The MTC

Our first task here in Ghana has us focused on the missionary training center  (MTC). We are in charge of missionary health, immunizations, and health education. We can already tell that this will be one of the most rewarding parts of our mission. In these first two weeks we’ve traveled to the MTC several times, and will do so several times for each cycle of missionaries. The MTC is located in Tema (about 30 km from our flat). From what I can see, Tema as a whole is very poor. There are areas that look like refugee camps (only permanent).

Looking at Tema from the Tema highway, just down from the MTC

The MTC building itself sits next to a chapel and the complex is very nice. This is a mile or two from the above photo.

The MTC (the compound is beautiful)

Each group of missionaries comes for about three weeks, then there is a day of rest for the MTC president and his wife (President and Sister Froerer), and then a new batch missionaries start to arrive. We see them on their second day to get their immunizations started, then two other days in the first week, then on their last day. Every other batch has French and English combined. Presently there are 43 missionaries, split evenly. There are 6 sisters, and 40 elders. We have one elder here from California, one from Australia, one from New Zealand, one from Samoa, and all the rest from Africa. Most of the French speaking elders and sisters are from Cote D’Ivoire and Benin or the Congo. They will serve in Cote D’Ivoire and Benin. The rest are from Ghana, Sierra Leone, or Nigeria.

What can I say about the MTC? It’s a spiritual place. These kids love the Lord. There are a few differences we are finding between the Ghana MTC and the Provo MTC. First is the age of the missionaries. The average age I think is about 23 for the elders and and may be higher for the sisters (I've been told there are no age limits for sisters so you may see them into their 30's). These kids are a bit more mature. They really have sacrificed. For most, they have worked years just to save the money for their passports and yellow fever immunizations. Before the mission call, most have never before had immunizations.  When we teach, we teach basics…I really mean basics. We teach them how to use the bathroom. (Som elders, for example have to be given explicit directions on how to use the toilets and the toilet paper.) Hand washing! We had our lecture today and  then had a run on soap from the dispensary. Let me tell you, these elders are SO grateful for everything we teach and do. They hate shots and they love shots. We’ve had to develop a little “lesson” on how to get shots, and after we did this, things seemed a whole lot better. We now have a contest with them to see who can make the best face and who can make the worst face while they are getting the shot, then take their picture. It’s a terrific distraction; plus it’s fun for us to review the pictures at night.

Our favorite missionary from our first batch hamming it up for the camera!

One of our tips is not to look at the needle.

Glad to have the last round of shots over with!

You can tell the French speaking elders by their headphones

Since our French is too rusty, we are using a translator

Last night, while we were going over pictures we kept seeing one elders big broad happy smile in a few too many pictures. We figured out afterwards that he had went through the line twice—I guess we won’t worry so much about him and hepatitis B (he’s now double immune).

These elders are SOO happy to be here. A while ago, one elder arrived a day late with a huge smile on his face. He was caked in mud and his bag was in shambles. The ‘bus’ that he was in was hijacked, stripped clean, and all the people were thrown out into the mud. The bags were all emptied into the mud. So when he finally made it he was a mess but he didn’t miss a beat, he was as happy and grateful to be there as any.

As usual, Sister Fife in the middle of things

Many arrive with one not enough clothes. Getting clothes here is a bit of a problem—you can’t  ship anything here—no packages as they just won’t make it. So projects from the states (collecting clothes and such), haven’t really been successful unless someone brings them over in the bags on the plane.

Showing off their "war wounds"

Now for malaria. This is one of my problems. We’ve treated far too many missionaries for malaria these last few weeks, especially in the Accra and Cape Coast missions (both here in Ghanna). The problem as I see it, is that it’s far too common of an experience. The mission presidents really do have other weightier matters to deal with, so the push for the elders to take their prophylactic doxycycline is not a priority. Mosquito nets here are a must! But we are far too lax. Its more common than the cold, and the medications (Coartem) works really well if you treat fast. So rather than emphasize netting and doxy, it becomes easier to just say, well we will just treat it when it comes. So this is becoming my battle. It was just a few months ago they treated a case of cerebral malaria (brain infected) and we could seriously loose an missionary if we become too lax. Almost all of our African missionaries have lived around malaria their whole lives, and have had it several times—so you can see it is extremely difficult to get these guys to use their nets and take their doxy.

Typical Missionary Apartment in Accra Mission

Water. What can I say. There is NO clean tap water in any country that we are in here in west Africa. So this is a major problem. Each missionary carries a filter bottle that the church provides—these are extremely effective and since started, our disease rates have dropped in half. Funny story. They had an elder this last month here in the Accra Mission, but serving in one of the villages up north. Anyway, he was really thirsty and didn’t have his water filter—so he just found a mud puddle and decided to have a little drink. He of course became sick and had to be treated. He said that since he was a missionary on the Lords errand, God would protect him. I know the Lord does protect his missionaries, but as his mission president put it, he doesn’t protect you when you do stupid things—so use some common sense!

Food. No food is clean. We teach missionaries the mantra—cook it, peel it, boil it or forget it. I deal with missionaries daily for “runny tummies”. This is a problem. One elder, I treated for Typhoid fever last week after a group of elders all got sick after eating at an investigators home. This is very common.  It’s sad. My advice is not to eat at homes or huts, but this is like asking an elder not to shake hands—it’s so ingrained in what they do. An elder will eat anywhere and anything and shake hands with anything that moves!

Sanitizing the fruit (bleach water in the sink)

Every missionary has malaria medication on their person. Each mission home is stocked with cipro for infectious diarrhea.

Upon entrance to the MTC, all the African elders gets “dewormed” with medications, and they are extremely grateful—because they feel so good without their intestinal worms. I’ll say no more on this subject for now, except to say that they we all will be dewormed when we leave because most of us will need it!

We also have the opportunity to serve in the temple about twice a week. We hope to attend with a group of missionaries through the temple on Thursday. This is a difference—in the states, most elders have been endowed in the temple before they came. Here they take them through after a quick temple prep class at the MTC. This is for many the only time in their lives they will be able to attend the temple, there  being only two temples in west Africa. We love this opportunity.

I took this photo from inside the stake center

Looking forward to the challenges of a new week. We have two more visits scheduled at the MTC. We are preparing for the new mission presidents and hope to travel to the Cape Coast Mission sometime next week.

...Elder and Sister Fife

The Streets of Accra

A small sample of the streets of Accra

You're Welcome!

You are welcome!  It’s the first thing you hear when meeting most Ghanaians (pronounced ga-NAY-uns). It may sound a little backwards, but it's really is a beautiful thing. It’s said from the heart, and every time we hear it, we truly do feel welcome. We finally arrived in Ghana this last week and have settled into our ‘flat’ here in Alema court.

Michelle on the Front Porch

View from the front porch

 

Street in front of our flat

We’ve also moved into our office, it is located next door to the temple, which is the most beautiful building here in Accra. I think we have the best view in the whole building, our window looks right onto the temple and the angel Moroni in perfectly centered.  We love our little office, though as of yet it is still quite bare, but Michelle is working on that. Our office is on the third floor, which in Africa is called the second, the ground floor being labeled 0.  We're still getting used to that!

Our office building next to the temple

Michelle messing around in front of the office

Our office is one floor below three general authorities. Michelle and I met with them on Thursday, and they were so gracious and warm. We felt at home. Elder Cardin is being released next week as the area president, and Elder Dixon will take over. Elder Sitati will remain as councilor and we will have another (Elder Curtis--newly called) by the end of July. They are great men, and we are excited to be working so closely with them. We are used to seeing them speak at conference on TV, but not used to being in their offices, and meeting their wives and such. We will be blessed. We have six new mission presidents coming in our area in July..so that means we are gearing up for travel in July August time-frame for medical training and missionary health review. There is a new mission here it is the Cotonou-Benin which is previously part of Cote D' Ivoire (The Ivory Coast). The local missionarries here have been in members home, and the mission president will move back shortly and the mission should be up and running again. The old mission home was taken over, and I think burned, and is not suitable for use after the latest political unrest. We probably won't be traveling there...at least not in the coming months--until things settle down a bit more. But we are happy to have the mission back up and running. There are four missions in Nigeria and we will probably spend a couple weeks there. There is a little bit of trouble in Lagos, but the rest of the country is safe. There are three missions here in Ghana (one is the MTC, one in Accra, and one in Cape Coast--we will head there first). There is also a mission in Seirra Leone as well as lots of humanitarian projects which we hope to in some way be involved in. I'm looking forward to visiting this mission I think the most. We may travel there second...who knows, but we need to get our French polished up a bit more first. 

This week we have tried to orient ourselves to this area of Accra. We feel safe here…except on the roads, but we are getting a crash course in driving. It is very unlike driving anywhere else. Let’s just say it keeps one on his toes. We should be getting our official Ghanaian drivers license Monday, and am told that itself is quite an experience. In the car, we carry with us Books of Mormon, pass along cards, a first aid kit and a few boxes of Malaria medication—it is quite a combination. We have been told to have a little money for bribes (in case we get pulled over), so we always carry that as well, but hopefully we won’t find ourselves in that position—one never knows.

We haven’t really done much work yet. We are preparing for our first visit to the MTC in Ghana. We have a trip planned for tomorrow. We have a last set of immunizations to give before the current missionaries leave early Tuesday morning.  We will stay overnight at the MTC Monday.

We find our experience here much the same as our experience in Dominica, so we really didn’t experience much of a culture shock. Frequently, however this is a common experience. In this last batch, two missionaries from the states turned right around and went home as soon as they stepped off the plane. It really can be scary if you are not prepared. A few things we’ve noticed however that are different. First, the people seem a lot warmer and friendlier. Second, there is a lot more disease apparent. Lots of polio victims begging at the intersection etc. This week, missionaries from Accra have been treated for malaria and Shistosomiasis. (Who knew in medical school, I would ever see these things?) I received a call this week from one of the humanitarian workers about a boy in a village north of here. (We do a lot of advising over the phone and internet.) Anyway, he has a hole in his neck which doesn’t bother him until he eats, then his food tends to come out of the front of his neck…and this is somewhat bothersome to him (go figure). Anyway, from the photos, it looks quite apparent that he has a thyroglossal fistulae, and we got them in touch with a surgeon here in Accra—hopefully they can repair this, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see him just live with it, as long as it is not infected. Third, the dress standard…is quite unique. We’ve both noticed that the women dress very modest. The Sunday dresses are striking! And we’ve noticed that the woman can carry anything that you can imagine on top of their heads without missing a beat. We’ve seen trays of elaborately stacked peanuts, laundry, tons of baskets, propane tanks, and even on the corner, there is a woman who carries around a whole little display case full of bakes…its very impressive. Michelle has been quite taken by the baby straps. Any woman with a baby or toddler usually has them strapped to her back, where they seem quite content.

  This lady has a display case on her head

We had a long, but great final week at the MTC. We spent most of the week training on the church’s medical records and computers, one day was spent reviewing  Tropical Medicine. I think after learning what we were about to come up against in Sub-Saharan Africa, Michelle seemed a little less enthusiastic about coming.  You know… worms, bugs and parasites—malaria, typhoid, meningitis, cholera, shistosomiasis, TB and many, many more. 

We left the MTC with 400 missionaries last Monday

 Now we are here and somewhat settled, so let’s go to work!

Elder & Sister Fife

On The Edge

"Come to the edge," he said.

"No, we'll fall."

"Come to the edge," he said.

"NO! we'll fall."

"COME TO THE EDGE!"

So we came to the edge...and were pushed,

then we flew.

         (Old French Poem as quoted by Elder Holland)

We've begun our journey and we are walking up to the edge. We made it to the MTC (missionary training center) and are ready to fly. Hopefully we won't need to be pushed. West Africa here we come!

No one leaves the MTC without a picture in front of the world map!

Finished the first week of training without any bumps or bruises. Actually we've thoroughly enjoyed this first week. We've met a lot of amazing people. Our group has about 30 couples and we are amazed at the diverse places that everyone is being sent to. There are few couples staying in the states. Four going to Africa (2 in South Africa, 1 in the Congo, and us in the Africa West Area.) Other places include Russia, Berma (no proselyting missionaries there yet), Honduras, Brazil, Mongolia, Siberia, Korea, and several sets for some reason on their way to London.

This is our district. (The three young elders were our teachers.)

 South Africa, Honduras, West Africa, and Brazil

Apparently we are fairly young to be going on a SENIOR mission. We found this out the hard way when we were stopped in the hall and chastised for being "to close" and without our companions. (Who knew it was frowned upon to hold hands with the young looking sister missionaries!) They must be getting use to us now as we held hands all day today and didn't even get a comment. I even snuck in a kiss...course I waited until the hall was empty.

We are learning French albeit slowly. We hope as time goes on,  this will improve dramatically. Hope to be ready before we have to tour in the French missions. We have time to walk around the temple grounds in the evenings and will spend the day tommorow in the temple.

Messing around in front of the Provo temple.

Over all, a pleasant way to start the mission.

... Elder Fife

We got our missionary name tags the first morning.  It was pretty awesome to pull them out of the bag and see ‘Sister Fife’ (me!) on a missionary name tag.  I promptly pinned it on and viola I looked like an official missionary!  I’m not real sure I feel like one yet though.  I was doing my homework that night (yes!  They gave us homework the first day!)  reading in Preach My Gospel and it said that as a missionary, I am an authorized representative of Jesus Christ.  Wow~  not just a representative of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints but of Jesus Christ.

I think I had better start shaping up a bit more!   We have been so busy getting the house ready to go these last four months and gathering all the ‘things’ that we would need for the next 18 months and packing and seeing family and the list goes on, that I feel I have kinda slacked on my spiritual preparation.  I’m mostly there, but not quite ready.   Not quite as ready as my bags are anyway!  So I really wanted to take these next two weeks and just let the world slide into the background for once and let my Savior take center stage.  I am so ready for that.

Surprisingly, one of the greatest places in the MTC is the cafeteria!  For one, the food is amazing.  We are finding that we are eating every time we turn around and not just a little bit!  We are going to have to start going to the gym if we aren’t more careful.   Or maybe we’ll just quit worrying about it and enjoy it~  because once we get to Africa I think the food situation will probably take a sharp decline!  (I’m not so excited to try cane rat)  It’s also the only time we really get to hang out with the ‘juniors’.  There are A LOT of them and they are all so impressive in their white shirts and ties.  At dinner one night, one sister commented that of all the hundreds and hundreds of people there that they were all smiling and happy.  And it was so true, smiles and laughter everywhere.  This is a place of joy and I am sooo happy to be here!  We even ran into a few familiar faces from home in the cafeteria! 

Missionaries in the cafeteria.

We have seen Jonathon Bahr and Danny Anderson, it was so fun to see my youth from back home!  It really is a small world sometimes. I gave Danny a big hug after which he said “I don’t think you can do that anymore Sister Fife”  which is probably true-  no more hugs, how sad!  (Both looked great moms!  Heathy and very happy J)

I am really missing my kids.  They ask us to focus on the things here and try to leave our home life at home.  But I'm having a few withdrawal symptoms!  Hopefully it will get better as we go along.  Probably by the time we get to Africa life will be so busy I won't have all this time to miss them. I love you guys!  You are in my prayers all the time. 

                                                                                                                                       .....Sister Fife