Weekly Schedule

Thanks to everyone who has been following our blog and for all your wonderful comments - the invasion of the flying termites definitely generated the most responses so far! Many of you have asked about our daily/weekly schedule, so we thought we'd give an update of what we did this past week in Ho and throughout the our region.

We were called to be "member and leadership support" missionaries in the Ghana Accra Mission. We help support 3 branches and 2 groups in an area about a big as the distance between Provo and Logan, but with a lot less asphalt for the roads. We work a lot with the local church leaders in providing training and supporting them with their needs. This can be anything from teaching at a Sunday or mid-week activity or helping with a traditional Ghanaian funeral, which is where our truck comes in handy.

We picked up the casket and drove it to the church for a wonderful funeral ceremony

Teaching about modern-day prophets at a mid-week activity at the branch in Kpando

We also spend a lot of time with the local youth in formal activities like Family Home Evening, Young Men & Young Women night and teaching their classes at church. Informally, most of the youth stop by our house during the week to say hello and have something to eat. Unfortunately, many of the kids here come from broken homes and many of them don't have the money or the opportunity to have even one full meal a day, so we've become pretty adept at cranking out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (or Nutella when the jelly runs out) when they come over. They're humble, polite and love to sing and learn about the gospel.

Each week we host about 20 youth at our house for Family Home Evening

Sarah working on Personal Progress with the young women in the Kpando branch. They'd never seen a selfie pole!

Each week we work more closely with one of the branches or groups by attending their church meetings with them on Sunday, teaching at mid-week, doing clean-up at the church building and meeting with the local branch presidency or group leadership. One of our favorite parts of the week is going on to visit the less-active members in each area. Some of them only speak the local Ewe dialect but they're so welcoming and happy to have us in their homes.

Going to visit the Ntifo family. We always bring a loaf of the local sweet bread with us.

This is Alphonse and his family. We've found that most Africans won't smile when you take their
picture even though they're such happy people

One of our favorite events last week was helping to coordinate a trip to the Accra Temple for members in the Ho and Tsito branches. They had 17 members going to the temple for the first time and many had never been inside before. One sister told Sarah that it felt like she had just entered heaven once she stepped inside. Their joy at being in the temple and the spirit we felt during that trip was as strong as we've ever felt.

We've been praying to know what the Lord would have us focus on during our year here in Ghana and, after the trip to the temple, we realized that we should do everything we can to help these local members receive the blessings of the temple. It's not easy for a Ghanian to come up with the money to cover the transport costs to Accra and to pay the food and lodging fees. As we drove back to Ho, we figured that it cost about $20 US to send an African member to the temple and we'd like to enlist your help in the goal we've set to take 100 adults and 150 youth to the temple during the year that we're here. Many of you have asked for ways that you could help while we're here. If you and your family would like to join us in reaching this goal, please send a check payable to John or Sarah Bodine at 44 North 1200 East in Lindon, UT. We're sorry that we don't have a more formal 501c corp or Go Fund Me account to make this happen in a more tax deductible manner, but we promise that 100% of the funds will be used to support these temple trips.  

The members from Ho and Tsito at the Ghana Accra Temple