Hi, Donna here: Dear Douglas, yes I did get your message, and I’m proud of Piper. Looking forward to see his graduated performance on the 1st of March. I’m a little concerned about the loss of the key in the hydro meter, – but we’ll check that out when I get back, don’t loose your key between now and then! Continue to do well health wise, and I’m enjoying myself. Do not miss the cold, snow or freezing rain, but think about you in the cold, snow and freezing rain. I expect you to be kind to your little brother and refrain from casting aspersions. Have not heard from Jim hope all is well. Perhaps you could check on that for me. Glad Debbie went by the house, not sure what happened to the bookcase, and which one it was, and thanks for rescuing the plants, especially the peace lily. That’s all for now, take care – love Mom.
PS: we moved 300 building blocks yesterday – to the second story no less, great eh!!
Hi kids, family and friends it’s nice to hear from you we were getting worried. Glad you are having fun. Sam sounds like you are doing great at hockey. Maddy I hope you are doing good in skating and school. Does this mean that Zoey is toilet trained? We are having fun and learning lots. We are doing great health wise. Did a garbage pick up today in the town. That went good. Until we good back to the compound to find out they were burning it. I don’t think I would have even bother I knew that’s what was going to happen. We were told it was going to be disposed of properly. They burn everything here and don’t think anything is wrong with it. This is partly our fault. We showed them how to make plastic and how to use it. Do you think we could have told them they would need proper systems in place to handle the waste properly!!!! Oh no that would make to much sense. All we seem to see is dollars and cents. Other than this little rant all is good.
Hi everyone at home. We are doing great here in Ghana. The weather is hot, but I think we are getting acclimatized to it. Hey boys, mom and dad are missing you, and you to Chester. So what has happened since the last post… Well we worked our behinds off for the Lord yesterday. We carried sand, water and blocks, enough to lay 300 blocks. We have laid all the north and south walls on the second floor of the hostel, now we are starting the east and western walls. Yesterday we also took a walk into the local village and spent some time shopping for snacks and fabric, the off to see Comfort’s sewing shop, Comfort is the wife of Samuel the caretaker of the YFC compound and worship leader of a local church. The Bible studies we have started on the roof at night by flashlight have been great. Today we were all up early and did a clean up on the main road from the clinic to the road to the YFC compound. We picked up garbage along the street and made a very noticeable difference. This afternoon many of the team went to a local school to give out supplies and small gifts. The grades at this school range from preschool to grade 5 with about 120 students or so.
So at home, how’s the snow? And anyone out there that can get a hold of my boys, brother, sister and mother, tell them to post! Phone them email them – whatever it takes, (Lawrence Jr. – this means YOU, (David Green)) it would be nice to here from family. Also, is anybody from work reading-Hello-?
Comments would be nice too. Okay enough complaining.
I am going to sign off and go and watch the ocean from the second floor of the conference hall, there’s a nice breeze…
We love and miss you all,
Lawrence and Penny
David & Ellen wrote, thanks Jenn & Ted for the Nascar update – even though Chevy hasn’t made a run at Formula One – big block racing is still a Big 3 event!! Right Captain Kinobe?
Sarah wrote:
I got some clinic time this morning – moms and babies everywhere…
I helped with registrations for a short while, then handed that off to Ellen when she arrived. I sat in on prenatal visits with the midwife – Sister Marion – for a while, then later spelled Kelly off of blood pressures, weights, and temperatures, so she could go administer polio drops. Sister Esther, a student midwife I worked with last time, said that it was a VERY busy clinic day. She told me that most of the white people who come through the village (tourists) won’t even look them in the eye, and all they (the local women) want to do, is to smile at them (the tourists). So when word got out that there were 3 white women helping in the clinic for the well-baby day, women flocked over so they could have the opportunity to smile at us. All the clinic staff were ecstatic, because it meant they had the opportunity to check on the health of more pregnant women and small children than they would have normally. By noon we needed to head out though, as our small breakfast back at 5:30am had long since worn off, and most of the team was heading out to visit a local school (Joshua’s school to be precise) at 1pm. The clinic staff were also very excited by our team’s garbage clean-up, as the backed up plastic bags in the gutter cause the water to stagnate (and that’s the politest word I can think of to refer to the condition of the gutters). The stagnate water breeds mosquitoes, which carry malaria, which causes huge health problems for people of all ages. They had a one month old infant in today being treated for malaria! All in all, its been a good day so far.
Hi Everyone, Janice here. Today we worked on some “environmental clean-up”. The gunge in the gutters was awful…fortunately we only had to deal with the dry garbage. We filled at least 40 large garbage bags. The church group we worked along beside would like to continue with the clean-up program…you could really see a difference. After brunch we took gifts to a local school. When we arrived, the 2 & 3 year olds were having a nap, but they woke up and sang their little hearts out for us. Midge, thank you for your prayers…this is truly an amazing experience. Steve, I hope you took some pictures for me. I don’t think I took any pictures on the first of the 7 walkways of the Canopy Walk…I was holding on too tightly!!! but I did manage to relax enough at the first landing to start taking some pictures…I just hope they do the scenery justice. Greg, good luck at WOSSA! Who’s Steph & where did you meet her…your Godmother & I want to know. Brian, about bringing my Jeep back… Take care. Be good. Hugs & Kisses. Love, Janice/Mom
Hi Everyone! Kate C: so happy to hear from you, Ben and Megan. It does sound familiar about skiing with you and Care! Love you Ben and Megan, can’t wait to see you! Sunday at Church was fantastic, I love the music and the joy, they dance up to the collection plate and I’m right behind them! Care: I know you are busy busy with school, the boys and I think of you often and how wonderful it would be to have you here too. Both you and Kate would do great work here too! The team is so great and today we went into the village of Kokrobite and helped clean up garbage. We worked alongside the Church group, it was a real partnership with the Ghanaians to deal with picking up garbage that isn’t the most pleasant job I gotta tell you! I am hearing about the weather! Yikes. But I can’t imagine it here believe me! Dealing with the amazing heat is all consuming but don’t get me wrong, I am thoroughly enjoying the blasts of heat but with it comes the most incredible wind and at night, we go to the top of the 2nd floor and we all sit up there with the laundry flapping in the background and it is so peaceful and breezy, it makes you sleep like a log! Wow, it is a grand sight to see me carrying pans of sand on my head to the building to help the Masonry people do their work of building walls up there. Hauling water is fun because we form a ‘congo’ line and the boys devised a pulley system to take it up to the 2nd floor and it moves real quick. Hauling the blocks of cement in the building is hot work and I am so glad the our ‘boys’, Jake, Lawrence, Daryl and David G. help get them out of the pile by looking for bugs, I mean scorpions, really nasty ones but the little lizards are cute! The ants are everywhere, you can’t escape so you live with them. You soon learn you can’t kill them, there are zillions of them. The people in the kitchen are marvelous women so eager to please us Canadians with food we can tolerate but the hot stuff is really exciting! Jared, Brayden, Kieran,Ben & Megan and Abbie: you gotta see the chickens, the goats and the sheep roam the streets in the village free of anyone harming them even the cars and taxis! We see little, little ones and they are part of the homes of everyone here. All the villagers look after one another, it is truly a community family. To all my friends (family too), I miss you and I thank you for sending me on this mission. Your gifts are put to good use with this team. I have a ton of stories to tell so bear with me, I need to unload them! I pray for my sister and really want to see Mary before February 28th, operation day. If any of my family/friends are on here, let me know. It is so encouraging to hear from everyone because it is sometimes isolating to be here without contact however, we are committed to working hard for the people of Ghana and Youth for Christ team and this is the first time really I have had some down time so here I am. I love you all and now in love with Africa and its people, I can handle it! I must close off now. God Bless you and keep those prayers coming for a safe and successful trip. Cheers, Love, Mom/Gramma/Friend
Hey there everyone, so today was a great day, helped the locals clean up the streets. And to see the improvement was awesome. We also got to go to a school and handed out gifts to all of the kids. It was awesome to see there smiling faces. Still falling even more in love with this place as the days go on and I did not think that would be possible. So hope you are all doing good back home. Love Darcie
