Christmas in Ghana

Merry Christmas to All Our Families out there! Happy New Year, too!

  

2 weeks before Christmas we celebrated Christmas as a mission.  We met at the Kaneshie Stake Center 2 different days (half of the mission each day) for lunch  - pizza (not nearly enough), French Fries, Chicken and Rice.   We had a talent show and enjoyed our time together.  We also delivered all the mail we had collected.   Thanks to all who participated in the Talent show and made our time together enjoyable.  We had beautiful singing, card tricks, stories, violin and piano numbers and the island missionaries+ performed the "HAKA" for us.  I saw a video of the "Haka" done by missionaries in the mall in New York City and was going to post ours (our missionaries really look professional!) but will do that soon when I have the download time.  Something to look forward to!  We loved being together with all of our missionaries. 

 

Below are some shots at the Christmas Conferences - both days.



 

 

 

 

 

  


 Caterer making FRENCH FRIES!

 

 

Our office Elders before Elder Asay went home.  Miss you Elder Asay!

Christmas treats!

Once we get together it's hard to say goodbye.

The day before Christmas the Office Council delivered the rest of Christmas packages to all the Zones.  Thanks to the Walls and the Daltons who delivered to the Bush and the Office Elders and Assistants who delivered to greater Accra Zones.  Any post-Christmas arrival packages will be distributed as quickly as possible.

Thanks to all our families who remembered us at this Christmas time. 

Hope you all got to enjoy your Christmas calls - missionaries and families!

Disclaimer:  Uploading pictures seems slower and slower - hoping to get an upgrade in the New Year. I have lots more pictures than time:)

District/Zone Council & District Training

So many pictures  - so little time to post. 

The beginning of November we had a combined District Leader and Zone Leader training.  In the morning we met with all Zone leaders and District leaders. Below are the small groups we divided into for discussion of some mission policies and activities. 

 

 

 District Leaders and Zone Leaders as of the 1st of November

 

 

In the afternoon we just had the Zone and Sister leaders.

Mission Leader Council - November 1.

 

 

The first week of November we also had District training.  For 5 days we had 1/5 of the mission each day come to the area office - by districts.  Half the group went to the temple in the morning while the other half had some training.  We ate lunch and in the afternoon we switched groups and the group trained in the morning went to the temple.

 

Training consisted of bike repair with Elder Nielsen and Elder Wall, as well as water filter maintenance.   We also had some cooking demonstrations/participation with Sister Wall and I.  We tried to expand the options for missionary meals using food items available here - Fried Rice, homemade tortillas, Crepes and homemade Bisquick (Biscuit mix) - to make pancakes, Impossible Bisquick Pies (including peach cobbler and cheeseburger pie) made in the microwave - since none of our apartments have ovens.

 

Bike repair and water filter instructions:

 

Below are snapshots of missionaries in our make-shift "kitchen" cooking up a storm (which actually happened one day when a power surge and then a black out shut down our electrical equipment - the burned out transformer smell was pretty powerful!).

(Pictures in random order)

 

  

  

The big reward for me was getting calls and emails from missionaries who had tried the new recipes and were reporting success.  The sisters sent pictures of their experiment with pizza - great pictures just in the wrong format to post.  We've also had lots of requests for "pancake syrup."  YEAH!!! - for missionaries being willing to try new things!

Early release and transfers this week because of Christmas travel blackout next week.  We're sad to see 6 great missionaries go home but excited for their families to get an early Christmas!