Kumasi

Welcome to Kumasi and the Noble House Hotel 
where we stayed about 5 hours north of Accra 



Saturday morning, we arrived at the Stake Center at the same time as Rebecca Abedi, the Stake Literacy Specialist who came by taxi.  But we found the gates were locked. A couple minutes later a young boy came by and said he knew where to get a key. So he took off by foot with us trying to keep up as he got a key from a neighbor and returned to unlock the gate for us.

He came in and helped us clean up the building and then began playing the digital piano which was his purpose for coming to the building in the first place, so he could practice. 

Nice kid, and perfect timing!!

We had a full crowd, 60 people in all as the word got out about the training and a bunch of people came from the Bantama Stake also.

It was really too many to train well at one time and we will be aiming to simplify in the future. These are all new teachers and some of their leaders.

We followed up with two of the Wards on Sunday

One very large class.

With child care provided. 

On the way to the second location.

The guys on the side, filling in the potholes, encourage donations. 

Another enthusiastic class that was more than happy to stay after the 3 hour block so that we could meet with them to help their teacher get them started.  They love pictures with their books.

Mary in the middle in red will be getting baptized next Sunday along with her family and extended family of 12 total! I so wish we were staying another week!!  Wish you could have heard her tell her story of conversion!! 

Before leaving town the next morning, we stopped at the Cultural Center which is the Asanti Region in Ghana.
We couldn't take pictures while inside, but learned lots about tribal kings and queens and their traditions. 



Outside is this Calabash tree. The large gourd like balls the size of watermelons are cut in half and dried for use as bowls.

There was also a Kente fabric weaving shop. 

Each pattern has a meaning behind the design.

A large kiln for baking pottery.

 Trucks overloaded with charcoal like this one often end up broken down or even tipped over on the sides of the road.

Flares are rare, so they use what we call "veggie flares."

 We stopped in Nkawkaw, a village where the Heckels introduced the program when they were in Ghana as missionaries while  writing the manuals 2015-2016.   

Mountain vistas, yeah!!  

 Collins, the instructor for the group has 29 students on the rolls. They don't all come every Sunday, but this handful took time out of their Monday to come show us how they are doing. 

Joan Heckel was particularly interest in seeing the progress of this group because Collins had contacted the NFED about getting additional help for his students. (The NFED is responsible for coordinating literacy activities in Ghana and implementing the National Functional Literacy Program) Apparently they have a native language literacy program in the Twi dialect, one of a handful of dialects that has a written language and they thought this might be a better way for them to go before learning English literacy. He said that after they came and observed his class, they encourage him to continue with the English Gospel Literacy Program he is doing and have continued to come and observe his class. We found this pretty cool!!

Kudos to these students who were most impressive!!

Heckels left for home yesterday, but we will continue with the rest of their visit on a blog post next week.  We are very grateful for their visit and feel the Lord's mighty hand in this work in so many ways!!