HAPPY EASTER!

If I had time to think about it, I would really miss the traditional family activities for holidays such as this.  The Ghanians really celebrate Easter but in a long drawn out sort of way. The holiday starts Friday (not all the people do this), and on Saturday they wear black, then on Sunday they wear white, and on Monday they go to the beach in Labadi. We could hear parties going on all around us. It has been nice to not have so much traffic, although it will resume to normal after Monday.

I finally remembered to take a picture of Linda, my piano student. She is a sweet young woman and will be finishing her schooling in May. I hope she will then have more time to practice, because she is not progressing as much as I hoped she would.

I had an experience with a referral that I wanted to share. I often get referrals from the MTC referral center and sometimes I email back and forth with them about questions they have or that I have. I received a referral a few weeks back for a Mildred Lamptey who runs an orphanage. I gave the referral to Elder Osur and, hoping, as I always do,  that he and his companion will call and then report. About a week later, I received an email from the referral center that Mildred had contacted them and said she had not been contacted by the missionaries. I got right on the phone and called Elder Osur and explained to him how important this was and that I wanted to hear from him right away. He called me back a short time later and said they had an appointment at 3:00 that afternoon. Well,to make a fairly long story short, Mildred, some of the teachers and children have a baptism date in April. I think he said there was eleven in all. When Elder Osur was in the office for a Trainers meeting, I asked him to remember this experience and share it with other missionaries so that, hopefully we have more of them doing better at contacting and reporting back to me. It is not that they don't have plenty of people they are contacting, because they do, but just think what an
experience he is having now.

Our Sunday in Senchi was unique as usual. Last week Sister Owusu, Sister Dwodu and I divided up the lesson between us. I then prayed all week that they would spend some time in their preparation; and I must say that I am having a lot of experience learning the virtue of patience! I know they have not had experience with any of this and don't know how much the district leaders train or even if they themselves know. When I stop my over-zealousness and think about a room full of primary children in Ghana, then I can simply be amazed about it all. Being able to teach and bear testimony about our Savior and what Easter is all about was really more important than how it was done anyway. How blessed I feel for this knowledge and being able to share it with these precious children and pray we understand each other. That is why, above all else, I need to have the spirit with me as that is when the understanding takes place.
We visited a family after meetings today and I was surprised to see that it was Emmanual's family. He comes every Sunday and is the sweetest boy and he sang "If the Savior stood Beside Me," with me and knew every word. I was hoping it would touch his less-active mother's heart even if she only speaks Ewe. His older brother, who is eighteen years old, has not shown an interest in the church and he probably felt bombarded by all of us sharing with him. I was amazed how gracious he was through it all and hopefully a seed was planted.

Well, it is back to apartment inspections tomorrow morning and hopefully we can be back by no later than 2:00. I have a fruit salad to make for the departing missionaries dinner at 6:00 (I need the mangoes to ripen faster) and do the final check-out with three of them. The other five departing missionaries I will do Tuesday, as their flights did not leave as early as the three. They will all attend the Accra Temple Tuesday morning before they return home. Writing all these schedules kind of makes my head  'swim', and I will be grateful when the transfer days for the departing missionaries is in line with the arriving missionaries without having to do so much arranging of schedules. Because of all the changes in the transfer days, which happened when the age for serving missions was lowered, we have to send missionaries home a few weeks earlier than their original release date.This adjustment will probably go on until we ourselves are complete with our mission and then some. I don't have the transfer days past March of 2014, so I don't know when they will start to line up but they should in time. Anyway, it keeps this 'old gal' from going senile for at least another year ha ha.

With love,
Sister Avery (mom, grandma)