Trip to Kumasi

Kumasi is a rather larage city in the mid-northern part of Ghanna. It has a population of around 4 million people. We have one Stake in Kumasi and I was asked to meet the Stake President and help him map out his wards and then to help him map out some divisions of wards he was considering...all done on Google Earth. We agreed to drive up on Sunday and stay overnight at a hotel and drive back on Monday. I woke up on Saturday morning and said to Elder Shipley, Do you realize we just agreed to drive the equivalent of a trip from Farmington to St. George and back!!!

It's a two lane highway most of the way. It reminded me of our trips to the beach when I was a small child. Along the road were broken down cars, buses and trucks left for who knows how many months or years. Their sites were telling as you saw the glass all over and the windows all knocked out and in some cases you could tell they had caught on fire. We could only imagine the fate of those who were in them.




We passed through villages that sold bread in front of every home, another that sold palm oil - tables set up all along the highway with their little jugs of oil, and another that sold hand carved bowls and sticks that looked like canes that were for grinding casava root into a powder that is used to make a sort of dumpling ball called fufu that is served with a soup. We haven't yet been brave enough to try fufu. But, we have heard plenty about it - it is a staple food here in Ghana. We also passed many trucks that just seemed to be loaded to the hilt and some busses.

We stopped halfway up in Nkawkaw (pronounced EnCocoa) to attend church. The church was located at the end of a long up-hill one-lane dirt road that dead ended at the rented church. You have to realize that dirt roads are filled with ruts washed into the roads by rain, and pot holes that can swallow your entire tire. We shook hands with all the members as they arrived. These people really had to want to come to church - it was located in such a difficult place.

We were told that a few weeks earlier one older lady who had no income wanted so badly to come to church, but it costs her 2 Cedis (about 2 dollars) to take a taxi there and back, and she was much too old to work. She made it a matter of prayer. Saturday she was in the market area and as she looked down she say a Cedi on the ground. She quickly leaned over and picked it up, to discover there were 2 Cedis, just what she needed to go to church! This is a great illustration of how Heavenly Father knows each one of us and how he answers our prayers.

This story illustrates the very problem we as an Area are trying to correct. Currently and in the past the people have had to come to the church. Some walking for miles. Others using their precious cedis to take their family in a taxi to church when they can hardly afford to put food on their tables. We are trying to correct this problem by bringing The Church to the people, r This was why I was sent to Kumasi - to help them tighten up boundaries, split wards and create others and branches of the church so that the church is within walking distance of the people. Google Earth has allowed us to see where the people live, and to see where our buildings are located. Until now we have never known where one building was in relationship to another and never have we been able to locate where the members lived. It has been a great blessing to the church in Africa and only the future will tell if the direction we are pursuing is correct...but we feel the spirit telling us this is the direction we are to pursue.

We left Kumasi with Elder and Sister Burgess who had completed their mission and were on their way to Accra to board their return flight home. On our way back we stopped to visit a senior missionary couple who live in Nkawkaw, The Mathesons. They are a great couple that work with the people, the missionaries and the local leaders. This is a missionary assignment that we would enjoy, but our current assignment is to work in the office, assisting the Area Presidency. Other couples here have missionary assignments to help with welfare projects like helping schools, digging wells, helping with the medical needs of the people. Our grandchildren think only of proselyting missions - where you are teaching the gospel. I hope they can understand that there are many types of missionaries. All are needed to do the work of the Lord. Together we all work to make God's work a marvelous work and a wonder.

Elder and Sister Shipley, Sister Matheson, Sister and Elder Burgess