Powells in Africa: Week 4 & 5

It's been another wonderful week of incredible experiences!

THOUGHT

A little message from last week's Sacrament meeting talks... First, let me explain that we are still having a very difficult time understanding everything fully, even though it is English that is being spoken! (Jordan says he understands maybe 20%, I feel like I understand at least 50%) 🤣 However, the beautiful Ghanaian people have pure hearts and share from the innermost depths of their love of God & Jesus Christ. That language is translated perfectly!

Anyone remember the name Peter Vidmar? Olympic medalist in 1984! He spoke in April 1985 General Conference. His message of Pursuing Excellence was shared in Sacrament meeting by several speakers. Here are a couple of my thoughts and take-away.

Greatest desire = Greatest chance of Success

Pres. Kimball said, "Do it!" & "Dont quit!"

Don't just talk and dream about it! Whatever IT is....work harder than anyone else and give a little extra. Just an extra 15 minutes can make a huge difference! Whatever you are trying to accomplish in important areas of your life, this small effort adds up to an additional 91 hrs a year!

"[I]...realize how serious my commitment to the Lord’s work must be if I am to receive God’s greatest gift. Indeed, it will take all of my talent, energy, and resources—my heart, might, mind, and strength—to earn and receive eternal life."

SINGING

Can I just say that the Ghanaian Saints sing with every fiber of their being!! The roof rattles and rumbles as they singing praises to God! Truly, it is quite something to behold!

Meeting with Area Presidency

President Gifford Nielsen

Elder Jorg Klebingat

SHOPPING

There are many places to shop in Accra. Our first outing led by another sister missionary who knows the ropes, was to the Palace Mall (don't be confused by the name) to find much needed items such as a broom and mop, garbage cans and laundry basket, laundry soap and caulking (yes, our showers leak and no, the caulk did not fix the leak!), towels and miscellaneous food items to get us by for a couple of weeks until we could figure out what to cook here! Cheese and eggs have been our best friend for the last couple of weeks.

Our 2nd shopping trip was a solo adventure with no guide! As we ventured out to what we thought was the next big place we needed to go, our GPS took us to a completely WRONG location where the store did not exist. Our goal was to find power strips and a hair dryer, and we were told the one main shop to get those is a place called Melcom. I promptly put Melcom into the GPS and Melcom Mall came up, not too far from our home. Having been to Palace "mall" I figured we were on the right track! Off we went, thinking we were doing pretty good! After about 10 min and a couple of interesting turns, we came to a dead halt. The GPS said, "you have arrived!" What??? Traffic in front and behind, on each side and coming at us... we could not move. We soon realized we were now completely surrounded by people... EVERYWHERE! This was a market street/shopping district (Makola Market - interesting history of this market) of epic proportions and cars did not belong! The people were as annoyed with us as we were with ourselves! How did we get into this area of lockdown? We had no choice but to sit it out, smile and wave and toss our hands in the area indicating we had no idea what we were doing. That was pretty obvious! After about 15 minutes, traffic started to creep forward. We inched our way out of that predicament and headed off to another Melcom - this time Melcom Plus Shopping Center. It took us 1 hr 15 min to get to the other Melcom (still not the correct one as we were later informed). We found a few of our needed items and figured we had better get headed home. To our surprise, now that traffic had lightened up, it only took us 14 min to get home. Good grief! We will gradually learn!!!

MAKOLA MARKET!!!

ENTERTAINMENT

Our first official weekend in country that we weren't foggy jet-lagged, found us in a Movie Theater with 10 other missionary couples enjoying Tom Hanks in A Man Called Otto! Although the theater was fairly old, was a little warm, and had sticky floors, our admission price of $4.75 per person and combo of small popcorn (choice of salty or sweet) and mini bottle of coke for $2.70 each, it was a bargain deal!! And, we were the only ones in the theater! Where can you go for movie, popcorn and drink for $7.45 each?? We are still working to figure out how to get some at home evening entertainment that is consistent, with spotty internet and "your region does not permit this programming" plaguing us, our VPN allows us pretty good watching range on Netflix and Prime Video. So please send your suggestions and favorites!!

AQI

Harmattan has picked up a bit, causing the air quality to diminish significantly. This weekend we saw the Air Quality Index hover around 350, which is in the hazardous range. We will not be running outside anytime soon! Jordan has taken to wearing a mask to limit the burn on his China scarred lungs! Otherwise, we are still surprised at our lack of profuse sweating given the amount of heat and humidity that co-exist here. Tender mercies in that we are handling the heat quite well!!!

PRICES

The cost of things varies here. Interesting to me how different it can be worldwide. Here is a little taste of Accra:

Eggs - 1 doz = $2.80 However, we have a little local gal at the office named "Lucky" that sells fresh eggs to us for $1.90 doz. Quite a bargain price considering we left the U.S. with eggs rounding out at about $6 doz.

12 apples = $5.50, 1 lb ground beef = $4.50, 5 lbs flour = $4.35, 1 papaya = 40 cents, 1 power strip = $11.00, 200g butter = $4.00, 1 jar mayonnaise = $14.30, 1 full tank of diesel for our truck = $70

So, all in all, not too bad. Looks like we will survive here!

So grateful to all of you for your love and support! We are heading into Week 3! Time is flying by! Take care and keep in touch!

Love, Cindy