April

I still can't believe we have turned another calendar page. April was a nicely balanced month with visitors and fun things and other times of normal life.

The building that is our church and was our school this year as well.

A beautiful sunset in our village.

The schools in Ghana take a three week break for Easter. This results in bored children that roam the village looking for something to do. Most afternoons several of them ended up at our house.

They put their imaginations to good use. Pounding mud for fufu and mixing up buckets of mud for bankuu.

They raided the compost pile for vegetable scraps and pretended to make stews and soups.

Ornamental Banana tree

Brent turned 9 the beginning of April.

Kyla and India came to help celebrate his birthday.

The cow herds never cease to fascinate me!

Since Brent and Marvin have birthdays close together Brent thought we should do something with them to celebrate. They had never been to Hans Cottage so we met there for fishing and supper. Marvin, Austin and Brent all caught fish.

We enjoyed having some of the Graber family visit Ghana! Former staff coming back to visit is always a good time of reconnecting.

We had a week of sick boys and a sick puppy. I didn't think the dog was going to pull through. After force feeding her for three days, our whole family was so relieved when she wanted to eat on her own. And thankfully everyone is healthy again!

You can barely see it but there was a cruise ship anchored near Elmina for the people to visit the castle. The boys thought maybe we should see if we can go visit the cruise ship!

We packed a picnic supper and ate on the rocks and watched the ship and the sun set. Our favorite way to spend a Sunday evening!

Kenny turned 40 so he and I went to a resort for a night. It was so nice to get away even if it was just for a little bit.

We attended the funeral of a friend's mother. It was actually a beautiful funeral. The Methodist choir sang and they had a nice service. But that was all tainted by the woman's very drunk husband making only a brief appearance at the back of the service, the daughter clinging to me, sobbing broken heartedly. So many people without hope.

   May 1st was the last day of school so this week we are adjusting to a new schedule and reorganizing. We plan to homeschool next year since our children will be the only school children in the mission right now. So we moved another desk and book shelf in to our living room and hope to keep everything organized and workable. Next week the  two teachers fly home and Kerik and Adriana Zimmerman arrive. Joel and Marcie Burkholder will be leaving June 2 after serving three years at the Palm press. So this month feels like a month of change and adjustments. We look forward to several sets of visitors the end of May into the beginning of June as well.