Jan 26, 2020 Surprises!

We had some glorious surprises this week!  A week ago we sat in a meeting that lasted about an hour while the branch president tried to get members’ input on who should organize an upcoming event.  It is to be a celebration for the three couples in the branch who were married last fall.  After much speaking and little conclusion, it was decided that he could pick someone.  

This week we were approached by one of the recent converts - who has now been asked to be in charge.  He has really taken the bull by the horns and organized everything.  It will be a morning event.  The couples have been asked to invite three other couples to attend who aren’t members.  There will be a program with speakers to introduce the church to them and encourage them to get married themselves.  Then a meal will be served (which is always the most important part if you want attendance).  He held an organizational meeting after the 2 hour block today, although most of the participants had already been asked to do their part.  We were impressed!

On Friday we (with the group leader)  visited a couple who are about our age.  He joined the church in the 1980’s.  The first time we met he showed us his baptismal certificate.  He hasn’t participated in the group, though desperately needed, because of an issue with a family member.  Church meetings are held in that family member’s home.  I felt prompted to share a personal experience related to the difficulty of forgiving someone who, without apology, had greatly offended me.  It is a story rarely shared but I thought it might help him, or at least let him know that I understood his plight.  Sue asked me in the middle of the story why I was telling him all this, and I replied “Because I think he needs to hear it.”  At the end he said he understood what I was trying to say and we left it at that.

Today this couple showed up completely unexpected, at Sacrament Meeting - he in his suit (suits are very rarely worn here) and she in her Sunday best.  It was one of the many small miracles that we have seen, a tender mercy.  They felt the spirit and were friendly with everyone. 

Tuesday afternoon we met with 4 members from our little  group in Zakaria. They had journeyed to the temple for the first time the week before with the Daloa Stake.  They were elated and their feelings of joy were contagious. Their faces glowed; they couldn’t quit smiling.  In retelling their experience, they felt they had been greatly blessed, treated royally, and wished to stay longer.  Their zeal to share the gospel was at a new level.  They brought greetings from the Temple office staff to us.

We taught three groups preparing to go to the temple this week -  each a different lesson.  Many of our students are new in the church (less than 2 years) so their knowledge is limited, but they are eager to learn and very attentive.  We are aware of the responsibility we have to teach doctrine and prepare them with what they need to know while still respecting the sanctity of the temple.  They are very fun to teach and we are establishing new relationships with them all. 

We  continue with our three sisters in literacy class.  We have decided that one of them has dyslexia, which will slow her down but we can be positive with what she can recognize.  She seems to be trying to memorize everything.  All are very excited to be learning.  One was trying to follow the hymns today in the book, even though the vocabulary is way beyond her capacity at present.  She is delightful, probably our age and has been to the temple.  Her son is a physician and a branch president in a different district. 

We seem to be learning a lot ourselves,  one step at a time, with occasional breakthroughs.  What an education!

Friends

Sheep on the bus

 

Jan 19, 2020 A visit to the campement

Communication across cultures and languages gets very interesting from time to time.  We started a second temple preparation class this week and tried to start a third.  It conflicted with a different meeting so we would have started very late but in the end only the men came and none of their wives, so we had to reschedule.  For some reason they didn’t understand that for going to the temple as couples both should attend the class.

Our most fascinating activity was being invited to visit the “campement” of one of our friends.  We assumed that it was like a camping spot near their fields where they could rough it if they decided to stay overnight.  Every time we meet at his house in the village his older brother and sister-in-law are there and often others but rarely is his wife there.  Sr. Spackman has wondered aloud several times where his wife could be.  We found out that the campement is their actual residence located about 4 km outside the village in the middle of their fields and groves.  It is where they spend most of their time working, eating, and sleeping - coming into the village for meetings and interviews, etc. at the home of other family members. 

Our friends have three small buildings— a residence, a storehouse, and an open kitchen.  This sister cooked us a breakfast for our arrival and then 3 hours later fed us again. The food was delicious, perhaps the best graine sauce we have eaten here. 

The kitchen

Breakfast with their home behind

 

Mama winnowing rice

Daughter "winnowing" sand

 

Lunch is served! Foutou banane (right) with rice and sauce graine with chicken

Drying cocoa in the village

Their crops are rice, cocoa pods, and rubber sap from the evia trees.  When you cut open a cocoa pod you find a stringy white fruit with a semi-sweet citrus taste, embedded with cocoa beans. 

Cocoa tree with pods

When ripe, you harvest the beans by removing the outer shell of the pod, and setting the fruit out to dry (ferment) in the sun on large plastic sheets. 

The smell is a sweet, putrid, rotting odor.  It takes 3-5 days to dry depending on the weather. Eventually you remove the chaff by hand and the cocoa beans remain and are purchased by a private company for milling.

The evia trees take about 7 years to grow.  When the trunk is larger than you can reach around with two hands then it is ready for harvesting sap.  A specialist is brought in to do that.  
 

Checking out the rubber trees

They cut a  line down the trunk with a couple of diagonal cuts into the bark and nail a small bucket there to catch the sap.  It dries quickly and then they send the dried sap to the factory to be turned into rubber.  

Path through the rice fields

 

This couple was so impressive. We thought them the perfect example of self reliance. Not only did they produce what they could sell for money, but also everything they ate - eggs, chickens, goats, rice, onions, eggplant, green beans, bananas, plantains, pineapple etc.  She cooks everything over the open fire. I explained to her that most of the North American population would literally starve if they needed to work this hard just to eat.

Jan 12, 2019

We taught our first Temple Preparation class this week. It was held in Zoukougbeu and attracted nine students. Two were married to each other—the rest we don’t know about. We were very pleased that 2 carried scriptures with them and one had done baptisms in the temple before.  It is about a 17 hour bus ride from the villages to Accra.  We think that all the members of our class can read which is unusual.  We will start two more sections of the class in Saioua and Godoua this week and hope to start in Issia soon.  Otherwise the week wasn’t that busy.  Some of our appointments fell through and that’s disappointing but normal.

This week we ate our first mangoes of the season. Hurrah!  They are one of our favorite fruits and we will miss them in America.  Maybe we can eat so many in the next 4 months that we will be sick of them.  The cool dry morning temperatures are gone.  Highest temperature in January so far 104 F — back to the sweating heads.

We were invited to a major training meeting yesterday in Daloa, a short five minute walk from the apartment.  The leaders came from all the districts in our mission, some districts from the West mission, and our two stakes.  It was held here because that way most could do the travel all on Saturday and get home.  Our Area Seventy did the training, presenting the Area plan of emphasis and leading discussions about what we need to do to help the rising generation.  A major emphasis was how to help young men and women prepare for and serve missions.  We very much enjoyed seeing all the leaders and spouses from our district at once.

This week is transfer week with lots of changes, also known as mutations.  We always hate to see the ones we like go elsewhere, but it's good for them! 


 










We helped in the group in Zakaria today.  During 2nd hour I taught a Sunday School lesson while Sr. Spackman helped in Primary.  Guess who had more fun?

Jan 5, 2020 Celebrating!

We have seen a change in the weather and it is very refreshing.  It is Harmattan season, with the dry winds that drop humidity and bring a cloud of dust from the Sahara.  We have dramatic hazy red sunrises and sunsets.  It started with no rain and very foggy mornings.  Then after a week or so the morning fog gradually disappeared.  The best thing is the lower humidity and with it cooler temperatures in the mornings.  We now see 70F (21C) in the mornings and it feels dry!  We have taken to opening all the windows in the evening before we retire, and the laundry on the clothes line dries much more quickly.  Exercising in the morning is heavenly because you sweat much less and recovery is quicker.  Even when the high is the same normal 95F, it feels cooler because of the lower humidity.  

Hazy sunrise over the rice fields

 Friday we had a new cultural experience in the villages of Godoua and Bolia.  After our morning discussion with the branch president we were invited to visit the branch clerk’s home.  There we found his wife and a friend pounding the plantains (a mix of ripe and not so ripe) with  huge wooden sticks, until the mixture was the consistency of moist bread dough. 
We were served a dollop of that dough, called “foutou banane”, covered with a spicy peanut sauce with some bits of tender beef in it.  It was very tasty.  The foutou banane has a mildly sweet banana flavor.  We used large spoons and forks.  The others ate out of their own bowls using fingers. 

 




Later we went to a large group dinner to which we had been previously invited by one of the branch presidents.  There were about 30 people congregated under a shade tree around some tables.  Most were extended family of the branch president but the village chief and the neighborhood leader were also there.  We hadn’t been aware of neighborhood under-chiefs previously but they explained that the village is divided into named neighborhoods, each of which has a sous-chief to help with community or family issues under the direction of the village chief. 

 

 The men sat at the tables and were served first. The  children and women sat on chairs and benches away from the tables and ate what was left.  We had big bowls of rice covered with a spicy stew made of tomatoes, onions, carrots, cabbage, and chicken (called kedjenou)  followed by more spicy foutou banane with chicken.

Everyone was served out of very large bowls into their own dishes and ate with spoons and forks.  There was very little conversation during the meal.  We think that is more the norm.  We were thanked by the village chief for being there, because we were from so far away and obviously important since we had a shiny black truck. Happy New Years to us!

The chief is in the green suit, the branch president in the orange striped shirt.  The women are his mother and sisters.

The cooking fire and the dishwasher (daughter of the branch president)