Opening Day!

Week 3 Day 3

So I’m not sure what’s going on with our mobile modem, but I’m writing the blog post now (about 9:15 pm on June 14) and we’ll see if at some point I can get this posted.

Big news of the day… Esther’s restaurant and catering service opened today!!!

So much fun! We went over just before noon when she opened and made sure we were some of the first customers to get some food.

Us and our "minerals" (their word for sodas) waiting for our food. Great service!

We are so excited for her. She actually had quite a bit of good business today. When Emily and I stopped by again later this evening we asked her how everything went and she was all smiles. We are just so happy that everything has started out so well, and hope that things continue in that same direction.

Esther in her shack, making the food. Her son, Elvis is so cute!

Other than that, things are going really well here. We are just loving this place more and more every day! We are loving being able to get around the village on our own and get to know people. We are picking up a little more on the language around here and the villagers love it! When we walk by and say things to them in Twi, no matter if they were mad or sad or completely expressionless before we got there, they smile and seem immediately happier. It’s great fun!

We are also loving the Abu family more and more every day. We had family night with them this evening and it was so neat to talk with them and learn more about their lives. We talked about how we can be Christ’s hands here on earth by doing as He would do, and serving as He would serve. These people are amazing examples of doing just that. They have taken us into their home, asking nothing in return (even though we practically force money into their hands every couple weeks to help pay for all the food and electricity we use around here) and they seriously live to serve our every need. I am constantly in awe at the service they give. And they not only serve us, but pretty much ANYONE who comes near, they are constantly giving and helping, and especially for the church. I have never seen such dedicated, Christ-like members in my whole life. Brother and Sister Abu are branch missionaries, and they spend a good majority of their time doing just that. They are absolutely incredible people! I can only hope and pray that someday I will be even half as good as they are. What a wonderful and amazing opportunity it is to be here and to learn from such great examples. We will forever be in their debt.

We Love Ghana!!!

Week 3 Day 2

What a great day! Every single day we have here makes us love Ghana, and this little village of Abomosu even more!

Church was wonderful and the children at church make it a hundred times better. They are so cute I can hardly handle it! They show up in these gorgeous dresses with their hair done all up nice (if they have hair that is :) A lot of the children have their heads shaved so they don't have to worry about messing with their hair) and then they just love you. They just want to touch your hand or sit in your lap and when they look so cute and they're all clean for church, I just can't resist them! One little girl, Mary, came and sat on my lap today during sacrament meeting, but when I got up to play the piano for a hymn Spencer took her. It was so cute! She fell asleep in his lap and I couldn't help but love the look of my darling husband holding a sleeping child. It was just too precious! :)

Anyway, we love Ghana today too because THEY WON!!! All I'm going to say about the game was that Ghana dominated and should have won by a whole lot more, but the Serbians are scary and LOVE to slide tackle. Anytime Ghana would get the ball someone would slide tackle them. It was ridiculous! Basically no one could stay on their feet during the game. Kinda frustrating to watch! Oh well, the house was EXTREMELY EXCITED this afternoon when Ghana scored and won the game! I am quite happy we got to be a part of it.

GO BLACK STARS!!!

(Honestly, I couldn't tell you who those men are, but I know they're on Ghana's team! YAY!)

Week 3 Day 1

Our computer is being really weird right now. Hopefully we’re able to get through this post without it dying or going crazy on us.

This morning was awesome! There a baptism at the branch building for 6 people!

I have never seen so many converts be baptized at the same time. It was so cool! What was even cooler was the fact that when we got there we realized that one of the teachers of a class we go into everyday was there to see her son get baptized. It was really fun to talk to her and to meet her husband and son. What a good family! I’m excited to see them at church tomorrow!

Here's a picture of a lot of the branch who came to support. Such wonderful people!


Other fun events for the day: Emily and I made No-Bake Cookies! Here in Abomosu they don’t sell actual cocoa powder, but the day we went around to all the shops asking for it we found a hot cocoa mix that has pretty much everything we need in it. All we need to add is water, butter and peanut butter, and they are SO good!!! They kind of have a hard time setting up though, so we’ll have to experiment on that to see if it’s just because of the humidity, or if we need to do something different.

We also spent a good portion of our day watching the World Cup games. There were 3 of them on today, South Korea vs. Greece, Argentina vs. Nigeria, and USA vs. England. We were obviously most excited to watch the USA game and that was the last one on today. And guess what!? Seeing the overall theme to this blog you’ve probably guessed it… The Power Went Out!!!! Only 30 minutes before the game started! We just about died! So 6:30, the time the game started here, came and went, and then 7:00 and then 7:30, and it’s almost 8:00 and we finally decide to find a radio and see if we can get the game on that and just when we got the game going on the radio… The power came back on!!! YAY!!! So we got to watch the last 35 minutes or so of the game.

I was a little disappointed in our performance against England. We ended up in a tie, but with the way we were playing I am so surprised England didn’t score again. We got lucky! Even our goal was lucky. The ball actually bounced out of the goalie’s hands and into the goal. Can you believe it!? The poor goalie is gonna dream about that one for the rest of his life.

Anyway, I think my favorite team to watch so far has been Argentina. They’re just a good team! They played REALLY well against Nigeria and won, but they were also such good sports! If they knocked someone over they would immediately bend over and apologize, which is definitely not normal from what we’ve seen so far. And when one of the Argentine’s got a yellow card, instead of yelling and throwing his arms in the air and asking what he did wrong (like every other person we’ve seen getting a yellow card), he just nodded his head and I think he even apologized. It was really cool! I like them! So if America and Ghana both get out before Argentina, they will definitely be the team we root for!

Health Clinic Woes

WEEK 3!

Realizing how much extra time we have on our hands every day, we asked Brother Abu to take us on a trip to the Abomosu Health Clinic today in hopes that we will be able to go help out there in the future.



The clinic, from a distance, doesn’t look too bad, but once we got inside I realized that it is definitely not a place I ever want to go to.

I mean, I can’t say it’s in the worst condition and completely unsanitary, it’s just overcrowded and too small to accommodate all the needs. We walked up and the first thing we saw were the rows of people and crying children just waiting to see a doctor. We went into the maternity ward (for which there is only ONE midwife) and there were well over 10 ladies waiting to see her. It was nuts! I don’t think they even have ways to make appointments, you just have to show up and wait for your turn.


Check out their Ambulance! It’s been parked there for years because no one knows how to fix it and if someone did, they wouldn’t have the money to do so.


The record room was almost as bad, it was just walls full of records and more records and the even the ground was covered in records. Never have I been so grateful for electronic record-keeping! Think of all the space it saves these days! They don’t have access to any sort of computer, and even if they did, it probably wouldn’t be reliable enough to trust it with years of service and records. I’m definitely grateful to be from America!

We also watched the first game of the World Cup! So much fun! I’ve never really followed the World Cup before, but I now wish that I had. It’s actually really fun, and the people here are totally into it! It was especially funny for Mexico and South Africa to be playing each other because we were obviously favoring Mexico a little more than South Africa, and obviously everyone here was rooting for South Africa. So it was a good game in this house, and probably a good thing that the game ended in a tie.

It's really interesting how involved the whole country of Ghana is in the World Cup. Ghana's team is called The Black Stars. All over the TV and news they have the president and ministers and preachers encouraging people to support their country and their team. It's awesome! They even have a song that goes, "We're the Black Stars, We are the Black Stars. We will fight, until, we win!" It's a lot longer than that, but that's all I remember. :) I can't wait to see how Ghana does!

If you’ve never followed the World Cup, you should try it this year! It’s fun!

A Special Event

Week 2 Day 6 in Abomosu (formerly “Abomoso”, we have come to the conclusion that this is actually the more common spelling)

Everyone, today is a special day because for the first time ever my husband, Spencer is going to write our blog post! ENJOY!!!

So I’m not quite sure how I got roped into this; I thought this was Abbie’s personal project. I think it’s safe to say that she finds more joy in writing the blog posts than I do. That’s why I have a journal. :)

For those of you that don’t follow soccer (which is nearly everyone in America), the World Cup is about to begin in not too distant South Africa.

We’ve been watching off and on the disappointing and amazingly unentertaining World Cup concert to kick off the games starting tomorrow. Although we feel like the music could have been better tonight, we’re excited to get the games rolling. Ghana soccer games have already interfered with our business classes, even though the World Cup hasn’t started. Some people would rather watch “football” instead of do business. Imagine that.

Classes and consulting are going well though. We’ve heard quite a few great business proposals already. I’m sad that we won’t be able to finance everyone, since we don’t have enough money, but more funds should come next summer. It’s been an interesting experience being a part of the pioneering partnership for SEED here in Ghana. We started with nothing and were told almost nothing, but we’ve been able to make great strides quickly. Luckily we have great people to work with.

Teaching English has become somewhat cumbersome because of a common lack of faith the teachers have for their students. Apparently, even though many of the students don’t understand everything Abbie and Emily say during class, the students do really well and participate until the teacher reenters the room. They were told today that they were teaching the “dumb kids” and that their IQs are 0. How sad is that? It’s amazing what some positive reinforcement can do to a child!


Oh, well it looks like Spencer has had his say. I totally ambushed him with the computer and told him it was his turn. I wish you all could have seen his face when he read what I wrote at the beginning. He actually started to delete it, but changed his mind and decided he could handle a day of writing here. That's how much he loves me! I hope you all enjoyed it. If you get the chance, thank him for it and maybe we can all hear from him again sometime! :)

Girl's Day Out and A Job Well Done!

Week 2 Day 5

So Spencer and Joey headed back out to Kwabeng this morning with Esther to administer their first loan! They had to register her restaurant as a business and then went to the bank to give her the money. They were under the impression that the bank would give her a contract to sign, but found out there that they would have to make one on their own. So they came home and made one up from the sample one from the bank and had Esther sign it before they gave her the loan. SO COOL! We're all thrilled and excited for her to get the restaurant going!


Spencer, Esther and Joey as they were signing the loan agreement and giving her the money. She's ALL smiles!

Having the guys head out to Kwabeng and having the schools still closed today left Emily and I with precious little to do, so we made a plan which we got Gloria in on. We headed to the market for flour, eggs and chocolate (which isn't really that good here, but we take what we can get) and then went to work. Elder and Sister Terry were kind enough to let us use their house for baking and we got to make cookies and surprise our wonderful husbands when they came back from their trip. It was so much fun!

Then tonight the guys had consultations at the church until 8:30 - so once again, Emily, Gloria and I set off to keep ourselves busy. Gloria has been wanting to watch a Ghanaian movie for the last couple days, but it's VCD, so it wouldn't play on the DVD player here. So when the boys left we pulled out the computer and had a great time watching a Ghanaian drama. It was called The Supremo. I'm not sure that I would recommend it to anyone, but it was cool to see and learn a little more about their culture and values.


This picture is actually from yesterday. Once again, Emily and I were trying to entertain ourselves and decided to try and see how well our hair would straighten here. We even put on some make-up! We had to take a picture as proof of at least the hair because it wasn't too long before the humidity made both of our hair curly again :)

Cute Family!

This is the Boadu family. Benjamin, Theresa, their two daughters, Mary and Lydi (the baby). They are so adorable! They actually have another daughter that we met tonight who is older than Mary. Her name is Florence. I can't get enough of their kids!



Benjamin came over today for a business consultation with the guys. He wants to start planting sugar cane, and apparently he can make quite a bit of money on it. Sounds really promising from what he's told us.

Anyway, his wife and two youngest came over with him today, and we had so much playing with them! Mary sat down and Emily pulled out our "Big Book" of ABC's for our program. She sat and wrote all of her ABC's with us. Then we took her out to see the puppies (which are 3 weeks old today!). She loved them!



It's funny though, it seems that the animals here are never exactly domesticated. They never pet their dogs or hold their cats, and anytime we go to play with the puppies everyone gets worried that the mother is going to attack us (which she hasn't done yet). So we just kind of laugh. I'm very grateful that they have the puppies who haven't grown to fear the humans yet, so we can hold and pet and play with at least some of the animals on the farm.


The guys taught another business class tonight. It went really well tonight! People were really participating and hopefully understanding what's important in starting a business. They felt really good about it. The turnout was great too. They've weeded out the people who just wanted to check it out, and now those who come really want to be there and want to learn something.

Most of the information I get about the lessons has to come from Spencer though because the second we walk up to the church there is a whole crowd of children that come with us. They are hilarious! We not only have the members' kids, who are attending the classes, but we also have the neighborhood kids follow us there so that we'll play with them. It makes it rather difficult for Emily and I to sit and listen to the lessons when the kids follow us, with their loud voices and laughter in and out and everywhere we go. It's hilarious, but they're worth it! Such cute kids, and we have fun getting to know them.

Margaret (Sister Abu) talked to me today and said that one of the girls who always comes to the church to play with us is the daughter of a less active member. Her mom apparently stopped Margaret today and asked her to thank us for loving her kids and then told Margaret that she wants to come back to church because of it. That makes playing with and loving the kids a whole lot more meaningful! But I think the coolest thing about hearing that was having Margaret be so grateful. She and Brother Abu are the ward missionaries and have been working non-stop with the less active members for the last 2 years, so I know that she's thrilled to have one of the ladies come back to church. Having her thank us so sincerely for loving the children (which is NOT hard AT ALL!) was really cool. It's good to know that we really can help the people here.