Ghana Gazette

Primary Presentation in the land of Togo
We were able to visit Togo with President and Sister Dil of the Ghana Cape Coast Mission. It is a French speaking country. While there we visited two branches on Sunday. This is the primary in one of the branches and they gave their Sacrament Meeting presentation that day. Formidable!!! Each one was well prepared and most gave their part from memory. Their group was small...but they sang with all their hearts. The music was led by one of the small girls. It confirmed what we already had learned...that Primary helps develop confident, able children, who love their Heavenly Father, all over the world.

You may not recognize this motley crew out of uniform(white shirt and tie). They are in order: President Nielson, President Dil, Elder Gillis and Elder Bayly. Elder Findlay chose not to brave the blistering sun to chase a little ball. The Dils felt a little outnumbered...as they come from New Zealand and the other four couples come from Alberta, Canada....so mostly, we were speaking Canadian...EH!

Sure was glad we had a good car to take us back to Tema - as we put the suitcases in the trunk, a group of "friendlies" had gathered in the neighborhood. The most friendly ones found a perch on the roof of some of the bungalows - the more shy ones remained in the tree - a little farther away. These are the turkey vultures - about as ugly a bird as you can imagine - and not one (or more) than I would particularly like to let too close to.
This is part of the highway going from Cape Coast to Busua - you can see that Ghana does have some very nice highways - their main drawback is that they go through every little town and as you enter there are two or three sets of speed bumps and as you leave there are two or three sets of speed bumps - so you go pretty slow through the towns - the other are the police with their radar guns - they seem to know just where speed can turn to profit and so driving requires being alert at all times. Actually Sister Nielson took the picture for the great African trees that we see everywhere - they are beautiful.

Some of the other couples had talked about Busua - in fact the Area Presidency had planned once to have the Mission Presidents' Seminar there - but it is about a 4 - 4 1/2 drive from Tema - too much travel - we didn't think we'd go either BUT a decision was made to fumigate the MTC - having lived through that a couple of times already, we knew we needed to be gone for a couple of days - local hotels were pretty expensive - in fact one night was the same as two down at Busua - so we took the long drive. The resort is right on the beach - the first picture is from our little cottage.
Here Sister Nielson is standing on our little veranda - staying our of the rain because it rained for most of our time there. The Hotel was very clean and pleasant - but the restaurant a little expensive and not particularly good (according to others who had eaten their - so we walked about a half a block over to the a little hotel and restaurant run by a couple - he came from Saskatchewn - she is Ghanaian - we did meet her, but her husband was back home taking care of the harvesting there.
Sister Nielson wanted everyone to know I was still alive and for only about the fourth day in 21 months, was not wearing a white shirt and a tie. Other than that there isn't much to react to in this picture except for the pleasant calming influence of the ocean. We had a very relaxing time.

We thought Carolyn ought to see this waterfall - and the hike in and out also. Ordinarily we would not publish another picture, but the difference in the waterfall from July until October was unbelievable (check July 12 blog I believe it was). As we neared the falls this time we could hear a great roar and even while we were two hundred meters away the spray and moisture were so evident - we didn't even have to get close to get completely soaked - in the picture you can see the bridge leading closer to the pond at the foot of the falls - but we couldn't get much of a picture closer because of the mist and spray. Given the temperature was mid 30"s (95 F) - it was a very welcome feeling.

Initially our sincere apology for being so slow - we have struggled since October 3 (our last post) to get the Blog spot working - Even the past three days we've continued to try with no luck on our own machine. This hopefully is being published through the office machine - and to this point looks like its going to work.
These missionaries arrived on October 19 - to a well painted, well cleaned, well equipped facilityand newly refreshed Mission President and Wife. The break (and we'll publish a couple of blogs if this continues to work) was wonderful, but we are so grateful now to have missionaries back in the MTC - truly it is these young people that make this place so wonderful.
This group comes from: United States (5) - Elder Simmonds (Utah), Elder Morriss (Washington), Elder Waite (Nevada), Elder Merrill (Utah), and Elder Hurst (Utah); Ghana (2) - Elder Mereku and Elder Asamoah; Nigeria (5) - Elder Etefia, Elder Essien, Sister Ohagwasim, Sister Omokaro-Benson, Elder Odigie; Togo (1) - Elder Djoka; D.R.Congo (4) - Sister Kakudji, Elder Kankonde, Elder Pala, Elder Mbayo; Cameroon (1) - Sister Gweth; Ivory Coast (10) - Sister Kakou, Elder Adou, Elder Koffi, Elder Gba, Elder Tchimou, Sister Irie, Elder Loukou, Elder Niambe, Elder N'Dri, Elder Bah; South Africa - Elder Moloi, Elder Musetsi, Elder Mogodi. Within the group we have three Elders (Waite, Essien, Mogodi) each of which comes from a different country (America, Nigeria, South Africa) - we call it our "Mini UN". Because of the odd number (31) - they are serving as a threesome and what a great adjustment they have had to make - each from a different country, speaking English with a different accent, having completely different cultural backgrounds and tendencies, and yet as missionaries and servants of our Father in Heaven, they have achieved a unity and respect that should be admired by all. We appreciate them all and feel a great deal of potential and cooperation evident in this fine group of missionaries.

We had occasion to visit a Monkey Sanctuary near Hohoe which is located on the Togo border. We arrived and with a guide who took a bunch of bananas with him, set forth into the forest to find some Mona Monkeys. We hiked for fifteen minutes without luck, but the guide was continually making what I assume were invitational type noises - because at one point he said "listen" - the leaves kind of rustled a bit and two of the monkeys appeared to test the banana market!!
Instead of just giving the bananas to the monkeys, the guide encouraged us to hold tightly to the bananas and they would beg a little bit for them, and only eat a little piece at a time - so Carolyn had to try the process initially - the Monkey cooperated very nicely. As this process was going on, the trees were beginning to fill in a bit and pretty soon we had about 6 or 7 monkeys doing all they could to get a bit or two of the bananas that we had for them.


Sister Nielson had a little luck getting one to stand up and eat the banana out of her hand. The leader of the group arrived during the commotion and sort of took charge - he would take a banana - no one contested it and remove himself into the jungle to eat it - it was too dark to get a good picture of him, but he was about the size of bobcat or perhaps a little bigger. The rest of our friends were smaller, very active and very tame and people friendly.