We are back in Yendi after “Plan B” turned to “Plan C”! Last night Steve received a text from Ms. Hawa, the Social Welfare officer that was going to write a letter for us to take to Immigrations explaining that the Social Welfare certificate had been sent to Accra for renewal. She said that her boss who had to sign the letter was out of town and therefore she was not able to get the letter for us. We thought about spending another night in Tamale but there were no guarantees that Ms. Hawa’s boss would be back tomorrow so we went to the Immigrations office to see if they would accept last year’s certificate even though it had expired. The immigrations officer was very nice; he said that he would not accept the certificate unless we had a copy of the new renewal receipt to attach to it. We had a copy of the receipt but it was in Yendi. We thought we would have to make a trip to Yendi to get the receipt when we remembered that Ms. Hawa had torn our copy out of a receipt book that made duplicate copies. “Plan C” was born! We went to the Social Welfare office and begged Ms. Hawa to let us borrow the receipt book so we could find a copy machine and make a copy. She was very kind and loaned us the book. We quickly made the copy and returned the book to her with a “thank you note” and a gift so she could have a nice lunch. She saved us a 4 hour trip to Yendi and back. Then it was back to the immigration office. All the other documents we had were in order and our applications were accepted. We were very happy! He said that we should give them a month to stamp our passports. Please a month! We asked him if they kept the passports in their office or if they sent them to Accra. He said they did everything in their office. Really a month to lick a sticker and put it in our passport! We don’t like to be without our passports; he gave us a retention receipt to prove that they were processing our visas.
It rained heavily while we were in Tamale this morning. We drove in a drizzly rain most of the way back to Yendi. We were excited when we got to Yendi and found out that we had gotten the same rain. Things were getting very dry and many of the farmers have planted a late crop of corn.
While we were in Tamale we bought the razor wire to secure the wall on the east side of the property near the main house and Child Center. Maybe we can get it put up in the next few days. That will be a job for Steve and me. Lucky us!
Thanks for all you do for us!
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
