lesson that we can all continue to learn! 

Daniel (above) and Ophelia (below)will be a strong family in Atsutsuare

Frank and family in Atsutsuare

Emmanuel, a teacher, will add strength in Kpando along with his wife and daughters

Attentive youth in Mutual class at Ho First Branch (with guest professor)

Wouldn't you like to be in her class?

Abigail Gafah and her non Ghanaian friend

                                 One of the great signs that caught our eye.  "Stomach Boutique Chop Bar"

Elder Kidd (Idaho) and Elder Charles (Sierra Leone) teaching in Anyirawase

Bismark and Stella are new additions to the Ho Second Branch
taught by Elders Bongomin (Uganda) and Bautner (Bountiful)

Eric and his brother Prince showing Prince's new duds 

Handsome Prince and a friend

Prince at the piano

Reaching for the "fruit"

Is this tempting?

This is not the Tree of LIfe, it is knotty (or naughty)

Elders Bryce, Turley, Henderson and Van Wagoner join in the Mutual activity of "Gadianton Robbers" (our name for an old game)