You gotta Ghana :)

So Mark has been emailing updates to several people, and I thought it might be fun to post them all on our blog. Follow if you'd like. Each day brings new adventures!

Here are the last 2 messages he's written. Enjoy!

So far so good. We've had some hiccups with travel, but interestingly
enough, those have been American errors. Long flights, long bus ride,
but we are now in our hotel room emailing all of you as you are nearly
ready to start your day.

We are in Kumasi, Ghana at the Okubi Hotel. Tomorrow is a laid back
day. We are going to church, I'm not sure if it is a ward or a branch.
Then we are going to the U-17 national soccer game between Ghana and
Nigeria.

Ghana is lush and green. It reminds me a lot of Guatemala, most
specifically Tecal where Return of the Jedi was filmed (the moon of
Endor) though we have seen no Ewoks. It's about 82 and humid, which is
nicer than I thought it would be. There has been light rain off and on
all day. Though there are no Ewoks, mini goats are everywhere in the
way you'd expect there to be dogs. They are the dogs of Ghana, and
probably more tasty.

We have a really great Ghanaian support staff of drivers and travel guides. Cofe (Ghanaian for "Friday) is our driver and he manages the
crazy roads really well. Lots of people here are named for the day of
the week they were born, so I expect to meet lots of Cofe.

I am excited to get to work. Love you all and we'll be in touch!

Richard is the man. Richard is our hotel manager. I was using my dad's voltage converter in the wall and there were two loud pops, some smoke and a black mark on the wall (I'll send a picture, maybe) and no more electricity to our outlets. I feared we may be on third world time to get something like this fixed, so I went looking for the fuse box myself to no avail. Having no other resource at my disposal I went for help. After the front desk assured me they would call an electrician, I prepared for a powerless stay in room 118 of the Okubi Hotel. To my dismay, Richard knocked on the door a few minutes later. I explained the problem and my desire to see a fuse box if things were similar to American electricity. He assured me he knew what to do and after another few minutes, power was restored. Now I can email all of you lovely people, the computer is charged.

Church was also great. Piano lessons are needed in the Kumasi Second ward, so Dad and Mom, maybe you could serve a mission here. The talks were mostly in English, the lessons were mostly in English as well. It was all very nice. One woman had a dress with the pictures of several modern day prophets on it as the print. I don't know if anyone took a picture, but imagine grandeur.

After church, Brooke and I passed out and missed the soccer game, but Ghana won 2 - 0 if you were wondering. Upon waking, we made food from our vast food storage (I'll upload a picture and send that too, we brought 2 suitcases of food). Cup-O-Noodles, but we have no way of heating our water so I put bottled water in a metal water bottle brought from home and placed it in a bucket. I then ran hot water from the shower into the bucket and heated the contents inside. It worked pretty well.

Then team meetings ensuring that we'd be ready for tomorrow and now to bed.

Let me know if there are more specific things you like to know.

Hope you enjoy reading. We're having a good time and we haven't gotten sick yet. Today was our first day in the field. I suppose I'll have to get used to this sticky feeling and be ok with my clothes clinging to my skin, revealing all my secrets. :)