"A person is just about as happy as he makes up his mind to be."

-Abraham Lincoln















Friday, June 18, 2010

Our Next Big Adventure Is...?

Week 4

So the exciting news tonight is that exactly 5 hours from now, or 2:00 AM Saturday morning, we will be off on a bus headed to Accra. We will arrive in Accra somewhere between 4:30 and 5:30 AM, and then at 6:00 we will then to be shipped off in a van for another 3 hours to get to Cape Coast.

It’s amazing what we’re willing to do for a fun adventure huh? Right now I’m just trying to talk myself into the fact that it’ll all be worth it. But I’m sure that when we arrive and see the cool castles and especially get to be in the Canopy Forest (as we call it), we’ll know why we are traveling at ridiculous hours to do it.

The Canopy Forest is like a reserve but instead of walking around on the ground or riding in guide trucks we get to walk around in the tree tops! Some crazy person decided to string rope bridges from tree to tree to tree (and so on) so that tourists (like us) could have a REALLY cool experience! Here’s hoping that nothing breaks and that I’m not really afraid of heights. I guess we’ll see huh?

Wish us luck! Cool pictures will hopefully accompany this post :)

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Dear...

Week 3 Day 6

Here are some thoughts or things we'd like to say in the form of a letter. You always hear that it's easier to write down your feelings than it is to express them verbally, so hopefully this is able to convey some of what we feel.

Letter #1
Dear Cockroach-
Why must you reside in our bathroom? I don't understand the fetish you have with our towels and window sill. We really don't appreciate you running across our bathtub and scaring us half to death. And please, if you wouldn't mind replying to this letter, will help us know what in the world we need to do to kill you? You are virtually immortal! We chase you and smash you and yet you still evade us and hide behind the bathtub. We just don't know what to do with you!
Love, Us

Letter #2
Dear Rooster outside our window-
What is wrong with you? You don't even sound normal and yet you still insist on crowing at the break of dawn EVERY SINGLE MORNING! We have learned to sleep through your friends who chorus through morning, but you, you're different, you sound like you're dying. Please get that fixed!
Love, Us

Letter #3
Dear Hope (The He Dog)-
We understand that you are "the guard dog" and we know it probably brings you great pleasure and stature to fulfill your duties to the best of your ability. But really!? Do you REALLY have to bark incessantly at 4am? And if you do HAVE to bark incessantly at 4 am, must really do it right outside our window? People walk through the yard to go to the river, they walk through the yard to go to the farm, many of them are workers and are SUPPOSED to be here. I promise you, they are NOT intruders! We will all live and be much better off if you'd just take a chill-pill. Would you mind doing that for a day or two? If it makes you feel better we'll even make you a badge and certificate that applauds your willingness to keep quiet for one morning! Please consider.
Love, Us

Letter #4
Dear Hope (The She Dog)-
Please stop hiding your puppies, we love them! We know also that you love them and we promise we would never do anything to harm them. We just want to play with them and enjoy them like you get to enjoy them everyday. Don't you think you might be a bit selfish with the little guys? I mean, really? They would love us if you'd let them give us a chance, but you keeping hiding them in places we can't even get to. How are we supposed to make friends this way? Please lighten up. I promise life is a lot easier when you chill out. Thank you!
Love, Us

Letter #5
Dear Children-
You are adorable! We love you! But after a month in your classroom do our names still have to be "Obroni"?
Love, Us

Letter #6
Dear Classroom-
How in the world did you get potholes inside? Do you really have a death wish for every man, woman and child that walks into your room? And tell us please, would you even cooperate if we tried to fix you?
Love, Us

Letter #7
Dear Electric Company-
Please stop turning off the power. It's really inconvenient.
Love, Us

Letter #8
Dear Vodafone-
You charged us way too much money for a modem that only works half the time. Could we please get a refund?
Love, Us

Letter #9
Dear USPS-
When you say 3-5 business days and mom pays a substantial amount for that time period, would you please keep it from 3-5 business days. 13-15 days is NOT acceptable!
Love, Us

Letter #10
Dear Mother Nature-
Would you please not make it so dry and cold here? We really would like you to turn up some heat or maybe start up your humidifier up there. We are freezing at night when we sleep with no blankets on and the fan going and we just don't know how much more cold we can handle here in the middle of Africa.
Love, Us :)

Letter #11
Dear Abu Family-
Thank you for everything! You are the best! We love you! Seriously!
Love, Us

Letter #12
Dear Family and Friends at home-
We love you! Hope you haven't yet forgotten about us! We think about and pray for you often. Thank you for all your love and support for us. We would never be where we are today without your guidance and examples. Thank you for everything!
Love, Us

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Hard Boiled Brownies Anyone?

Week 3 Day 4

Not sure if our internet is going to work again tonight, but once again, I’ll write anyway and hope that sometime in the near future we can get it posted.

Our funny story of the day is thus: Emily and I wanted to make brownies while the guys were teaching their business classes tonight. We had everything we needed for the job except the eggs. When we made our cookies, Gloria took us to the place we needed to go for the eggs, so we were confident that we could handle the task this time around.

So we get to the little shop and ask for eggs. They start asking us a bunch of questions all in Twi and no one seems to know how to interpret them for us. There were some eggs just sitting out, so I pointed to them and held up two fingers and hoped they’d get the point. They kept asking me more questions that I obviously didn’t understand, so I once again pointed at the two eggs, pointed at the little bag in the lady’s hand and nodded my head. She finally put the two eggs in the bag and we walked off having finally accomplished our mission.

When we got to the Terry’s to mix everything together I was at the stove melting the butter and cocoa together and Emily was mixing together all the other stuff. Suddenly I hear, “Uh… Abbie, the eggs are hard boiled!”

“WHAT!? Who sells hard boiled eggs!?” was my immediate reaction. We just started laughing our heads off. The confusion and misunderstandings all made complete sense. Luckily, Sister Terry had a couple eggs she was willing to let us borrow and we got to finish, but not without a good laugh and an even better story.

PS: The brownies turned out to be incredibly delicious, and SO easy!

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

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.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

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!)

Saturday, June 12, 2010

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!

Friday, June 11, 2010

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!