The Work Moves On.....but oh so slowly!

Our task is to help and support the missionaries in Sunyani and to train and instruct the new native members here so they will be able to administer the Church themselves as they grow.  We have four branches now; Fiapre formally became designated as a Branch last Sunday.  It is really exciting to see the Church grow and how spiritual the new converts are and how humble and devoted these people are as they are moving forward in the Gospel.

We've been a District for six weeks and still can't get the local bank and the Area Office in Accra to figure out a bank account.  We have leased a new building and are trying to get it ready to house the new District office and four missionaries.  Because our mission is splitting on July 1, all efforts are going into getting the new mission home finished in Kumasi and an apartment ready for a new senior couple who will be arriving shortly to work in the office there.  As soon as the dust settles, we'll be able to concentrate on finishing our building here in Sunyani.

Just this last year the mission office used to put new Elders, sometime all alone, on a bus and send them up here.  Sunyani is pretty isolated.  Elder Belnap, one of our favorite young men, was a brand new missionary and his first night out of the MTC, they loaded him on a bus at night, headed for Sunyani.  They told him to get off at the last stop and that someone would be there to meet him.  Little did anyone know that the bus driver decided since most of the people had gotten off at the various stops along the way, and he wanted to go home early, he told Elder Belnap to get off and that they were  at the last stop.  It was in the middle of nowhere.  Elder Belnap is a very big, strong, quiet and polite young man from Idaho.  For a brand new missionary, he showed a lot of fortitude, knew that this wasn't the right stop, sat back in his seat and softly said, "No."  Finally, after a long argument, the bus driver finally took him to the proper stop.  Had the Elder been intimidated and gotten off, they might never have found him, as the missionaries never carried phones or much money and even though they say English is the official language in Ghana, most everyone speaks Twi or some other native dialect or a version of English that's not recognizable.  We now don't put Elders on the buses alone and we are trying to arrange for them to have transport telephones.

When we arrived all of the four chapels were in awful shape--overrun with weeds, garbage strewn all about, in dire need of paint, etc.  Actually, they were about normal for Africa, but President Thayne has made it his own personal crusade to fix up and clean the chapels and their properties so they look like the temple grounds.  It's a long process and we're not there yet, but we've made tremendous improvements.  The weeds have been "whacked" down with machetes and the painting has begun.  Elder Otagba, a Nigerian missionary, personally whacked the weeds at his building and then had all of us help to plant corn.  Now it's coming up.  We've got the grass looking much like a park at Fiapre and the missionaries are fixing poles to use with a volleyball net to use as a fellowshipping and missionary tool for all the people who live around that area.

The District Choir is up and running and we're having leadership training for all of the auxiliaries.  The members want activities.  Remember, there are few TV's, no movie houses, and there's really nothing for them to do.  The volleyball court will help, and we're trying to find a basketball standard to put at one of the other chapels and hopefully a table tennis table.  We're even trying to form a social event like "Minute To Win It" for the young single adults.

Last week when we returned from Accra, we learned that one of the branches had sustained a 14 year old boy named Chris as Young Men's President and his counselor was an eleven year old.  I'm not sure how we're going to fix that one!

The Area Presidency in Accra sent some lovely people to have a day long seminar on Family History.  The only problem is that Africans don't write anything down and most Ghanaians don't have a clue when or where their parents were born or sometimes even what their names are.  We've found countless documents listing birthdays as January 1, which is what they put down when they don't know.  We did have over 60 people at the seminar and they were trying their best to learn.  We have to start somewhere and now at least the people who were there know it's important to keep records.

The future of Ghana and Africa is their children.  During the last few years the government has stated that the kids are all supposed to go to school--some don't, but many do and they are learning to speak and write English.  They are the hope for Sunyani and the Church in Africa.