We are in Accra. We arrived this afternoon. We had a good flight. Since it is Sunday the traffic from the airport to the hotel / apartment was very light. The place we stay has been built on a very small plot of land. To get the rooms that the owner wanted they made the building 3 stories high. There are no rooms on the first floor; it is the office and reception area. This time all the rooms on the second floor were occupied so our room is on the third floor. There is not an elevator in this building! We are getting our workout walking up and down the stairs! Fortunately the manager allows us to leave the bulk of our luggage in his office; can you imagine hauling 50 pound bags up 2 flights of stairs? It is bad enough hauling my own body up 2 flights of stairs! Ha!
When we realized how little traffic was on the streets we decided to hire a taxi and go to the cultural center so I could do a little “shopping”. We always have a difficult time getting the taxi driver to understand where we want to go. Last time we were in Accra we were informed that the reason they could not understand us was because we were asking to go to the cultural center when we should have been asking for the “art” center. We tried it with our taxi this afternoon and it did not work so I reverted to my broken English and told the man that I wanted to buy gifts, I wanted to buy elephants and things to take back home with me. He got it! He said, “You want to go to the art Center!” We paid the taxi driver to sit and wait for us so that we did not have to find another taxi and try to explain to him where we were staying. He liked the idea of sitting in his taxi, napping and not wasting fuel and still making money. The only thing interesting that I found today was a string of beads. The vendor said that they were stones and that they were Kriya beads (meditation / yoga beads). Now I doubt very seriously that they have anything to do with either meditation or yoga; I personally think they are prayer beads. The Muslims have prayer beads just like the Catholics have rosary.
I forgot to tell you that on Friday we asked Timothy if his wife Rita had made communion bread to sell to the churches. She has a small business making and selling communion bread to the churches. He said that she was planning on making it Friday night after they finished serving supper to 417 people and cleaning up the dishes. Really! We knew that she was exhausted! We remembered that the church at Bethel had given us the communion bread that they had left over when they changed from passing the communion trays to using personal communion packets. It has been sitting in the freezer waiting to be used. We decided the seminar would be a good way to use the bread and it would save Sister Rita from having to stay up most of the night to make bread for scratch. She was very grateful not to have to make the bread because not only was she tired but she also had stomach problems.
Have a great day!
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
