Going, Going, Ghana!

 


A very familiar sight in Accra, Ghana: Street hawkers
bearing their wares on their heads...hundreds of them!

Street booths are everywhere amidst colorful buildings and colorful taxis

 

As Bob's calling includes all of Africa, we were invited to the Mission Presidents' Seminar for the Africa West Area in Accra, Ghana this past week, where we were able to meet face-to-face the Area Presidency (Elders Curtis, Vinson and Dube of the Seventy) and their wives and the 13 mission presidents and their wives.

We participated in the mission president training by the Area Presidency and the discussions and sharing of best practices and also were able to spend a full-day sightseeing in and around Accra, tour the MTC with two of our former Cape Town missionaries from Ghana and participate in an endowment session in the Ghana Temple. 

Although we applied for our Ghana visas nearly two months ago, we almost didn't get them in time. On Monday, our departure day, we expected the visas any minute all day long, and the longer we waited the more tense we both got.  We were still awaiting a call about the visas at 2:00 pm. We were supposed to be picked up for the airport at 1:50 for our 4:55 flight. Finally, at 2:05, Bob had the Area travel supervisor make one last desperate call to the visa agent. At 2:06, we were told the visas were approved and the visas and passports could be picked up. The driver who was supposed to provide our ride to the airport instead left immediately to pick up our passports and visas, and we hurriedly drove ourselves to the airport, parked and met him there by about 3:30 for our 4:55 international flight. 

 

We went to South African Airways to check in for our flight and the agent told us the system denied our passports!  The agent said it had never happened before, and she didn't know what to do. She said she was sure we were okay, but she couldn't print boarding passes without passport approval on the system.  She asked the agents on either side of her, and they both said they had just experienced the same exact thing. After a phone call to their supervisor, it was clear that their computer connection to the passport system had quit working. So we waited and waited, along with the passengers on either side of us, until finally the agents just approved us and prepared handwritten boarding passes. 

Then, of course, the security guy asks, "What is this? These aren't real boarding passes!" When he realized there were several of us with handwritten boarding passes, he found his supervisor and got approval to let us through. Once we were finally on the plane, we were able to relax a bit after a very tense day and enjoy 6 1/2 hours of peace, quiet and rest. We even both slept for about half the flight. Then there was more waiting at the airport at the other end for our transportation to the hotel. We landed at close to 9:00 pm and got to the Fiesta Royale Hotel after 10:00 (midnight our time) in stifling heat and humidity, even at that hour.

Accra, Ghana, being near the equator, is much hotter and far more humid than we expected. Temperatures are in the 90's and humidity in the 90's all year round. It was also much more lush and green than we anticipated, but we really didn't see anything the first night and were in meetings all day the next two days.

When Bob went to his first Mission Presidents Seminar 10 years ago, there were 9 mission presidents there, all white Americans. The Area Presidency taught how the day had to come, sooner rather than later, when the majority of mission presidents in Africa would be native Africans. At this conference, 10 years later, 8 of the 13 mission presidents at the seminar in Ghana were black African natives!



Area Presidency and 13 mission presidents pose for a group
photo with their wives at the Mission Presidents' Seminar

Elder LeGrande Curtis, Jr., the Africa West Area President and his counselors (from Australia and Zimbabwe) were wonderful to include us and make a big deal out of the value Bob provides to the Area. He gave us time to introduce ourselves on the first day, gave us 45 minutes on the agenda the second day, and had us bear our testimonies at the end of the seminar. We loved the training and learned so much. And we became quite familiar with all of the couples, over two days of meetings and meals.

Elder Curtis talked about the incredible growth the Area is experiencing. There are 7 stakes in greater Accra plus a temple and an MTC, and 50 stakes now in the West Area, plus another 7 projected for this year and 14 new chapels under construction. At 12 converts per missionary per year, they had nearly 25,000 new converts in 2014 and are on target to exceed that this year, making West Africa the fastest growing Area in the Church, and Africa the fastest growing continent, exceeding the growth rates in Mexico and South America. The mission presidents and wives in West Africa were completely overwhelmed by the General Conference announcement by President Monson of a third temple in West Africa, in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire (the Ivory Coast).

With an additional 14 stakes being projected for the Africa Southeast Area this year, that's a total of 21 new stakes projected in Africa in one year! That's 21 new stake presidents and presidencies, 250 high councilors and more than 150 new bishops, just in the new stakes, and there will also be new districts and branches in almost every one of the 27 missions. This growth will be sustained with local leaders in charge, and less dependence on American missionaries, which is more evident in West Africa, but also emerging across the rest of the continent..



A typical LDS meetinghouse in Ghana

The Accra Ghana Temple is beautiful, and we were able to join the Area Presidency, all the mission presidents and their wives in an endowment session Wednesday evening. Unlike the Johannesburg Temple, the Ghana Temple is staffed entirely by black, native ordinance workers (we saw no white American temple missionaries) and, much larger than the Johannesburg Temple, we had all 50 of us in one session.

At the Ghana Temple at dusk, where we enjoyed an endowment session

We had a free day Thursday to be tourists and see the country. President and Sister Heid of the Ghana Accra Mission showed us around from 7:00 am to 3:30 pm and took us to the most scenic places in the country, along the Volta River and Volta Lake, north of Accra, near the Benin (eastern) border. David Heid is the son of Elmer and Bonnie Heid, dear friends of ours (and of Ray and Kathy Egan) when we lived in Kirkland, Washington, and David and Delynn are neighbors and dear friends of Terry and Susan Gylling (my mission trainer in Denmark and his wife) in Fallbrook, California. So we had a lot to catch up on as we saw the sights and fought the incredible traffic while within the city of Accra.



Scenes in Accra, Ghana

 

 

A beautiful tree and a sample of the lush
greenery north of Accra along the Volta.

A Muslim mosque, taken from the car, in downtown Accra

 

In the shade along the Volta River in Ghana with President David and Sister Delynn Heid at the Senchi Resort

The Heids dropped us off at the MTC, where we were greeted by Bob's only two returned Cape Town missionaries from Ghana, Elder Pappoe and Elder Adonteng, who were so thrilled and excited to see Bob and to meet Martha. We spent a couple of hours with them and invited them to a guided tour of the Ghana MTC with us, from the president. Then President and Sister Robison of the MTC had us for dinner and had their driver, Patrick, drive us through the Accra traffic to the airport and our flight home.



With Chris Pappoe (left) and Alex Adonteng (right), former
Cape Town missionaries at the Missionary Training Center
in Accra, Ghana

We thoroughly enjoyed our three days in Ghana and found it well worth the nearly 13 hours in the air, so very grateful that our visas came through last minute, as an answer to many sincere and almost desperate prayers. We are loving every adventuresome day we spend in Africa!