Holidays & Trips

As we walk into the area office each morning, this picture by Greg Olsen greets us and reminds us that we are laboring in the Lord's vineyard among His children on the African continent. We know that learning about their culture helps us to love and serve them better. Our experiences traveling around Ghana broaden our view and appreciation of the people and their traditions.

The following photos are documenting a few of our holiday activities:

The Christmas tree in our apartment livened up the wall.

Sisters Jorgensen, Brown, Bingham, and Breillatt helping to serve a Christmas dinner to the young Elder and Sister Missionaries of the Accra Ghana Mission.

It takes a lot of food to feed 150 missionaries; there was a mix of Ghanaian and American food to please every palate.

This group photo just gives you an idea of how many missionaries are in the Ghana Accra Mission. I hope someone got closer than we did.

There was no mistletoe so we just stood in front of the Christmas tree at President and Sister Cardon's home. We had our Family Home Evening there the Monday before Christmas.

We had a Christmas eve party in the ancillary housing where we live and then a Christmas brunch at the mission home on Christmas day. We took lots of pictures of the events but couldn't choose which ones to add so we just decided to put President Smith's African gray parrot on display. He has taught him some missionary phrases. The parrot says, 'The Book of Mormon is true.' and 'Will you go to church?'

The day after Christmas we took a trip a couple of hours northeast of Accra to see the Volta Dam which backs up the Volta River to create Lake Volta, the largest man-made reservoir in the world. On the way we passed the Shai Hills Reserve, and though we didn't go in, the baboons were on the roadside so we could take their pictures. We decided we need a camera with more zoom capacity than 3x so we can get closer pictures without getting any closer.

The trip included a boat ride on the Volta River. The 'Sinchee Scenic Boat Ride' is a popular tourist site that has a rest area with picnic huts (above), a playground, and the boat harbor or should I say platform (below).

There were four couples that were on this excursion--Brown, Empey, Stubbs, and Wall. This is our touring craft and though I look like I'm the bravest, we are waiting for the young boatman to invite us aboard. While we are waiting for our husbands, a frog in the shallow water has our attention.

We are off! This is an island on the Volta River that we will circle around to sites beyond.

(We tried adding a video clip of a native canoeing from this island to the mainland. It is at the end of this post because we aren't sure how to mesh the video and photo images together.)

This arch bridge over the Volta River was built by the Italians in 1956. It is the main road to Ho and makes an awesome reflection in the water.

These huts along the riverbank had a lot of activity going on. It was bath day and many were taking the opportunity to clean up in the river.

We are back at the Sinchee Park and these children are anxious to see the strange white people getting off the boat. They also love to see their images on the camera viewer.

We finally arrive at the Volta dam. This earthen dam was built by the Italians as was the bridge.

As the Volta Reservoir is channeled to pass through six generators, this creates the power for most of Ghana. This is a bird's eye view of the power plant from the top of the dam.

It was a hot tour of the dam and so we are ready to enjoy our lunch in this air-conditioned hotel. Christmas decorations are still up and there is a live band to entertain us with Christmas songs (with an African beat) while we make our choices from the buffet.

Elder Brown took this photo of the dam from the patio of the hotel where we ate lunch.

Our last stop on our way home was at the Cedi Bead Factory. It was a return trip for a few of us but those who had not been there enjoyed the bead making process. These beads are the most expensive and are displayed in a glass case.

The owner, named Cedi, and his family live on the premises and they were preparing their fufu and ground nut soup for the evening meal. This is our first experience of actually watching the fufu-making process. It's rather long but we hope you find it as interesting as we did.

The video below is of the man canoeing across the Volta River.

This last video clip was at the missionary Christmas party program. It was supposed to be before the group picture of missionaries. We are learning that we need to be more frequent bloggers if we want to share all of our adventures. We visited a cattle farm (we'd say ranch) during the holidays but that will have to be on another post. We will end by wishing everyone a very HAPPY NEW YEAR. I'm sure 2010 will be a continuing adventure. May you all be blessed throughout the year. Love Elder and Sister Brown