the routine...

African Nights--gotta love telephoto

We spent the month catching up. Our daily routine hasn't changed much. Mostly our missionaries remain healthy. From a health standpoint, December is going well. We have set a goal when we first arrived to have each of our missions with less than three cases of malaria per month (about 30 cases for our area). You might say it was optimistic considering most of the ten missions we work with were averaging about 20 a piece.

We have been aggressively campaigning the use of mosquito nets at night and daily anti-malaria meds during the day...and we have almost made it. Last month we had only one mission reporting over goal and in that mission we have seen the numbers cut in half.


Elder Omokoro--sick with malaria in Lagos (our worst case since July)

We beg, we plead, we command, we bribe where necessary, and we even use scare tactics...and it is working. I show them a flyer from earlier this year and it helps illustrate the seriousness of the situation.

On a lighter note, the missionary work has never been stronger. On December 10th, an entire branch was baptized in a river outside Bibiani. We see these kinds of stories routinely. This congregation has been meeting for the last few years. All have testimonies and have been faithful--even paying tithing. They have been pleading for missionaries to come into their area, for some time an permission was finally received to push the boundaries of the mission northward and the missionaries started teaching en mass... This photo is from Elder Zoll (sr couple) show the group on their way to the river. Instantly thirty members, andthirty more preparing for next month. Instant Branch and soon to be Ward.

Elder Zolls Pic--on the way to the baptism

We spent much of December at home or in the office with our faces in the computers.

We have been working with a program called World Joy (www.worldjoyghana.org) in preparation for the Asunafo health clinic opening in January. We have been writing community education material.

We are writing basically a health manual that the nurses can use to teach classes to community leaders in the area. These community leaders will then go out into the community and teach their family and friends. These will be flip-charts--each one can be used in a mini lesson. We have finally turned in our first draft. Turns out this was a bigger project than we had anticipated. We did lessons that include malaria, diarrhea, dehydration, typhoid fever, schistosomiasis, tuberculosis, home safety, respiratory infections, and skin infections. We kept eying our January schedule worrying that we would not get finished—as January is where we gear up again—safe to travel and many hospitals and areas to visit. We both breathed big sighs of relief on Friday as we turned in our material. We will travel up to Asunafo in February for the launch of this new project.

Re-stocking supplies in the infirmary

 We continue to work at the MTC. Currently there is a great bunch. Last week we were able to hire a licensed nurse to come in and give Immunizations as we were told we needed someone with a Ghanain license.  She will work out fine. We love the MTC.

Double-teaming Sister Jackson

Sister Fife's "mommy lectures"

"things that make getting your shot easier..."

Lunch at the MTC with President and Sister Froerer

We now do two lectures with each group. Sister Fife gives the introduction to health at the MTC on their first day, and I give the introduction to health in the mission field on their last day. She teaches the "mommy lectures"--you know, the things your mommy was suppose to teach you, but sometimes you forget like take a shower every day, clean your room, etc. President and Sister Froerer are winding down. They return to the states in 3 weeks and then we will have a new MTC president. We continue our weekly tradition with them on Wednesdays—we attend a temple session with the missionaries in the morning and go to the new KFC after. We still haven’t got tired of it. We miss our friends the Pages who have been home for a month now.

Christmas came and went. We spent the day on Friday with the Accra missionaries in their annual Christmas conference—we had dinner, a devotional, and watched a talent show. It was fun to see the missionaries let lose a bit. On Christmas Eve we had a breakfast with the area missionaries at Elder Curtis’ home. Then on Christmas day we drove to the mission home down in Cape Coast and spent the day with our good friends  at the mission home—president and sister Shulz, Elder and sister Zoll, and Elder and sister Asay. It was so relaxing and enjoyable that we forgot we were even in Africa for a while. We had a turkey (from France) dinner with all the fix’ns, we watched a BYU basketball game and a Christmas movie, and we played cards. This helped us both as we were both feeling down about not being at home.

This month I have been teaching the Gospel Doctrine class in the Jamestown Branch here in Accra. I think it is going well—we are still working on some cultural barriers. Progress is slow. Michelle is teaching in Relief Society.

This week we are researching hospitals in clinic here in the west part of Ghana for the Accra mission. We will hit the ground running after the holidays tracking them down. This will take most of the month. We are preparing for another big trip in February into Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Overall we are doing well.

…From Accra

Elder and Sister Fife