This morning Steve called a meeting with all the Child Center workers. He also invited Divine and Timothy the evangelists to come to the meeting. Divine and Timothy are both on the board for the Child Center. They were in agreement with shutting down the Center and sending all the workers, even the night watchmen, home for at least the next 4 weeks. We gave them their pay through May so they would have some money to stock up on the essentials they will need. We want to protect ourselves as much as we want to protect the workers, mothers and children that come to the Center. We know that if we are open they will come. This morning we gave out enough formula to the motherless babies to last for 4 weeks. Hopefully by then the virus will have started going down and Ghana will be able to lift some of its bans within that time frame.
Oh! The discussion Steve’s class generated was amazing! The workers were so amazed at how fast the virus could infect lots of people in a short amount of time. Steve gave everyone antibiotic soap and he taught them how to make their own disinfectant. He re-taught them how to properly wash their hands and he gave plastic cups to each of the workers and their family members. We wrote the names on the cups and made smiley faces, stars and houses on the small children’s cups so they would know which one they were supposed to drink from. Zorash said that many of the things we told them to do they could not do because it would break “culture”. She said that if they do not let their neighbors and even strangers drink from their own cups they would say that they were wicked. If they did not pick up their friends and acquaintances on their motorcycles and bicycle they would insult them. If they did not give a stranger that came to spend the night in their house their bed to sleep on (while the owner of the bed slept on the floor) it would be a problem and cause a fight. They have the information; what they do with it is over to them. If the virus comes to our area it will spread very quickly! Someone said, “Only God will save us!” We were quick to tell them that God has put tools at their disposal and he has given them a brain to be able to reason and do what will help the most.
This afternoon we got a message from the American Embassy about the request Steve made a couple days ago to try to get back to the States. The reply to our message was not favorable. Basically they said that we would have to bear the cost of chartering a plane to fly to Ghana and pick us up. They said that they could not give us advanced notice. They could not tell us how much it would cost; they did not even give an estimate of the cost. We figure that is because they do not know how many people they will be picking up and they don’t want to frighten us with the cost. They also said they we had to be prepared to sign a loan agreement before we got on the plane to pay whatever the expenses were and that we had to give them our passports to keep until we had either paid off the cost or we had secured a traditional loan and were making payments to pay them back. Please! If you have to take out a loan to pay for your passage it is going to be too expensive for our blood! I guess we will just wait for the President of Ghana to open up the airport for travel back to the US. Another problem is that the only direct flight to the US flies into JFK, New York.
Keep praying!
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
