= Sunday, we attended church at the Mfuom Branch. Some of the testimonies were in English. This is a small branch, but larger than the branch in Turkey. A little of what I heard: Jesus sacrificed. Can you also sacrifice? God will give us strength to come and serve Him. We are all learning. Just come to the church.
= Home, we marveled that when you snap a plantain in half, it sounds like a stick breaking; a banana won't do that. We broke our fast, and we worked on medical issues and then read scriptures together.
= Monday, the "road" from our house was blocked by the construction of a drainage ditch. Because we were late for the morning meeting, there wasn't time to print a list of the 60+ new apartment maintenance issues I had extracted from housing visits.
= That actually worked out well. I wound up submitting them directly to those who need to take action, and we can look at their status next week. Elder Barilleau showed me a periodic financial task he wanted to transfer from Linux to Excel so someone else can do it when he leaves.
= Tuesday, we brought the plantain stalk indoors. We worked on mission tasks. The Internet connection quit. So, we came home early and attended noon Toastmasters in Alabama via Zoom from our house in Ghana. It was good to see a founding member who doesn't get to attend much and see many guests give table topics.
= Wednesday at the mission compound, Sister Rebecca added our plantains to some from Sister Barilleau and some from another source and made plantain chips for us and for Sister Barilleau: great treats. Internet quit again at the office; so, we went to the house.
= At the house, I glued a rear backup sensor of the truck, loosened by whatever cracked the edge of the bumper, back into place. Before the night was over, I was achieving the same results with Excel that Elder Barilleau had produced with Linux utilities. When we were ready to go to sleep, Sister Morgan asked Steph to summarize major medical issues for Sister Morgan to pass to the Area Presidency, which had just begun to ask for this information. It became a late night.
= Thursday, we demonstrated why we need a four-wheel drive vehicle here. The truck settled in mud in the short time it took for me to close the gate. The right rear wheel caught some cement in front of the gate, and the truck made it out of the mud when Steph gunned it in reverse. We didn’t run into any of the debris around the drainage ditch. The last long stretch out of where we live was covered in water that might have been deep enough to cover the tailpipe, but we made it through. Getting through was a real blessing. At each stage, we could have blocked the only way in and out for hours, and the truck (unlike small vehicles here) was too heavy for men to lift.
= Someone noted that our driver-side front tire was low, and we had just added air recently; the verdict: the rim was cracked! Potholes don’t play. I alternated between working at the computer and working in the shipping containers behind the office. By 4 PM, I had found and sorted clothing left by departing missionaries that missionaries in the field could use.
= The water had receded on our "road" by the time we headed home. I called missionaries to have them check their smoke/carbon monoxide detectors. We worked mission-related stuff until 9:45.
= Friday, we had a roof leak from hours of rain at sunrise. A river of mud had washed down from a “road” above, raising the dirt around our neighbor’s plantains by at least eight inches. That same mud was what the road just below our gate consisted of now. We drove/slid down the path and reached the grate at the bottom without drifting into a wall on either side!
= While we worked at the office, our truck was taken for maintenance a second time. This time it came back with a new rim and had been cleaned inside and out. When we left the office, we picked up KFC, watched Netflix, and left the world behind.
= Saturday, medical issues and documentation occupied the morning. The rest of the day was mostly ours. I updated the journal and the blog.
People will walk an hour to church; our walk from the vehicle is short, and you might find an egg.
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