= Sunday, Steph got us to church by 0851 in intermittent rain only to learn that individuals from our branch would be baptized at the Hemang chapel. We and the ones to attend the baptism left after taking the Sacrament. We arrived at the end of the Sacrament meeting in Hemang. I attended Elders Quorum, which reviewed the duties of the Aaronic priesthood [as held by Levites] and the Melchizedek priesthood [as held by Abraham and Moses]. Steph attended Relief Society; the ladies discussed a Conference talk.
= After those meetings, each person was baptized in turn. "{name}, having been commissioned of Jesus Christ, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen." After they dressed in dry clothes, each individual had hands laid on head and with authority was confirmed a member of the church, was given the gift of the Holy Ghost, and was given a unique blessing as led by the Spirit.
= At home, we had only a little water in the pipes to wipe with frugally, the pump connection having broken again. My phone now had no Internet data, our home router ran out last week, and we didn't know how much Steph would be able to do with her phone until it ran out again. We did what we could.
= Monday, we had the usual 0900 office meeting. I inspected wooden phone boxes to be used by missionaries to keep phones from being snaked out through barred windows; and, I labeled used clothing and packaged some to be sent to missionaries who had requested it. Steph had a lengthy medical meeting with President Morgan as usual.
= Elder Bahi brought the remainder of a meal he had prepared for other missionaries last night: cat. Steph and I got to taste some: good, if a little spicy for me, texture similar to dark meat chicken. After a two-hour update to my phone, it had Internet access again, but we don't know how much data we can use from it before the end of the month when it renews. Steph and I picked up test results for an Elder and at a pharmacy found enough deworming pills for the half of the missionaries that will need them soon (some individuals every three months, some every six months).
= Tuesday, we worked from home. In addition to our usual duties, we had been studying Twi; it's hard not hearing it, but we couldn't waste bandwidth to do that, not knowing how much data we had left. Steph had received a PDF intended to be a booklet of half-page size, but the pages were in regular sequence instead of in the sequence needed to print two pages to each side of a sheet of paper. I copied the data to Word in the needed 60-page sequence.
= Wednesday, I had hoped to do laundry at the Barilleaus' in advance of tomorrow's Takoradi trip, but Sister Barilleau suggested using President Morgan's washer. Mistake: he has little privacy as it is; I deserved the chewing out. The booklet I created for Steph failed: the pages (snapshotted individually from PDF) printed blurry, and the printer refused to honor the setting needed to avoid printing back sides of the page upside down.
= I did successfully make a change to a funding workbook for Elder Barilleau. Steph did finish describing medical issues in eMed, a process that would have been easier if she had been able to see from home what she had already loaded there. Home, a new pump was arranged so that water came through it from the overhead polytank even with the pump off; we left it off for the night for the connection to cure. I retrieved information that our middle daughter, Michelle, needed for a job application.
= Thursday, the house router had Internet again. And after resetting the pump, we had good water pressure. Passports and payment cards in hand for tomorrow's Ghana non-citizen card renewals, we picked up deworming pills for Takoradi at the new pharmacy near Life Clinic. We dropped off other pills with an Elder in Kissi.
= At the hotel in Takoradi at about 3:30, Steph found a top and bottom that would work as a bathing suit. But a request for medical information kept us in place until it was too late to swim. We brought the deworming pills to the Takoradi mission office and Elders there (previously our Elders) led us to the mission home a few car lengths away.
= Sister Hellands showed us around their home: two stories with bunk beds and bathrooms for 10 plus a VIP room. When President Hellands joined us, we visited for almost an hour. Then I called a halt and we headed for the hotel.
= Friday, Steph got us to the card renewal office by 0835. Someone at the surrounding bank - the agency leases a room - made a call and workers arrived by perhaps 0930. Identities were verified before lunch (except for the person picking up food for our group; his was handled on his return), but there was no progress in creating the cards. By 2:20, the agency agreed to let one person (me) pick up all our cards and the group drove back to Cape Coast. By 4, the agency agreed that no cards would be produced today and I should check back on Tuesday. (They tried; the machines just didn't cooperate.) We were home an hour after dark after a stop at KFC.
= Saturday, we started our fast by 12:30 and napped for hours. Then I did laundry (yea!). Steph worked on medical issues and prepared to lead a scripture discussion tomorrow. I prepared to teach the temple prep class again (compressed this time).
= I did successfully make a change to a funding workbook for Elder Barilleau. Steph did finish describing medical issues in eMed, a process that would have been easier if she had been able to see from home what she had already loaded there. Home, a new pump was arranged so that water came through it from the overhead polytank even with the pump off; we left it off for the night for the connection to cure. I retrieved information that our middle daughter, Michelle, needed for a job application.
= Thursday, the house router had Internet again. And after resetting the pump, we had good water pressure. Passports and payment cards in hand for tomorrow's Ghana non-citizen card renewals, we picked up deworming pills for Takoradi at the new pharmacy near Life Clinic. We dropped off other pills with an Elder in Kissi.
= At the hotel in Takoradi at about 3:30, Steph found a top and bottom that would work as a bathing suit. But a request for medical information kept us in place until it was too late to swim. We brought the deworming pills to the Takoradi mission office and Elders there (previously our Elders) led us to the mission home a few car lengths away.
= Sister Hellands showed us around their home: two stories with bunk beds and bathrooms for 10 plus a VIP room. When President Hellands joined us, we visited for almost an hour. Then I called a halt and we headed for the hotel.
= Friday, Steph got us to the card renewal office by 0835. Someone at the surrounding bank - the agency leases a room - made a call and workers arrived by perhaps 0930. Identities were verified before lunch (except for the person picking up food for our group; his was handled on his return), but there was no progress in creating the cards. By 2:20, the agency agreed to let one person (me) pick up all our cards and the group drove back to Cape Coast. By 4, the agency agreed that no cards would be produced today and I should check back on Tuesday. (They tried; the machines just didn't cooperate.) We were home an hour after dark after a stop at KFC.
= Saturday, we started our fast by 12:30 and napped for hours. Then I did laundry (yea!). Steph worked on medical issues and prepared to lead a scripture discussion tomorrow. I prepared to teach the temple prep class again (compressed this time).
On this day, drums were audible from somewhere in the woods beyond the chapel.
1 Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise;
2 For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue.
..
30 I will greatly praise the Lord with my mouth; yea, I will praise him among the multitude.
31 For he shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him from those that condemn his soul. 
Not shown: sugar and spices in a corner cabinet over the counter and an old scale (useful for splitting bags of pasta to use half a bag for a meal).
Alongside the national highway.
Like a fisherman who grouses about the fish that got away, I grouse about missing a photo of a cattle herder holding a cellphone: a mix of old and new.
Graveyard...
Have to get it home somehow
{Peace} Cold Storage
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