8 Weeks!

Cape Coast Trip Day 4

This morning we woke up at 8 with a lot of energy despite staying up till almost 3 last night. We were all pretty sore from so much dancing last night. We left to eat another delicious breakfast at Baobobs. We waited for almost an hour and half for our pancakes but in Africa time that’s nothing. We got two orders of banana pancakes and two orders of pineapple honey pancakes to split. The waiter came out an hour after we placed our order and said he didn’t have any bananas. We told him that they’re fruit stands everywhere; can’t he go out and buy bananas? So he went about 50 ft away to a fruit stand and bought a bunch of bananas. Our food came about 10 minutes later. We had church soon so ate our pancakes really fast and walked to church. The church building felt like more of a church building than ours in Asamang with classrooms, bishop’s office, and nice chapel hall. The most peaceful feeling overwhelmed me. I know that it doesn’t matter what the building looks like, it still made a bit of difference for me to walk into such a familiar setting. We walked to the second floor where the chapel was located but Sunday School from the first ward was still going on so we just sat down and waited. A lot of members came into greet us, even some handsome missionaries with matching Kente ties. Every time I see missionaries I can’t help but get so excited for them and The Church. To see the church spreading to so many corners of the earth is joyous. Sacrament meeting was typical here with us not understanding most of what was going on. Although, the first talk was in Twi-nglish so we understood a bit of her talk. I read my scriptures for most of the time because I am still very behind on scripture reading. At the conclusion of Sacrament we said goodbye to the missionaries and walked back to the hotel to change our clothes. We got an extra sheet from the hotel to spread out while we had our group meeting. We went over how in life we make choices that are good, better, and best. We all made the decision to be here and now we need to make sure that we make our time the best it can be. We discussed how in Provo we would have had a good summer but why choosing to travel to Ghana was the best. We reflected on the past two months and what expectations we had for the third month. We went over what the top 2 things we have learned since being here and it was unanimous that spiritual growth was the biggest. We all learned so much about ourselves that we might have never learned without this trip. It started to drizzle and we were hungry anyways so we went to Chic-Hebs to get a small snack before dinner since it was already 3. We met the cook Henrietta but she told us to call her Hetta. She asked us questions all about us and insisted we ordered veggie burgers. We told her we only wanted a small snack so we ordered drinks and fries instead. I got a pepsi to drink while we just sat and laughed about everything. We were all in such a good mood that we laughed at pretty much everything said for the next hour. Our food came and it was absolutely disgusting. The fries tasted like old tofu and the side was coleslaw with fry sauce on it. We paid a whopping 5 cedi for it thankful we didn’t order the veggie burgers. We went back to the hotel to have our packing party and listen to some Beyoncé. It took a little longer than we planned to pack so it was around dinnertime by the time we were finished thankfully. We were still hungry because our snack was so gross. We went to the Castle rooftop for diner and I ordered curry rice with chicken. I figured our food wasn’t going to be there for a while so I went downstairs to take a shower. The water was freezing as usual. I can’t wait till I can finally have a warm shower. When I came back onto the rooftop they were in the middle of a game of skip-bo. We waited almost an hour and half for our food but it’s a good thing we’re such a funny group because the time passed by pretty quickly. I had a fanta with my delicious dinner. We finished with talking to each other for the next couple of hours about our time at BYU and telling funny stories. The other girls left to go back to the room but I just stayed on the roof enjoying the quiet and reflecting on the past few weeks here. The time spent here has been such a steep learning curve for me. I have learned so much about myself and others that I might not have otherwise. I have been happier here than ever before. In college it’s easy to get caught up in the day to day tasks and assignments that I forget to take a second and breathe in all the beauty around me and realize how truly blessed I am. I’m sad this trip has come to an end but so grateful we did it. Tomorrows going to be another travel day, which are never good, but I’m hoping it won’t be too awful!

XOXO

Natalie