Arriving in Ghana

Sunday January 18, 2015

Today we arrived in Ghana.  We left the house yesterday morning at 8:15am and arrived at the Ghana Temple Complex today around 1pm.  Let’s just say it was a long, long day of travel.  The only glitch in our travel was after the doors were closed on the plane at JFK ready to head out to Ghana, the oxygen masks above our heads (only above Camron and I) just popped open and out dropped the masks.  Camron totally could have just put the panel back together, but no, of course the flight attendants said, “Don’t touch,” and they had to open the doors and have a maintenance man come aboard and put it back…a delay in leaving.  All in all, our flight left JFK about an hour late with the extra time spent loading the plane and waiting on the tarmac for take-off.  As we lifted off, I could hardly believe we were actually on our way.

10 hours overnight on a plane is a rough one.  With barely reclining seats, freezing temperatures, PA announcements coming on, crying babies, coughing and other noises, none of us got much sleep.  Before we knew it they turned the cabin lights fully on and started serving what they called  breakfast (a snack of crackers and cheese in a box).  My phone read 4:45am New York City time (or 2:45am Salt Lake time).  Ouch!  But it was 9:45am Ghana time so it was time to get going since we were 1 hour 25 minutes away from landing.

While the plane was frigid, the heat and humidity hit us immediately as we climbed down the steps of the plane, walked across the asphalt to head into the building.  Dennis the temple engineer met us at the airport with two vans.  We all hopped in the one with seats and the missionaries (2 elders, one from California and one from Ghana) put all our luggage in the other van.  It was full.  We had been warned that people at the airport would help or take your luggage and then want tips for helping out.  Camron & Mark kept telling them “no” we didn’t need their help, but they kept helping anyways.  In the end I think we ended up paying about $8 in $1 tips before we got away from them all.  It was pretty crazy!

There were people walking up and down in the middle of the busy roads with huge baskets of wares on their heads selling to anyone who would stop at an intersection.  And of course beggars all over the place.  It’s hard to not roll down the window and hand out $1 bills to those who were obviously physically handicapped, but that isn’t an option sitting in the back of a very full hot van. 

Literally just as Dennis tried to turn the van onto the temple grounds, the van died.  I mean really died.  Mark & Camron were looking and trying to figure it out, but said it looked like something major was leaking.  Thankfully we got to the temple before that happened, and even more thankfully the missionaries had all our luggage and had already unloaded right in front of the patron housing door so we didn’t have to haul all that weight in from the street.

Our sweet cook, Rose had made us a lunch of chicken drumsticks, salad and rice, along with papaya and pineapple.  Rose has been a member 29 years, has nine children, has been a stake RS president, has a huge smile with very uneven teeth and is kind and gracious and most likely grateful to get paid for three weeks to cook for our group.  Her English is a little hard to understand and I realized that often she doesn’t understand the questions we ask her.  Even though everyone here speaks English, there have been very few that I can understand easily.

Later as we were finishing up dinner, the crew from Nigeria arrived.  Ben, the patron housing manager had picked them up from the airport.  There are 8 men and 1 woman. I think I’ve met at least 20 people over all, which seem too numerous for me to remember. Language accents make it difficult to understand what everyone is saying.  So, it should be a crazy week ahead, but I’m praying for patience and miracles to help us along the way.