July 18, 2021

We are attending church today in the Ghana Ofankor stake. They will be
launching their Gathering Place on Tuesday at 10 am, so we decided to drive
out here in advanced to get acquainted. The chapel is the nicest and definitely
the cleanest we’ve seen so far. Even the bathrooms were passable! There
were some very plump and healthy chickens scurrying through the grass and
unique plants surrounding the building. Chickens in general are very common,
so it is the healthy part that made them noteworthy.

Because of the unpredictable driving conditions, we’ve learned to leave at
least an hour earlier than the GPS suggests. Sometimes that helps us arrive
when we should, other times we arrive long before anyone else. Today we
arrived when only one member was there sweeping up from the chickens. He
spoke little to no English, so we did a lot of smiling and head nodding.

GPS in Ghana is surprisingly good, if your destination has a real address.
Unfortunately, the Ofankor chapel is listed as, “across from Rev John Teye
Institute.” The security guards at the institute must have been asked before,
because when we showed up wearing our name tags, they immediately
pointed to a steeple jutting out of a knoll, on the opposite side of the four-lane
road that separates the two buildings.

We attended the meetings of a ward and a branch that meet there. The ward
sang with no accompaniment, the branch sang with a twelve-year-old playing
an electronic keyboard as a nine-year-old pointed at each note. We attended
both unit’s YSA Sunday School classes where we learned still more about
their concerns and issues.

In response to our question, “How did you become a member of the Church?”
about one third said they were born in the church, we got various answers from the
other two thirds. One young man who was very well read said that he had been looking
into different denominations. At each of those churches the pastor either didn’t know the
answer to his questions or it was clear the pastor was making something up. He found it
very refreshing that when he asked a question at our church, the teacher or the
missionaries would ask him to find the answer in the scriptures. This helped him know
that the gospel was based in scripture and that members were encouraged to find
answers for themselves.