We just got back from the village of Binalado. One of the church leaders decided to take a second wife. Polygamy is legal in Ghana. A Muslim can have up to 4 wives at one time but a regular Ghanaian can have as many wives as he wants. Polygamy is such a problem in our area. We lose many church members to polygamy. We were in hopes that we could reason with this brother but his mind was set. He married his brother’s widow to insure he had access to his brother’s children, land and belongings. The widow has little or no say in the matter. The family believes that she is their property because they paid a dowry for her. They do not want her to marry to any other clan. In this area when a man dies his brothers inherit all of his belongings and his children. The wife gets nothing except being married off to another of his family members. Today was a sad day.
On our way back from Binalado we had a flat tire. This time we had a jack but we did not have the wrench to remove the lug nuts. When Gomda worked on the truck he had to pull off the front tire to change the bearings; obviously he forgot to put the wrench back in the truck. We were in the middle of a small village; not a shade tree in sight. It was very hot! The high temperature today was again 122 degrees but the humidity was higher today so the heat index was 146 degrees. It did not take long for the villagers to come out and try to give us a hand. There is a grinding mill in the village and a mechanic of sorts. The mechanic brought a handful of box end wrenches but none of them would fit the lug nuts. We saw a motor king driving up the dirt road. Steve flagged him down and asked if he had a wrench; he had one and it fit the truck tire. We were very happy! After we got the wrench it only took a few minutes to change the tire. We gave both the motor king driver and the mechanic a small monetary gift for helping us.
This morning Red, the part time driver/mechanic came to the mission house to see what could be done to strengthen the metal gutter crossing grate he made a couple weeks ago. It is completely broken down. He thought we should order some metal from Tamale. I thought we should go to the scrap metal dealers and see what we could find. Steve was not around; he had to attend the second day of meeting about children. We stopped and looked at some other people’s crossing grates to see how they had made theirs then we went to town. We bought a couple of 4 ½ “U” beams to use for the outside of the grate and then we bought a motor king frame to cut the short lengths. All in all we found some good stuff that will make a strong grate.
Red also got my brother Paul’s truck up and running. Paul will fly into Ghana on Tuesday afternoon. Red will drive to Accra to pick him up.
Hope you have a good day! Please pray that we get some rain.
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
P.S. Thank you for the prayers that have been offered up on behalf of our niece Tera; she had surgery yesterday to repair damage to her hip. Please continue to pray for her and her family.
