General Conference and a trash truck

Today was general conference. Because no one has Internet or even a smart phone everyone comes to the church to watch conference. Even with the fans it was so hot. When the speakers finish the congregation all joined in with a loud amen. When the Tabernacle choir sings a song that the congregation knows they all join in.  For the closing song the choir sang "We Thank thee O God for a Prophet". It was touching to hear the congregation sing along with them. There was a nice spirit in the meeting.

 The Dolo's Town Branch joins with the Harbel Branch for the meeting. Afterwards they take a traditional picture. Cheryl is in the back on the left hand side. I took the picture.  This was a pretty good turnout when you consider that everyone had to walk, it was really hot and at best they can only understand about one half of what the speakers say because they're not used to American English

We had a turnover ceremony where we officially completed our project with the city of Totota. We donated the garbage collection vehicle in the background and various tools and equipment such as wheelbarrows, raincoats, rain boots, etc. cetera.

This is their old trash collection vehicle. They have kept it running for 18 years but now it's so broken it's not repairable. Trash has been piling up all around the city.  Everyone in the city seemed so grateful. When the vehicle was delivered the mayor cried in gratitude. 

How it works is people pile the trash in front of their house or business then the workers come with a wheel barrel and pick up the trash and put it in the trash truck. The trash truck takes it to the landfill. This is all done for a small fee.

Cheryl was one of the speakers. She did well.

This is Gregory Benson. He lives in a house that is on reclaimed river bottom land. We had a wind and rainstorm the other night and it blew down his house. He is the pastor of a local church and the principal of a school. He is a good man. He was the contact for a project to bring water into this community. He has no money and doesn't know how he is going to rebuild his house. If anyone feels like donating to him let me know. Right now the entire family are living in the portion where the roof survived.

We had a challenge at our project at Pipeline school. The contractor was claiming that the principal was stealing some of his supplies. The contractor and the principal were having disagreements on how the project was proceeding. Lastly the company that's making our desks didn't do a very good job and the desks were already starting to fall apart. Fortunately we were able to get all of the parties together and get everything ironed out. We will see.

Every Sunday we travel on the main road that goes from Monrovia out to the airport to go to church. It's about 30 miles. The government has been doing improvements on it for several years. When we first arrived here it took about an hour and 40 minutes. The road has been improving and our travel time had reduced down to about an hour and 10 minutes and the road was a lot more comfortable to drive on. Today we were so depressed. The road has gotten bad again. They tore up a new section and now we're back to our original travel time.

Cheryl is in charge of producing our contracts and all of the paperwork for the payments to the contractors. She fills out a template that is then sent to the Legal Department in Ghana and they create the official document.  She is filling out our final contract for a project to put a solar system in a government hospital.

Even though we've been here for 15 months it's easy to get overwhelmed with the poverty these people live in. There is so much that needs to be done in this country and we can only do a little bit.  At least we can help somebody.