Once the rainy season ends and the dry season begin, dust from Harmattan gathers in the skies and creates muted sunsets and translucent sunrises. A few weeks later however, and the fires begin. Most are set by people who want to clear the weeds next to the roads or on their farms. The result, mixed with unintentional bush fires, creates air quality that is below acceptable prolonged human exposure levels. There is an Air Quality App titled, “Air Visual” that gives an hour by hour look at the air quality in Kumasi from three different monitoring stations. Looking at the one closest to us, the chart is not great news for those with lung issues. Fortunately, we have not felt the effects of the poor air and we hope it will clear out in the coming weeks. I have also included a chart below that details the Air Quality Index and what it means relative to the level of health concerns. Again, we have not felt the impact of this and are grateful for that. In fact, we would be oblivious to it had Elder Klebingat from the Area Presidency not called us Saturday morning and alerted us about the poor air quality in Kumasi. We are grateful for an Area Presidency that looks out for us, while we are looking out for the missionaries.

This was the 7th week in what is normally a 6 week transfer period. Because of the timing of the Christmas black-out dates for missionary travel, our December transfer date was moved up a week, making this transfer period a week longer. While we were not all that excited about the 5 week transfer, we definitely enjoyed the extra week in the 7 week transfer. It gave us an opportunity to work on the things that needed attention but had been neglected due to time. I think this past week we slept better, exercised more, and felt the joy of clearing “to do’s” from our calendars.

On Monday, I played basketball in the morning and in the evening we had another great Virtual MLC meeting. These meetings have made a huge impact on the mission and I am so grateful for President Myles Proudfoot sharing what they were doing with us. The meeting has made a significant difference in so many areas.

On Tuesday, we attended the Bantama District Council and interviewed all of the missionaries. They were our last interviews for the transfer. It is always a good feeling to finish another round of interviews because it is only then that I can start working on the transfer board. Fortunately, there was an extra week to refine the board and seek additional inspiration, which we needed given the complexity of having so many already being in training and then adding 19 more which eventually dropped to 17 for reasons on which I will not elaborate.

It was also unusual that both of my mission presidency counselors were in the Bantama building on Tuesday. President Obeng has his office there and President Asante was down from Tamale to attend some meetings, so I also was able to snap a picture with the two of them. These are great men on whom I rely significantly.

On Wednesday morning, LaDawn and I met with the Office Elders for companionship study. We spent 1.5 hours on 4 scriptures under the topic, Jesus Christ, exemplar. Can we just say it was amazing to sit with Elder Bryant and Elder Ramaidamanana and be taught by the Holy Ghost? Matthew 12:48, 2 Nephi 31:16, and Hebrews 5:8; Moroni 7:48. Such a wonderful experience!

On Thursday, we held our couples council from 2:00 – 3:30 pm. It is always a joy to be with them and counsel together with them. Here is the agenda of our meeting. We spent quite a bit of time talking about how to improve our apartment inspections to increase an emphasis on health and safety. By the next day, Elder Loveland already had a plan to start with all of the sisters’ apartment to make sure they are all safe. We would be lost without the help of these amazing couples. They are a heaven sent gift to us.

On Saturday morning, I attended our quarterly Coordinating Council meeting at the Mission Office where Elder Sosu presides. Also attending were all of the stake presidents as well as my counselors (President Asante was still in Kumasi so he also came). Here are the key topics we discussed over the 4.5 hours that we met: 

• YSA Summit and FSY Conferences to be held in the Coordinating Council in 2024. The desire is to hold the YSA Summit in Tamale.
• “State of the Mission” was an overview of the Ghana Kumasi Mission and need to focus more on recent converts in getting them ordained to the priesthood and given a calling. 
• Helping members to begin to use the gospel library app more in their personal study and worship.
• Keeping the doctrine pure (discussed the various practices across West Africa that have crept into our worship services and church administration).
• The need to improve the relationships and interactions between the Bishops/Branch Presidents and the Youth. 
• Bringing the Area Vision to Life.

After the coordinating council meeting, I returned to the Mission Home, picked up LaDawn and we drove to Ike’s Restaurant in the Cultural Center and had a nice “linner” with the Loveland’s, Samuelson’s, and Pack’s. Their chicken burger is always delicious and this visit was no exception. The first time we went there, the chicken burger was 35 GHC. On Saturday it was 100 GHC. I think a few businesses took advantage of inflationary pressures to increase their profit margins!

After returning home, we spent 2.5 hours with the Boateng’s over Zoom as we continue to help acclimate them to the mission and the things we are doing. We spent about half the time talking about the GKM Toolbox and how the missionaries use it to stay focused on the most important things we are trying to do as a mission.

The rest of the time during the week was spent working on several things. LaDawn spent much of her week working on the 2023 Mission History. It is nearly complete and is just awaiting my final “state of the mission” document to be included. I spent time on a variety of things. I have mentioned before that we are moving all of our key mission documents to one folder on the mission google drive so that when the Boateng’s arrive they won’t have to go looking for the files. This includes the 12 and 26 week training and improvement programs, the Akwaaba (welcome) Booklet, and the Toolbox. We recently made a few changes to the Toolbox and the Akwaaba booklet and so they needed to be updated. For the Akwaaba booklet, that means a new Table of Contents with new page numbers. To put page numbers on the PDF document, I have to use a program (PDF Expert) that I have on my personal laptop. Needless to say, it is always a bit of effort to make changes, especially when pages are added causing page numbers to change. 

I also spent quite a bit of time on the Mission Leadership Council Tracking Sheet. This is a shared Google Sheet where we input all of the Key indicator Goals and then Actuals across the mission each week. After setting and tracking our goals by transfer (generally 6 week periods) for the last 2.5 years, we are finally prepared to move to monthly goals. This means the goals are now “area” goals and not “companionship” goals and when there is a change in the middle of the month due to a transfer, the new missionary coming in can trust the existing goal was set under inspiration. This requires a high level of spiritual maturity in the mission, which we are now seeing. Moving from transfer goals to monthly goals will align us more with the missionary department where all reports are monthly. It should help flatten our “transfer spikes” in terms of the key indicators (and especially baptisms). This change was introduced to the MLC two week’s ago and the rest of the mission on Monday. We asked the District Leaders to discuss this in District Council on Tuesday. Overall the change has been warmly received, for which we are grateful. Missionaries feel this will make things easier for them as well, helping them be more aligned with ward and branch goals, and being better at constantly finding. This generally means finding people in the current month that will be baptized the next month. This change meant adjusting the MLC tracking sheet away from 5-7 week transfers and going to 4-5 week months. I took the time to create worksheets for the next 6 months and then worked with the office elders to move the maintenance of the spreadsheet over to them in the event President Boateng wants to continue with the same process. With some help from our son Garen, we were able to figure out how to protect the sheets from accidental changes while still allowing input into the selected cells. While this sounds like it should be easy, it was only with Garen’s help that we figured it out as we could not find it documented anywhere. Spending time with the spreadsheet also allowed me to clean up a few bugs and faulty formulas and discover an easy way to quickly duplicate sheets for subsequent months and change the formulas to point at the proper month. Much easier for a modern spreadsheet guru with Virtual Basic skills than for a former LOTUS 1-2-3 macro builder. Now if we just had the time to “mine” the data we are collecting and discover the new insights about areas, missionaries, and methods that are currently unknown.

This past week we also rolled out a new process for the instruction reviewing the scriptures on Christ in District Councils. We found there were a number of different practices in place and since some were better than others, we took the best and encouraged everyone to follow the new process. Here is the note that was sent to the missionaries and then again to the District Leaders.

“Sisters and Elders, in order to make a more consistent and robust District Council instruction around the scriptures on Christ each week, we (The MLC) would like to introduce the following format. This should begin with next week’s council. I am sending this now so you can discuss it briefly tomorrow as necessary.
1) Each missionary picks one of their ten scriptures from the weekly Jesus Christ scripture and comes up with one inspired question relating to the scripture.
2) The person leading the instruction does the same.
3) The instructor will then ask a member of the council to share their scripture and their question (not their insights).
4) The Council will then discuss that question much in the same way we do the Vision Refresh in Zone Conferences. This means each person needs to come prepared with their scripture and their question.
5) Some district counsels may only get to two or three questions in the time they have.
6) Everyone will benefit because of their preparation and the ensuing discussion as the spirit of unity and love invites the spirit to reveal new truths regarding the question to the entire council.“

On Sunday (Jan 28th), we attended the Ejisu Ward where Sister Enokela and Sister Sua serve. It was our first time at the ward and it was good to meet the members there. I think we were even introduced as the “new” mission leaders for Kumasi. One of the problems with not being able to attend every single unit in the mission while we are still “new” is that when we do visit we are “new” to them. The Priesthood lesson was focused on the talk from October’s General Conference titled, “Do You Want to Be Happy?” by Elder Yoon Hwan Choi. The instructor did an excellent job of keeping everyone involved and having a meaningful and robust discussion. I snapped a picture of him at the end. I suspect he was a counselor in the EQ Presidency.

After returning home, I spent most of the day responding to Missionary emails from the prior Monday. While I had read a few earlier in the week, I still had over 50 to read and respond to. The Assistants came around 7:30 pm and we spent 2 hours talking about the upcoming FTF MLC, the Virtual MLC Meeting to be held Monday evening, and the changes I had made to the transfer board. LaDawn made some of her delicious homemade chocolate pudding as a treat since it is something Elder Mba loves and this was his last meeting with us as an Assistant. After the Assistants left, I finished the last missionary letter about 11:00 pm. Earlier in the evening, I sent out my weekly email to the missionaries titled, “Truth is Truth“. I knew that Saturday was going to be busy, so I completed most of it on Friday afternoon and into the evening. It was good to have a couple of days to reflect on and refine it a bit more before sending it out. I am always grateful for what I learn by writing these letters each week.

There will be a lot of changes next week with the transfer. 19 missionaries will be leaving us and 17 new missionaries will arrive (including a Filipino late Friday evening). We will have a new Assistant replacing Elder Mba and 7 new zone leaders. While the air quality outside is deteriorating, the spiritual air quality in the mission is on the upswing. We are so grateful for this opportunity to serve and experience the constant change that is endemic as mission leaders, even as we gather Israel one last time, Together in Ghana.