Missionary Work

Today was the first day I actually feel like a missionary.

We work hard every day, but to be honest, most days feel just like any other day back home (aside from the hustle and bustle of Accra outside the office).

Kids from Accra outside our office (they came to visit the temple)

We traveled to Cape Coast this week to find hospitals and meet with the new Mission President there. In the Cape Coast mission, we have 140 missionaries and occasionally they need a good hospital. They can be hard to find. It is our job to find and evaluate the hospitals for the church. Needless to say, we were pretty excited to find a good, solid, and CLEAN hospital. Cape Coast Regional Hospital has about 200 beds, a three bed ICU, an ER, and a nice OPD (out patient department).

Cape Coast Regional Hospital

One of the chapels in Cape Coast

I met a wonderful family practice physician (Dr Kennedy) and he took us for an extensive tour. He promised to watch out for our missionaries and told me to call if I ever ran into trouble.  This was the work part of the day, and actually it went really well. Whilst we were about this business today, we had a couple of great experiences.

As we wandered the wards during visiting hours, there was a woman who came running up to us essentially in tears because she saw our name tags and knew that we were Mormon missionaries. She is widowed and comes to Ghana frequently to work in a nearby orphanage. She had a sick child in the hospital, not doing well. She felt strongly that he just needed a priesthood blessing, but was beside herself as she didn’t have a clue how to find someone to do it…until she saw a couple of missionaries walking down the path. We had the wonderful opportunity to administer to her child and she seemed very content and at peace by the time we left. It’s hard to describe how privileged we felt just to be in the right spot at the right time. We felt the Lord was using us to help her in a desperate hour.

Baby Frances in his hospital bed

While we were leaving, another man came to us and told us he was a member as well, and his wife was sick with malaria. She’d been in the hospital there for a month, and was now needing blood. She was doing ok, but she needed a blessing. He is in the bishopric in one of the wards, but most priesthood holders here (even the ones with significant responsibility) are new and do not have a lot of experience. I had the opportunity to help him administer to his wife, and this as well was another one of those choice spiritual experiences.

It feels great to be useful—especially in these ways!