This afternoon Delta airlines sent out a message saying that flights into Ghana had been suspended as of March 21st. We thought that if there was an evening flight on the 21st we would try to leave Ghana and fly home. Steve called them to see if they were going to have the late flight on the 21st but they were not flying out on the 21st. It seems that Ghana is the one that has stopped them from flying in; not the US or Delta. The agent Steve talked to said to try again in April. It looks like we will be staying in Ghana for a while. There are 16 confirmed cases in Ghana; the last three were people that actually live here (not someone that has traveled into Ghana). Possible they were caregivers to those that were sick. Charity, our daughter, said that the “STEP” program will help try to bring American home if they get stranded in another country. We might check it out to see exactly what is involved in using the program.
We left the mission house this morning at 5:45 to go to Tamale to get additional money that the elders had sent to us. We want to be sure to have enough money to pay the employees in the event we have to leave or if things get serious in our area we will have what we need without having to go out in public. We will stock pile a few more items just in case. While we were in Tamale we had the oil changed in the good van. We drove 2 vehicles so we would not have to ride in a taxi to do our business. We wanted Japan Motors to service both vehicles but it took them 4 hours to get the van done; we did not have 4 hours to wait for them to service the red truck or we would have had to drive back to Yendi in the dark.
We were able to pay the “stool tax” for the property. This time they let us pay it for 3 years. We wanted to pay it for 5 years but they were afraid to let us pay that many years in advance because the taxes might go up and they would not get their share. It seems like there would be some benefit to getting 5 years of taxes in a bulk sum instead of trickling in over several years.
We got back to the mission house around 2:30. Oh! I almost forgot to tell you that we got a good rain in the wee hours of the morning. It started raining at 3:00am and it rained for several hours. We drove in rain most of the way to Tamale. It was dark when we left the mission house. The lightening put on quite a performance for us as we drove to Tamale; it was really spectacular! It almost made it worthwhile to get up so early. We only let a small portion of the rain water go into the cistern / reservoir; we diverted the rest because Dawda the mason was supposed to come today and take down the wood and the bracing system he put in place to pour the cement and close the opening in the top of the cistern; we did not want Dawda to have to swim to remove the wood. This evening it looked like it was going to rain again. I told Steve that I did not want to miss another chance to catch rain water. We put on our rubber boots and head lamps and climbed down in the cistern. We had to crawl through a small opening to get to the middle room and remove the wood frame work. After we got the 2×4’s taken down Steve had to cut the plywood in half so it would fit through the small opening; then everything had to be hauled up the ladder. While we were in the cistern we used a pool net and strained out the leaves and debris that had fallen in. We went ahead and watered the walls too.
Please keep us in your prayers and we will pray for your safety too.
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
