We got a lot of stuff done today. Dawda the mason worked on the upper gutter and hopefully got the leak fixed. We won’t know for sure until we get another big rain. Red got the metal door for the tool shed finished and Dawda got it installed. He even made a nice cement stoop/ramp leading into the shed. It will be nice when we need to roll the air compressor in and out of the shed.
Shiabu fixed the security light that is hanging on the city pole near the Child Center. When we bought the light and paid to have it hung we were told that the city would take care of any and all repairs; well, that is a joke!
The man from VRA, the electric company, finally came this afternoon. He said that there was no real problem. The meter is a pre-paid meter. Its 100 days pass and you have not bought more units; your meter is locked. They think this is a way to keep down theft and make sure the electric company gets their monthly service charge. After 100 days you have to buy more units even if you do not need units. The mission house has 600 units which are enough to last us for a month but since we were in the states and not buying credits our meter was locked. It does not matter if you still have units on your card that you have not loaded into the meter, those units don’t count after 100 days either. The only good thing about this whole process is that when you re-activate the card your old units are still there. You don’t actually lose them. We have had the pre-paid meter for about 3 years and no one has ever shared this piece of information with us.
This afternoon we went to town to buy medicine for the Child Center. While we were in town we met a guy selling used wind breaker type jackets. We bought 9 jackets from him and told him that we needed more. His English was not very good but finally he said that they were “at house” which led us to believe that they were at his house and he would bring them to us later. I know, I know, how did I get all that from “at house”? There always seems to be a language barrier. I feel like we understood each other.
Remember I told you a couple of the church members came to the mission house on Saturday so we could make some photo copies for the church. Well as Noah was on his way back home armed robbers attacked the vehicle he was riding in. He said that they attacked the bus in front of them too. He said that when they came upon the bus they thought that it had broken down; when they saw the people lying on the ground. They knew that the bus had been attacked. Before his driver could turn around the armed robbers jumped out of the bush and attacked their vehicle. Noah said that they took all the passengers’ money, cell phones and everything of value. Noah said that he only had 25 Cedis about $4 and that when they made him lay down he tucked his cell phone under his stomach. You know that he was praying that the thing did not start ringing! He said that they beat him on his buttock! He fared better than some of the others. The robbers had AK47 type guns and were shooting, mostly up in the air. They shot a motor king driver in the leg that tried to get away from them. Fortunately no one lost their lives!
Take care and keep us in your prayers.
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
