Never a boring day!

I will say it again; there is never a boring minute, hour, day, week, or month, when you are serving a mission. I haven't done a year yet, so don't know about that one. Ever so often I will look around me and say to my husband, "are we really in Africa?" It truly is being a wonderful experience here, and I have probably said it before, but a mission changes a person. It is the most challenging yet rewarding work I have ever done, next to raising a family, of course. I am growing in ways I didn't know I could, and I think the best is yet to come.

We had a great Fast and Testimony meeting this last week. I have to listen very carefully to understand a lot of the saints here, but it is worth doing so. Elder Sitati, of the First Quorum of the Seventy, and his wife visited our Sacrament Meeting. You can see a picture of him in the Ensign Conference issue. We haven't been assigned to a Branch yet, but probably will be after the first of the new year.

I can tell what time it is each morning by the birds that start singing around 5:30. It is just barely starting to get light at that time and I really don't think I hear this one particular bird song at any other time but then. There are birds that are very similar in size, color, and sound as our ravens at home. They have some white on them but are mostly black and oh how they can squawk. We also have a male peacock next door, and I think I saw a female one just a few days ago. That particular day they were giving their bird call which is very distinct. I haven't been able to get a picture yet as they are not always where they can be seen.

The Ghanians just had there election for President yesterday and everything still seems to be peaceful. Yesterday there was hardly any traffic, which was nice, but we did have to go a different way home as a section of the road was blocked off where we usually travel. Thursday the traffic was terrible and there were all kinds of rallies going on. I hope they have a good President that will care about the people and use their resources of oil and chocolate to see that the children all have a good education.

I think we are finally learning what to look for on our power meter so we know when to buy kilowatt hours. We had to learn the hard way this past week, and thank goodness it rained that night, so it wasn't as unpleasant as it could have been. We pay for our power in advance and it is put on a device that looks like a thumb drive and then we scan it to our meter to add the hours to it. It has been hard trying to decipher how much power we will use in a given time, so we will always have hours on our device so when it runs out, we just scan it and it starts up again. That doesn't help us when the power goes off for other reasons, but that hasn't been quite as often lately.

Our last apartment inspection for the year is on Monday and it will take us to Nsawam, which is a great distance away. On Thursday we will have a Christmas Conference/Social with all the missionaries. It will be great to have everyone all together as it is such a big mission area-wise.
The missionaries will all be given phone chips, so they can call home for Christmas, at this activity. I am excited to hear the talent numbers that will be performing as Sister Judd had auditions for it and said they were really good.

I need to include a picture before I close. It is of Joseph, our maintainence person, and a rat that he caught in a trap at the misson office compound where we work. He said it wasn't dead but was just pretending to be. I couldn't believe the size of that thing!

Now you know why I can say there is never a dull moment here!!!

With love,
Sister Avery