Ghana Election Day

Today is the Ghanaian General election. This week we have seen much campaigning on the streets. Our Christian friends here are hopeful for their fellow Christian candidate to win. Voting here is by paper ballot and may take up to 3 days for official results. Pray for a peaceful process.

I arrived in Ghana on Tuesday evening and have been busy visiting projects and having meetings and interviews until today, which was a nice day of rest.

So far I have visited the pineapple farm project and helped bring a load of fruit to market and sell to a buyer in Tema. There are still a lot of pineapples to harvest, but many are very small because of too little rain.

This week I also had a very good meeting with Jones Abbey with the Nestle wholesale project. Business has been very good, but he still has challenges within the business, as in finding good employees! We discussed some ideas as to how to improve or change the way he is doing things. We prayed together for God's Grace to continue on he and his family, and his business. I feel that the already strong bond MRI has with Jones continues to strenghten.

Leaving Jones in Nsawam we were able to go to Amasaman and meet a with Edward Boafo. He has applied to Mission Resource for a loan to expand his chicken business. I was able to tour his existing facilities and operation and gather further information and pictures for further consideration.I was impressed with what I saw and heard so far.

I have also spent time with Sampson Dorkunor on two occasions now, to examine further his Micro Finance project. We were able to meet here at the house for several hours to review the business plan. Several suggestions were brought forth and new number crunching will be done soon to finalize the 2 year plan. Just yesterday we met again at his office, where I was introduced to the two employees: George -who is the administrator and assoc. pastor of the church, and Dora - who is the accountant for the church, mission, and micro finance. Both of these people are fine additions to the project. Sampson and I seem to be on the same page on almost everything. He has such a good grasp of the western ways and also of the cultural issues facing the Ghanaian people. His dream is to take the micro finanace project and turn it into a full Savings & Loan. Savings here in Ghana just does not happen at this point - but I believe Sampson can teach the people the importance of saving and make it a reality. I look forward to continuing to work with Sampson and his team!

Sampson will also be one of the key speakers at the training sesions coming up, for the new project recipients. We also had the opportunity to discuss what will be covered at these sessions. Sampson will be covering the repayment of loans and the financial reports that will be required. I think coming from Sampson, we can instill the ideology that is required for the recipients to fulfill the obligations they are pledging.

Tomorrow I will be interviewing Pastor John Otumfro and his wife Mabel. They live in an area of Tema called Ashaiman, which is a very poor section of the city. (as compared to the already poor conditions all around Tema). Their plan is to open a retail "supermarket" in the area. I have reviewed his plan already and will examine it closer with him tomorrow. This project has already been graciously underwritten.

We have experienced power outages, and no internet off and on. Also water pressures have been an issue at times. This goes with the territory :-) TIA ! (this is Africa - for those who have watched the film Blood Diamond!) Leaving Indiana on a snowy afternoon and arriving to the heat and humidity here is quite a shocker to the system! I slept with AC for 2 nights until the power was gone - now I am not using AC at all. Still pretty warm today though :-) It will be even wamer as we travel to the north region next week - so this is good conditioning.

Well as we have power and internet, we will try to update when we can. David will be starting his travel in a few hours. We pray for safe travel for David and look forward to his arrival monday evening (local time of about 7:30 - approx 2:30 Indiana time)

Frank <><

Phil. 4:13