The grand tour

These are the steps up to our front door (behind our gate). The wall is around our house since there is a little house behind our house. The sister missionaries are coming to stay there this week. This wall is close to six feet high. The dirt is pushed up a little higher on the outside so a tall person could see over but they can't get inside very easily--just the goat that gets in the back yard somehow! We feel very safe here. The gate is always locked and there are lights all around the outside of the house that we turn on at night. When someone comes they make themselves known by banging on the gate. I can usually see a head when I go out the front door and I have the choice as to whether I will open the gate or not.


This is the back of the house. You can see our water container high on a stand. We have a pump to turn on when the city pressure is low or there is no water! (We are in our second week of no water due to repairs and breakage some place in Cape Coast!) The far steps take us into our utility room. The closer steps goes into the kitchen but we can't open the door because there is a cabinet there for our dishes! The window that you see above the air conditioner is to our dinning/front room. We get nice warm morning sun!


This is the hall of the utility room. You can see our bedroom door on the right and the bathroom doors on the left and maybe the washer.


Our little kitchen.


Dad working at the table. Our curtains are very African.


The other end of the front room. Can you see our little Christmas tree?

On the street where we live...

This is the road to our house! That pile of junk came from our back yard. The elders are going to come over on one of their p-days and burn it! That last white gate on the left is our driveway. It has a padlock on it and it is my job to open and close it each time we go in and out (Elder Turner drives the truck in and out!). We live in a good part of town!

Jungle Accomodations

This is a picture of how the houses are built out in the jungle area. You can see from this picture that this house is made of mud that was spread on top of a wood frame. The mud has straw mixed into it and rubbed onto the house. This house is many years old. The modern homes are made of cement blocks and then a layer of cement is smoothed onto the blocks and then painted.

All in a day's work...

(Here we are with the king of the village. The group LDS leader there is pictured in the upper left corner.)

Today we had the trip of our lives. We left early to drive one and half hours to Trifo Praso. We picked up the Elders there and headed down the road to the jungle village of Kenkwase. We went from pavement to red gravel and then turned on to a rutted dirt road. We had been up that road three weeks earlier to visit the leader of a group of Saints who live in the village.

On arriving we made our way to the group leader's house. It was miserably hot. We were soon wet with perspiration, a condition which stayed with us throughout the remainder of day. Neither the group leader nor his wife were there but his twenty year old son was. He led us on foot down a narrow trail through the jungle. We walked for two hours through country which not so strangely looked like the set for a movie made in Africa... trees and bushes and grasses of all description, including cocoa trees. We walked through tall grasses and on ground sometimes dry and sometimes muddy and frequently covered with leaves from the many trees. More than once we tripped over roots on top of the ground covered with leaves. We crossed small steams on wobbly planks of wood. I was so thankful that I had put on my walking shoes in the truck before starting the hike. Couldn't you just see me in my sandals making this trek?! I also wore a long cotton skirt which was a blessing too because the grass and leaves never bothered my legs nor did the mosquitoes bite me. We walked forever it seemed but we had very little sun on us because of the tall trees. It was quiet and I could hear the swish of the grass on the trail and my breathing as we walked along. The elders were great to take my arm when we had to walk a plank to cross the water and mud.

Our "guide" did a good job keeping us safe but scared me to death when he jumped and said "Oh, there's a snake!" I told him I didn't think I wanted to look at it and I shied away from it as fast as he did. "There are three of them," he said. "They are the deadliest snakes in the jungle!" (They were mambas) All I saw was a quick slither of a tail through the trees just above our heads. Frank said he could see one just about eye level with us and perhaps two feet away. On the way home, the young man led us away from that particular tree. I felt like kissing him for that!

When we were first walking along the path in the jungle we encountered some school children. They were carrying tubs of sand on their heads to a project in the village. The girls kept right behind me, giggling and wanting to talk. Their English was limited but that didn't stop them. I took the tub off the head of one of them and put it on my head. Needless to say I was not nearly so graceful as they. They all giggled. Then I asked for the piece of cloth which they wind tight on top of their heads as a support for the tubs. I put it on my head and then the tub on top of it and tried to walk. I took about three steps and the bowl fell to the ground. They thought that was very funny. It really is an art to carry all that they do on their heads! The children are so sweet. They want to hold your hand and walk with you and talk.

We stopped at a small compound of primitive buildings, the home of some of the natives. Homemade chairs and a bench and glasses of water were brought out for us. I was so thirsty by this time and so badly wanted to drink the water and quickly. One of the elders, however, whispered, "Just drink a little." We didn't want to offend our hosts but didn't want to get sick either. The guys sipped a small amount and threw the rest away. I sipped a little, too, and then rubbed the cold cup on my cheeks.

A while later we came across a similar home and were treated equally well. There were four women, all nursing their babies. They brought out benches and we sat and visited. One of the elders with us is Ghanaian and speaks two of the African dialects well. Thus, he was able to translate for us wherever we went. Most of the people in these isolated locations do not speak English.

We discovered that one young woman--well, she looked young but had given birth to eight children, one of whom who died--was a member of the Church. We asked her if she had ever thought about going to the temple. She said her husband had urged her to go but she just didn't feel right about it, that she had a grudge against a lady at Church, and she didn't feel it was right to go to the temple feeling that way. So I told her to pray about it and to try to forgive the woman. We told her that Heavenly Father wanted her to have those blessings and suggested that perhaps she could tell Him about her grudge and then just let it go and let Jesus take care of it. She smiled but I wasn't convinced she would do it. We also encouraged her to talk to her husband about it. On our return some hours later we met the husband who had come in from work and was with one of their little boys. We introduced ourselves and invited him to attend our upcoming Temple Preparation class on Fast Sunday this January. He was a little hesitant at first, but agreed to attend after we told him about his wife's problem with the grudge. He said that they would both be there. As we left, I looked her way and saw that her eyes were bright and glistening and that she was smiling and waving goodbye to us.

With that we continued to walk through the jungle to a small group of buildings at the top of a hill, the home of the king of this particular area. On the way I kicked a leaf that was covering a colony of black ants. The Ghanaian elder saw me do it and cautioned me to get away quick! He helped me brush them off my shoes and skirt and legs. They move quickly. He said they are dangerous and to stay away from them. The king was dressed in shorts, a shirt, a baseball cap, and tall rubber boots and didn't look like anything special. He and his wife met us as we were walking up the last 100 feet or so to their house. He owns the cocoa trees which surrounded us. He takes great pride in his crop. He had all of the dead wood thinned out and it looked beautiful and well taken care of. When the woman met us, she looked at me and motioned to her pants, indicating that I should have worn pants. I was very glad that my legs were covered with a skirt at least as my ankles were protected.

The people were very gracious as they invited us to their home and brought out benches to sit on under the trees where there was occasionally a little breeze. Their home and outbuildings were primitive, made of wood frames plastered with mud and straw. The oldest daughter brought out a dishpan full of coconuts and then began hacking at them with a machete. She cut off the skin of the upper fourth of the fruit, then wacked off the top. You drink the watery, semi sweet milk and scrape the fruit out with a spoon. It is soft in texture and mild in taste. Dad drank a little of the milk and said it wasn't bad but was afraid of what the sugar content might be. I drank two of them and the elders each drank four! They were so refreshing and I was so hot.The hair all around my face and neck was wet from sweat and curly because of my perm!

We got to talking about family, and they brought out their photo album with pictures of their children. Their little girl had just turned nine and wasn't baptized yet. We told them the Elders had a baptism scheduled for December 30th and asked if they would like to have their daughter baptized on that date. The father said that he would except that he was going to be out of town that day traveling. He said that the family could all come and have his daughter baptized in his absence. I suggested that they should wait until he could be there. Then his wife talked to him a little, and he decided that he could be there after all and would start out on his trip afterwards. Success!

Frank discovered that these people had not been to the temple. He invited them to come to our Temple Preparation class. They agreed to do it. Before leaving we took pictures and the father ran a short ways off to a plantain tree and cut off about thirty pounds of fruit for us (plantains look like huge bananas). Then he brought out a large basket full of oranges that he had grown. The young man who served as our guide put the plantain on top of the oranges in the basket and then balanced the whole thing on his head and headed down the jungle trail. After a while one of the Elders relieved him of the plantains and placed them on his head for the remainder of the walk back to our truck.

We arrived at his house where we discovered that his father had heard that we were looking for him earlier and had taken the remainder of the afternoon off to wait for us. He took us inside their modest home and sat us down to a late lunch which his wife had prepared for us. As is customary here both the husband and wife left us alone to eat. We were given water to drink and to wash our hands in, followed by the best that they had to offer, boiled plantain and yams and a traditional sauce to dip them in. I had a couple bites but couldn't handle the sauce which has a fishy taste and which I have yet to learn to like. The elders, on the other hand, ate every bit of it and made Frank and I look good when the wife returned to pick up the dishes. She brought in oranges which had the rinds cut off but the pithy white still attached. We sucked out the juice which was delicious and refreshing.

In talking to the father afterwards, we committed him and his wife to join our Temple Preparation class. Their son, our guide for the day, said he wanted to come, also. He is planning on going on a mission as soon as he is able to earn enough money. This is a huge problem for most of the Ghanaians. There just isn't enough money to go around.

Their home was so meager. In one room the walls were covered with newspaper pictures. I saw President Benson's picture on the wall. They brought us into their home to sit out of the sun. They brought in wooded benches. The floors and walls are cement-worn and weathered. The doors are always open for cool air and little goats wander in and out. These people have very little, next to nothing really as far as material things go, no modern facilities, no electricity, no telephones, no soft chair to rest in, no soft davenport for guests, no fancy dishes or napkins, no sinks or running water. Even so, they made us feel so welcome and like we were a part of their family. Their little girl did not want to let go of my hand as they walked with us about twenty minutes to the truck. This Mother had come in from work in the cocoa fields, cooked us a meal, cleaned herself up and put on a dress so that she would look nice while accompanying us back to the truck. The little goats cried because they had to stay!!!

(We have a goat that has adopted us. Either at night or when we are gone he finds his way into our yard. He doesn't do much harm except the droppings he leaves behind. When he is in the yard and hears the gate open, he comes running and out he goes.)

Arriving in Nuomochrom, we stopped at the church to use the restroom facilities there. We then drove a short distance to visit a family which the Elders have been working with. We had to walk a short distance, which turned out to be an unexpected challenge of sorts when we encountered thousands of those deadly black ants covering the trail for three or four yards. The Ghanaian elder yelled: "Go for it!" and took off running, pulling me by the hand. We, of course, had to do the same thing upon returning to the truck. We stomped our feet and helped one another swat away the few ants that got on us. It hurts when they bit you! The Elders say the people here burn a tire each night before going to bed in order to drive off the ants which could otherwise enter the house and actually kill a person if he were not to awaken before they covered his body. The Ghanaian Elder told us that that his mother set fire to a tire every night and would get up in the night to check on them when they were kids. Remember in the movie Indiana Jones where they tied a man to a stake on an ant hill? These were those kind of ants!

Needless to say, after Dad and I got home and tried to get out of the truck, our legs were more than a little stiff. When we applied for a mission, we were asked if we could walk three miles and climb a flight of stairs each day. I don't recall seeing anything about hiking through a jungle in high humidity amidst dangerous snakes and ants, but we did it!

I'm sure I have exhausted your patience with all of this. Before ending the story of this wonderful day, I mast tell you of the huge sacrifice that the people in the Kenkwase area make in order to go to Church. For the ones who live in the village itself it is a short walk to the little grade school building where Church is held, but for those like the King and his family whom we visited today it is at least an hour and a half walk. They attend Church here on all but the first Sunday of each month. On Fast Sundays they walk another one and a half to two hours one way to the Branch located outside the small town of Nuomochrom. They are a small group of people, perhaps thirty or so in number, who for reasons of Church support and organization, belong to the Nuomochrom branch. In order to expedite the Temple Prep class which would in normal circumstances meet eight Sundays in a row, we plan to give two lessons on each of two Sundays a month for two months. The lessons will take place during the time alloted to Sunday School and Priesthood and Relief Society meetings. Here is another example of sacrifice in that the Kenkwase people will for two months have to walk into Nuomochrom twice a month instead of once.

Finished (Ghanaian for it is over, done with, no longer available).
Sister Turner

A WEDDING IN GHANA

A beautiful young Ghanian woman, a former missionary in the Ghana Cape Coast Mission, asked the mission president to perform her wedding. It was held in a chapel and included opening and closing prayers, congregational singing, a talk by the bishop, and, of course, a traditional wedding ceremony. LDS tradition ended there.

The bride's shoulders were not quite covered. The train from her dress must have been at least twelve feet long and was constantly rearranged and adjusted by her maid of honor, who also continually fussed with the bride's hair and dress, even during prayers. The best man was equally as attentive to the groom, constantly wiping the perspiration from the groom's face, neck and head, and during the prayers as well. Interspersed in all of this was the constant running back and forth and whispered instructions of the wedding planner.

As the mission president took the stand to perform the wedding,the cameras came out and people rushed forward to get good shots. When President told the groom he could kiss the bride, hollering and catcalls began from the congregation. It was quite entertaining if not traditional.

The couple were married in the Accra temple the next day but,as is the practice here in the Church, had to be married civily first. Neither the Church nor the tribes accept the other's ceremony. Tradition is that the groom must deliver a dowry (a "bride's price" determined by the family), upon payment of which the family allows the couple to go off together. With that they are officially married in the eyes of the family and the tribe. There are no papers involved, no legal verification of the union. Because families so often determine a "bride's price" which is beyond the means of the groom to pay, couples often just move in together without benefit of marriage. Thus, there are many unmarried couples living here with children and some in polygamous relationships. The Church requires that traditional marriages and unmarried relationships be "regularized", meaning made legal by a civil ceremon. Actually, not even a ceremony is required in these cases. A simple signing of papers with witnesses will do. The couple then has two weeks to be sealed in the temple. Otherwise they must wait a year.

That's all for now.

Love you much,
Dad

MUSIC IN THE GHANA CHURCH

This last Sunday we attended a meeting in a chapel in a small village called Kissi. The church building is basically a covered pavillion with no windows and lots of open air. I can only imagine what it must be like during the rainyseason, especially when the wind blows. A pig just outside the building snorted loudly during some of the meeting. We arrived early, thinking that the meeting would commencean hour before it did. The people here love to sing, so about twenty five minutes before the meeting started I stood up and led them in every Christmas song in thehymnbook. They knew them all and grinned from ear to ear while singing.

Most of the chapels do not have keyboards, especially in thebranches. Standard procedure is for the chorister or someone seated near the front to sing the first line of the hymn alone and then to return to the beginning with the congregation in tow. Sometimes the directors say a quick: "one, two", not always in anything close to the time in which the song will be sung, before everyone starts singing. The rhythmic figures, expecially dotted eighths and sixteenths, are not always accurate (sung more like two eight notes). The pronunciation of the English is sometimes largely unitelligible and the intonation does not always invite the Spirit, but the people sing with gusto regardless.

This last Sunday while singing "I Stand All Amazed" the leader and the congregation all missed the D natural on the "me" in the phrase: "That for me, a sinner, He bled and died." They were consistent, however, and missed it on the two remaining verses as well.

The standard repertoire of hymns sung by the congregations here is more expansive than ours at home. It is interestingto hear the congregations sing hymns that for us back home we know only as coming from, as Steve Bills likes to say, the sealed portion of the hymnbook.

I led a thirty-voice missionary choir in four hymns at a wedding last week. The bride, formerly a missionary in the Ghana Cape Coast mission, requested that her former companions sing and that the mission president perform the ceremony. The missionaries sang beautifully. There are only four sister missionaries in this particular mission zone, and two of them are altos, so we were a little short of sopranos and altos. Some of the tenors volunteeered to sing the alto lines up an octave and did a creditable job. To my surprise and delight, two of the Elders asked if they could sing soprano and in the correct range. Who would have ever imagined that one would find two truly excellent counter tenors out here in the jungle? It was a remarkable sound and beautifully pure.

On "Love At Home" I had everyone sing "loo" on the second verse. On the third verse we started with a tenor solo and then added the two counter tenors on the alto part for a great sound, finishing with the full ensemble on the chorus.

Ghana 101

Dear Ones:

The Mission Training Center experience in Provo was intense, somewhat frustrating (too much to absorb in not enough time) but spiritually rewarding. The mission experience in Ghana so far
has been interesting and rewarding although somewhat frustrating at times as well. More on that in a moment. When we left Provo there was snow on the ground. What a contrast Ghana is to that. There are two seasons here... hot and hotter. The hot is the rainy season. It is just ending. We have gone through two good rains. The rain was warm! The dry season is about to begin. We have been told that it is still humid, just not as much, and that it contains hot dusty winds blowing in from the Sahara.

Happy belated Thanksgiving. I assume your day was a tad more traditional than ours was. We had chicken kabobs on the beach at a resort nearby. Beautiful atmosphere but not a trace of a turkey. Fact is, I haven't seen one, dead or alive, since we arrived. Even if there was one, the people do not observe our holiday. Their big holiday this time of year is Farmer's Day, and that is tomorrow. Everything will be closed down.

Perhaps you know that Cape Coast enjoys the dubious distinction of being the location for the beginning of the slave trade to the Americas. There are two castles here built by the Portuguese
and which housed the slaves in the basements. They have been designated international monuments by ENESCO. The Fanti tribe was instrumental in procuring the slaves for the Portuguese and then for the Dutch. That tribe is the dominant group here now. The treatment of the slaves was so brutal that more of them died here than arrived in the New World on the slave ships.

Ghana is the most stable of all countries in West Africa and, thus, the safest. After arriving we learned some specifics about why our mission was changed from an assignment in Nigeria. Whites have been threatend and robbed in recent months and four of our missionaries, a senior couple and two young elders, were kidnapped and ransomed. Needless to say, we are grateful to not be assigned there.

The people here are sweet and humble. There are no or at least minimal racial feelings towards Whites. They do think we are all rich, however, and by their standards we are. The two guards at the Mission Home work alternating twelve hour shifts six days a week and get paid about $60. a month each. The street merchants do not hesitate to quote higher prices to us as soon as they see that we are White but often can be talked down. The people do not steal from each other but they will steal from us if they get a chance, and they do not hesitate to ask us for money. There is a small middle class, even smaller wealthy, with the large majority being dirt poor.

Few people own cars. They either walk or ride sub compact four door taxi cabs or "trotro"s (three to five bench seat mini vans). There is almost no mass transit. The government for some reason has shut down most of its rail traffic. Traffic on the roads is intense. Most are two lane roads, but this does not overly concern the motorists who will make additional lanes for themselves whenever possible. You have to be careful making left hand turns because a car behind you may make one inside your left as you start to make yours. For the most part, the drivers are friendly maniacs. With a smile on their face they will cut in front of you if given an inch or less, leaving only two options, either let them in or run into them. They honk their horns a lot but I have yet to see an angry face or an obscene jesture.

The really interesting roads are the unpaved ones cutting through the jungle. Karma and I will be traveling on these quite a bit in our new four wheel drive, diesel powered Ford Ranger pickup truck. It is a four door model with air conditioning (the most important feature) and has a shell on the back. Traveling in the bush is challenging, not only because of the roads but because there are almost no road signs to guide you. Small villages dot the landscape along with coconut, palm. pineapple, popo (papaya), banana, and plantain trees and several other tropical trees and bushes. Cocoa beans are a major industry.

Their are no public toilets in the villages and few in the larger cities. People, especially men, just let it hang out wherever they happen to be. Karma, of course, is not real comfortable with that, so we look for the best restaurants that we can find.

The LDS church is thriving here but not without some difficulty, that being adequate leadership to sustain the growing membership. The problem comes from (1) small pockets of members in outlying areas where there are no stake or district organizations to provide a needed umbrella of support and (2) branches which are uncomfortably distant from stake or district leadership. The Area Presidency has decided to reduce the geographical areas of some of the stakes and districts to a more manageable size and in a few cases to cut off branches from their mother units. Neither baptisms nor proselyting activities are taking place in any location where there is not a ward or branch within a maximum of thirty minutes walking distance. This leaves some dozen or more isolated groups of members that we know of in our mission area, some as far as five hours away from our home in Cape Coast. Karma and I are currently in the process of identifying and confirming the locations of these groups.

Our mission has become in effect a stake organization for these isolated groups and they will collectively be called the Ghana Cape Coast Mission Branch. This puts the mission president in a unique position of being in effect a stake president and a mission president at the same time. He has been working this all out as we go since we arrived. The way it is shaking out is that Karma and I will have supervisory responsibility for these groups, which translates into a fair amount of travel through the jungle, keeping track of the branches and groups which are not otherwise assigned to stakes or districts, and helping to meet their needs. We will also do some teaching and proselyting in these areas, although we will not be knocking on doors like the young missionaries do. It will be more a matter of assisting the local branch and group leaders as needed, particularly with inactives and part member families.

The history of the LDS church here is quite interesting. There are some Protestant ministers teaching our doctrine from the Book of Mormon. Some have left their churches and joined ours. Others continue to teach their flocks from the Book of Mormon without benefit of any association with the Church.

I taught "I Am A Child of God" to the congregation in a Pentacostal church last Sunday. They were very receptive and learned it quickly. Our mission president gave the sermon and two of our young missionaries taught the Sunday School lesson. The minister wishes to be baptized into our faith but is concerned about leaving his flock. He has told them about his desires and is trying to bring them along with him. The one negative about our attending his church meeting was that we failed to join the congregation in dancing during the "praise" portion of their services, and it
offended them. The dancing and indeed a large portion of the minister's remarks to the congregation were accompanied by two modestly accomplished solo singers, a really poor keyboard player and two percussionists only slightly better who performed underneath the minister most of the time. Making things even more interesting, if that is the right word, was the cacaphony coming from the church next door which included brass instruments and loud speakers.

If the minister joins our church it will not be the first time such a thing has happened here. The attempts are not always successful, however. Recently a female minister attempted to bring her congregation into the Church but changed her mind when she learned that she could not be their Bishop.

Even before the Church announced in 1977 that all worthy males regardless of race could hold the Priesthood and before any of our missionaries entered the country, a group of ministers, unknown to each other, came across Books of Mormon, were converted to the gospel taught therein and petitioned Church authorities in Salt Lake for visits of missionaries, additional copies of the Book of Mormon, and for baptism.

Karma and I had a really interesting experience about two hours into the jungle where we went to find a group of Church members that we had been informed were holding unauthorized services there. Our arrival interrupted a political rally conducted by a political leader of the federal government (big federal elections next Sunday... potentially dangerous depending upon who does or does not win). The politician asked someone who we were and then invited us to join her on the stand, or that which constituted a sort of stand in this jungle village. Seated perpendicular to us was the tribal chief, the queen mother, and some other dignitaries of the tribe. We were introduced to everyone by the political leader. Then we were asked to stand and walk down the line of tribal authorities introducing ourselves as we went. Then those same people got up and walked over to us and introduced themselves to us. After the rally we were invited to go to the chief's house where we introduced ourselves again and told him why we were visiting his village. The queen mother suggested we should build a chapel so that the people would have a nice place to meet. She said we would get more people interested in the Church that way.

Karma asked if she could take their pictures, and they responded like little kids, giggling and so on. We were truly treated like visiting royals. It was fun.

Way more than enough for now.

With love,

Elder Turner