Life Less Hectic...

This is how Sister Stevenson releases her "absent grandmother" tensions.

We have had a fairly peaceful week.  We got to sleep in our own bed each night and had time to catch up on some administrative things that had been piling up.  I hope it was enough, because next week we have a mission tour with Elder Dube and two weeks of zone conferences after that. 

On Monday, we had to run an errand with Sister Bankole and Sister Otieno.  They made me proud.

This week we had our monthly Mission Leadership Council.  

On Friday, we invited all of the Trainers and their new missionaries to come to the mission home for "course adjustment training".  It is just an opportunity to get together and make sure that the training is going well and answer any questions or concerns that the new missionaries might have.  We had 18 missionaries this time and they all seem to be doing well.

Saturday and Sunday, we had the branch conference for the Kissi Branch.  Kissi is about a 30 minute drive from the mission home.  While I was conducting training on Saturday, Sister Stevenson and our friend Rebecca were baking.

Sister Stevenson learned how to make Ghanaian meat pies.  (She filled a couple of them with fruit jam because she loves me.)

We had a nice conference with the Kissi Branch.

We ended up filling the chapel and a little overflow area they had set up.  We were really lucky today. Since it is an open-air chapel, we usually have to compete with neighborhood loudspeakers and other distractions, but today, all was quiet and there was even a breeze to keep things less hot (I almost said cooler).

I forgot to mention a cool story from last Sunday at Dunkwa-On-Offin.  It was testimony meeting, where the members of the Church are invited to come up and share their faith in Jesus Christ.  The last man to come up was very distinguished looking and I had never met him before.  Elder Riehle, who was standing in the back of the chapel, mouthed the word "investigator" to me.  The man said that 25 years ago he had been introduced to the missionaries and had gained a faith in the Restored Gospel.  He was involved in the government at the time and because the local priests and others were saying such terrible things about the Church, he decided not to be baptized.  He did stand up against the government at the time of "the freeze" (a two year period in the late 1980's when the government of Ghana banned the Church -- missionaries were sent home and public meetings were not allowed.)  He said if he had just tried harder, maybe he could have brought the Church to Dunkwa-On-Offin much earlier.  He expressed gratitude that the missionaries had found him again and that he could be there at the organization of the first branch.  I hope he will soon finish what he began 25 years ago.  He is a wonderful man.

DATE NIGHT:

Chicken and rice at the Sizzler.  It was Ghana's Independence Day and the DJs were setting up -- luckily we were long gone by the time the party started.

CREATURE OF THE WEEK:

We don't have lions and tigers, but we have lizards!