Day 75

Today was spent deep cleaning to try to rid our room of the fleas. We woke up at 7 and spent almost the whole entire day cleaning our room. We first cleared out all of our clothes and stuff then removed our mattresses and stripped them of the sheets. While we were cleaning the power went out around 8 so we were pretty hot and sweaty cleaning up and moving around the furniture. I had to pack all my stuff into the bags and thankfully it all fits. We swept, mopped, and dusted the whole room. Not only did our room feel twice as big but actually smelt normal. While we let the floor dry I washed all my sheets while it was sunny out. Kofi came over and hung out while I organized my stuff. I absolutely adore that kid. I gave him the rest of the stickers I had and let him just hang out in the room and play. I am going to miss Kofi more than I can understand. He has the cutest laugh and is quite the troublemaker. His cousin Kobi came over and played with the rest of the stickers too. Cassie left for the school so it was just the two boys watching me as I cleaned the rest of the room. The gate opened and I assumed it was Cassie but it was just a bunch of school kids curious to see what we were doing. I shooed them away because Madam Esther said no one is allowed except for Kofi and Kobi. They got mad at me that I wouldn’t give them water and let them stay but I felt so violated that they had walked into our room without permission. Kofi is a pretty clever kid and hid while the other kids came over so I don’t think they knew he was over. Kofi, Kobi, and I played for another hour or so until Cassie came home. The school kids were still yelling at us through the window but after ignoring them for awhile they left, or so we thought. We sent Kofi and Kobi home so we could get some work done for the res of the day. I put on my workout stuff and began my workout. The kids were all watching me over the fence and looking at me like I was crazy. Afterwards I wanted to shower but since our water wasn’t running I had to put some water into a bucket and take a nice cold bucket shower. It feels so great to be clean here because it doesn’t last long. Afterwards I did some notes before Cassie and I ventured out in the town to run some errands. I needed some oatmeal and to drop off some material for skirts for my sisters. We ran into Cassie’s farming friend Baron and ended up agreeing to go to his church tonight. We had to quickly go home to finish some things and make dinner before going to his church. I read about an hour of my scriptures and from the Teachings of the Presidents: George Albert Smith book. I am amazed at every single one of our prophets and can’t wait until the ones are released for President Hinckley and Monson. We walked to the station and had some really obnoxious kids follow us the whole way yelling things in Twi at us. We waited awhile for Baron and grabbed a snack. Once Baron arrived at the station in his nice church wear we got into a taxi and practically went off-roading to get to his church. When we arrived, the church was almost in the middle of nowhere with no lights on anywhere. There wasn’t anyone else at the church yet which confused both Cassie and I because he said church started at 7 and is was 7:20. Literally everything here starts hours after they say. When we got to his church it was strangely decorated with plastic chairs and wooden benches for pews. We didn’t know but Baron is actually one of the preachers for the Pentecostal church so he sat up in the front leaving Cassie and I to sit in the audience together. We waited for awhile and only 4 women had showed up in half an hour. A nice lady said she would translate for us when the sermon began. The sermon began and the chairs slowly began to fill up. The woman and men sit separately so it was easy to see that there was more than twice the amount of women than men in the room. The first 45 minutes were allotted for praying which to me sounded more of like a competition of who could pray louder. Some men grabbed microphones and proceeded to pray at the top of their lungs.  The drummer and pianist got up and began playing which cued the beginning of singing and dancing for another 45 minutes. This was my favorite part of the night because we got to pick up tambourines and dance around. Afterwards Baron and the other 4 preachers gave a sermon on bearing good fruits. Then prayer began again and it was very different than anything I have ever experienced before in my life. Most members had their eyes closed and yelling so they weren’t phased at all when Cassie started taking pictures. One girl about 17 years old began spinning around and screaming mabababababa really loud for 5 minutes until the preachers went over to put their hands on her head and cast out the evil spirit they believed was possessing her. The sermon wasn’t over until 9:30 so once we got home I did some coursework and fell asleep pretty quickly after my long eventful day.