Our Ghanaian Adventure

 The weeks seem to go by so fast!  We are grateful to be here in Ghana.  These are a happy people in spite of their circumstances and lack of all we enjoy in the US.  Their life is simple.  They make do with what they have, and they are extremely resilient.  We have seen time and time again where their lives and properties are disrupted by road construction and other things, and they just reestablish their shops in a new location and continue on.  The economy is fascinating to us.  It is not controlled by big business and national chains.  It is all about small individual shops or small family or individual businesses everywhere marketing to neighbors and those they come in contact with.  Monday was staff meeting in Accra at the mission office.  President and Sister Jacobsen have staff meeting with the senior couples in the office, Patrick (supplies and vehicles), and Ebenezer (housing) every Monday afternoon.  We go in once a ...

 This week started off with driving to Swedru for the Swedru district council.  The district council itself was quite typical, but this week was transfers and half of these missionaries would be leaving this district on Wednesday.  So it was a bittersweet time for them.  Swedru District Council Our drive to Swedru did have an event of interest.  In Ghana, motorbikes are everywhere on the road.  They pretty much claim right of way no matter what and go wherever they want—against traffic, passing randomly on the right or the left, swerving in front of you, etc.  So, vehicle drivers have to always be on the lookout for motorbikes.  We were traveling on a dirt road that was rough with ruts and erosion as usual.  As Elder Judd approached a couple of ruts diagonal across the road, he slowed down (from not going very fast) and swerved slightly to the left.  As he got past the ruts, he glanced in his rear view mirror and saw a motorbike had cras...

 Last week we indicated that we had multi-zone conferences on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday of that week.  Well, as we were leaving for home from the zone conference on Friday, Sister Judd started with sneezing and a runny nose like allergies.  It wasn’t too bad, so we didn’t worry much about it.  We had to stop at the West Hills Mall on the way home to do some grocery shopping.  By the time we finished with that and started for home again, Sister Judd was beginning to get stuffed up sinuses, a headache, and body aches.  When we got home, she pretty much just went to bed feeling miserable.  Saturday morning, she was not feeling good at all.  Elder Judd contacted the mission medical advisor, Elder Divis, who said we should test her for malaria.  Luckily, we had a malaria test kit we had brought back from an apartment inspection.  The test was negative!  She stayed in bed all day Saturday and most of Sunday.  By Sunday evening sh...