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.
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| 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. |
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| Lawnmowers are scarce in Ghana. Machetes are plentiful and do the job. African grass is very different than grass in the U.S. | Our second stop was at a hospital where three wards from Adenta Stake raked up and removed cuttings of great big old trees. |
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| This happy group of members and missionaries was able to get a lot done in a short amount of time. | We are supposed to stay in the background and let locals talk to the press, but our white skin creates a bit of interest in the news. |
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| You can pick out four cute sister missionaries by their name tags. | The elders enjoy a day of service as much as everyone else. |
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| They forgot to tell me to wear my hat and fabulous earrings! | Someone always comes running in right before we snap a picture. |
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| This is the African version of a rake. Pretty clever. | Bernice is an artist. She carted off several stumps for a project. |
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| These adorable babies go everywhere with their mothers. | Someone has a lot of laundry to do this week. |
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| By the time we got to our third destination, a police station, the group of 200 volunteers had dispersed. Originally they wanted to paint the building but couldn't find a paint donor, so they cut back the weeds and trimmed the overgrown trees instead. | The last two volunteers were just putting finishing touches on a replacement of the faded sign in front of the police station. We were so impressed by the turnout and support of Church members and their friends at the All Africa Helping Hands day. |
