Missionary Experiences 2 plus

Fishing boats beached on the shores of a major bay west of Accra.

British English is the basis of Ghanaian national English, though it is definitely distinctively its own.  But many British expressions are in use.  For example, if you want to buy "gas" you want propane.  You put petrol (gasoline) or fuel (diesel) in cars.  Thus, you stop at a petrol station for a fill up, and there is no self-serve.  Attendants always pump the petrol or diesel. Now, there is a petrol station that we stop at in order to fill up sometimes.  Because people normally know who we are (the name-tags help 😀), it is common to be addressed as "Elder" with obvious basic understanding of what that means.  The first time we stopped at this particular place the attendant addressed me as Elder right off and soon asked if we could give him a Bible.  Sister Emfield said, "Do you mean a Book of Mormon?"  We did not have any Bibles with us at the time, but we did have a Book of Mormon.  He said yes, that he loved to read.  Well, we felt pretty good about it and gave him one.  The next time, we stopped in there, the attendant said that he was a member of the Church, and that his children attended a local ward but that he didn't go very often.  He asked us if we could give him a Book of Mormon, though, which we quickly did.  Perhaps we should patronize that station more often!  But, that is not the only place where we have had that kind of an experience.  The sheer number of our meetinghouses here astounds me.  I expect this is not the case in outlying villages, but in metropolitan areas they seem to be everywhere.  Just to illustrate:

This is a ward meetinghouse that sits at a road junction.  As you can see it is contained within a compound.  All Church owned buildings are, though that is not always the case with rented ones.  This is something that is standard here.  That is not surprising as middle class housing is all contained within such compounds that have their own maintenance and security staff.  Many important businesses (banks, pharmacies, etc.) have the same.  It goes without saying that upper class everything has the same.

Entry to those compounds are through gates such as this.  This is the entry into the compound of the same meetinghouse pictured above.

This is another view of the meetinghouse.  Notice that there are three buildings.  It is not unusual here to have three parallel buildings, side by side, that make up a meetinghouse.

Notice how the vines climb through the tree here.  Then the tree catches dead leaves and other material.  As a result, there can be quite a collection of organic matter.  This is in the city.  Out in the rain forest this process becomes extreme!  Life in the tropics.

Speaking of life in the tropics, it really knows how to rain here!!!

Stairways can become waterfalls.

Elder Emfield