Ivory Coast Youth Conference

We spent two days in Ivory Coast at a week-long LDS youth conference for 600 young people, 14-18 years of age, representing three stakes and two districts. A second conference takes place this coming week for the other half of the LDS teenagers in Abidjan and surrounding areas. The first-ever conference of this kind in Cote d'Ivoire was a thrilling experience for everyone who attended. We loved spending time with the beautiful Ivorians.  

  

Terence Vinson, 1st couns. in the Africa West area presidency and
 Norbert Ounleu, area seventy, were invited by the session-directing
couple to speak to the youth at the end of their very special week. 

The conference was held on the campus of a university that was
big enough to handle a large crowd. Besides the young people,
  80 coordinators, counselors, and teachers attended.  

Helping Hands

Saturday, August 16th, was the eighth annual All Africa Helping Hands day, where members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout Africa donated their morning to weed, trim, rake, sweep, dig, mow, plant, haul, mop, scrub, repair, and paint wherever their stakes and wards arranged a service project. Some stakes assigned each ward to choose its own area of focus within the stake boundaries. Other stakes put two or three units together for a bigger impact. Our hope was to visit at least four of the sites in Accra that morning to take pictures and see how the projects were going. Because of the distance between projects and lack of familiarity with some parts of Accra, we only made it to three locations before the morning was over.

       

  

The earlybirds of Cantonments Ward showed up at 7:00 sharp.
We snapped a shot just before they got started on their project.
 The size of the group doubled when their Elders Quorum arrived.

Because of the Ebola virus scare in a few West African countries,
everyone is being extra cautious these days about protection and
cleanliness. We are all safe and healthy here in Ghana.

Coming to the Temple

The Ghana Accra Temple is attended by people from throughout West Africa and often other parts of the world. Before it was dedicated 10 years ago, the closest LDS temples were in London and Johannesburg. It has been a great blessing for many members of the Church who could not otherwise attend the temple. Busloads of people arrive regularly, with August being an especially busy month because children are not in school and they can come with their parents from surrounding countries. The ancillary building houses temple attenders during their stay, sometimes for 5-6 days at a time. Over the past year, we have seen groups from Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote d' Ivoire, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria. A small group even flew in last month from Ethiopia.   

We have loved seeing this beautiful temple and the finely groomed 
grounds each day as we come to the area office. 

Kasoa Stake Family Party

A friend invited us to come to his stake's family activity last Saturday. We hadn't been to this stake center yet, and always enjoy seeing where our acquaintances in the area office attend church, so we drove out to join the fun for a couple of hours. We arrived just as the activities began. If we hadn't known that we were in Accra, this Church event could have been anywhere in the world -- friends and families joining together for games, food, and a chance to enjoy one another's company on a nice sunny day.   

  

The building is on an unusually big piece of property tucked back
off the main road. There was plenty of room for activities outside.

Each ward was assigned their own color to wear -- probably to
make it easier to divide into groups and organize the games.