January

New Years day Kenny and the children borrowed Dante's boat and went for a ride on the river. They got in near the ocean and since it was high tide paddling up stream was easy. It always amazes me how the high tide changes the direction of the rivers or makes them stop flowing pretty far away from the ocean.

Kenny and the boys went on a long moto ride one afternoon. This is a quarry they often went to when Jarell was staying with us.

The sunset on their way home.

The last weekend in January was our much looked forward to missionary retreat. We all stayed at Han's Cottage from Thursday evening till Saturday after lunch. The boys spent most of their time fishing. There are crocodiles in the water and more than one person lost their hook and their bait to the crocodiles. It added excitement!

It was everything a retreat should be. Beautiful, relaxing, and not far away from home but feeling like you were far away from home. Clifford Martin was here and had several topics for us. There were babysitters along so for just the adults to sit and drink in the messages was such a blessing. And our children had so much fun between the fishing and the swimming pool.

Both evenings we gathered in the conference room to play games and sing.

                              

Three of the board members came for the retreat. We took Barry and Elaine and Jay and Miriam back to the airport. Brent had fun playing a game with Elaine across the table while we waited for supper. He is starting to warm up to people more quickly and I think Elaine reminds him of his Grandma.

                             

This load of charcoal takes some creative stacking! But they can fit more on a load than Americans can! The sky was very hazy this day especially in Accra with the added usual smog of the city.

   I enjoy doing these monthly posts because it helps me recap in my mind what happened and the highlights of the past month. A lot was going on in January. It just wasn't things you take pictures of! A big part of it was spent getting back to normal after our flying trip to the US. Dust never waits and with dry season and harmattan my house needed a good cleaning. Kenny helped Duane with preparing for the first day of school at the shop some but Duane has done so well with taking over there. Last year Kenny started a transmission rebuild project for a company that drives Chevy vans as public transportation. He is working on finishing those projects, so he is still at the shop every day, but just working on vehicles. He is looking forward to having all the vans back on the road and hopefully they stay there for a long time!