Oh! What a day! Today is the busiest day that we have when preparing for the seminar! This was our last day before over 400 people descend upon us. On top of the seminar we have masons working on the training center. Everything was going as planned; we got up extra early because today was hog killing day. Steve had to be at Divine’s village at 7:00am to pick up the pigs. Divine had a friend that killed the pigs for us. While Steve was picking up and delivering the pigs to Kulkpeni I got everything ready for the mason. As soon as Zorash got here this morning we started washing the corn that had been fermenting for the past 2 days. The stuff smelled just like silage that the farmers fed the cows during the winter in Iowa.
As soon as Steve got back to the mission house we headed to Kulkpeni with another load. When we were in the middle of Yendi Mr. Iddrisu called and said that the masons needed more cement. We turned around and headed back to the mission house to give Mr. Iddrisu the money so he could buy more cement. While we were at Kulkpeni, Dawda, the mason, called and said that they needed more buckets to fetch water and more head pans because there were plenty of people working. He said that we must hurry or they would be standing around doing nothing. We were 20 minutes away from the mission house so we called Zorash and told her where the buckets and head pans were so we did not have to return immediately to Yendi.
As we were returning to Yendi we got a phone call from the Social Welfare officer that is in charge of helping us renew the Child Center’s license. We turned the report in on the first week of November. She told us that our report had gone to Accra for review and had been rejected because we did not have a copy of the Beneficiaries Ownership Profile attached to the Child Center’s report. This is a new document that has just been required since March; it is so new that it has not been added to the list of requirements for renewing the license. We had already filled out the documents but we had not received the official form that the Registrar General’s office generates. Please! We called our friend Awal (pronounced like “owl”)who works at the auditor’s office and asked for help. He told us to come on to Tamale and he would go with us to the Registrar General’s office.
Steve wanted to leave immediately but Zorash and I had to grind the corn for the breakfast porridge. While we were grinding the corn Steve took the masons’ their lunch money and got things organized for us to leave. After we ground the corn we stopped by the bread bakery and picked up the bread they will need at the seminar for breakfast tomorrow morning. We loaded the bread and the ground corn in the truck we were taking to Tamale. Dawda wanted to be paid before we left because he knew they would finish before we got back from Tamale. Before we left Yendi we went to the job site and paid the masons. Kulkpeni is on our way to Tamale so we stopped by and dropped off the bread and ground corn. We usually buy lunch for the men and women that cut up and fry the meat but today we asked Rita to cook for them because we did not have time to get their lunch. We told her to just use what she needed from the seminar food and we would replace it later if needed.
When we got to Tamale (2 hours later) Awal was waiting for us; he had copies of the original documents but he did not have the official document that was generated by the Registrar General’s office. At this point we were not even sure what we needed; we were so happy that Awal had taken pity on us and went with us to the Registrar General’s office to help us get the document we needed. We made it well worth Awal’s time for helping us.
We went to the Social Welfare office to turn in the documents and had to pay to send the documents by EMS (a special mail service) to Accra to be put with the report. Now, what do you think the chances are that the document will ever meet up with the report? At least we have done what we can!
We did not have any other business in Tamale so we headed back to Yendi. We got to Yendi just before dark. We were happy we did not have to travel after dark. On our way in we stopped and bought Ibuprofen for the cooks tomorrow; they will need it after standing on their feet all day preparing over 1,000 meals!
Today is our son Aaron’s birthday!
Please keep the seminar in your prayers especially the people traveling.
In HIS Service,
Steve and Kandie
