Summer in Accra is over…

But all is well! We have had virtual meetings with the Saints in Burkina Faso (in French), we went to a baptism (this young woman was taught over the phone and Elder Martinez participated in the lesson), led another mission tour in Accra (this time with President David Corey and Sister Melissa Sanders) and had a follow-up meeting with the recently arrived Mission Leaders of the Africa West Area. This last virtual meeting included President and Sister Young who will preside over one of the Accra Missions but are still in the US until Ghana opens its borders. They will replace the Keyes (see the previous post) who cannot leave because the borders of their country of South Africa are also closed. The present situation is like playing dominoes with puzzle pieces, things have to fit but also fall in sequence. Hard to visualize, right?

Below you will see our connection via the iPhone with Côte d’Ivoire and us at the baptism of Esther Fallur.

Below, I am speaking at one of the zone conferences (the projector almost concealed me- compare with Hugos’ picture); Hugo and I speaking to the zone leaders and sister training leaders at the Mission Home; with the Sanders.

The wife, Laneth Dick, of the Area Presidency Executive Secretary, James David Dick, had a fall and broke her arm. It was a spiral fracture and required an operation. Through God’s tender mercies, an excellent orthopedist operated on her and she is having a good recovery. In the meantime, Lorinda Belnap, the pool gang (Kristi Evans, Jeralie Hymas and Julie Price) and I have been taking them dinners and looking in to keep her company or help in any way. My friends and I have also been to the market to buy, guess what? More fabric!

What do I need more fabric for? My African Queen (AQ) Block Quilt, of course.

I must confess that I didn’t like sewing. I lacked the patience and forbearance to cut a pattern, put together the pieces, sew straight lines leaving 1/4 inch and rip seams and adjust for when measurements had been less than accurate. Never in my life did I think I would enjoy sewing and least of all enjoy sewing a quilt. It may be mostly because of my excellent quilting teacher, Julie, or maybe it is the beauty of the fabrics in Africa, or seeing the quilt start to take shape and envisioning what it will look like when finished. Maybe all those things together captured my attention and dormant abilities, unknown to me, surfaced. I enjoy taking the fabric scraps and making a design pleasing to the eye. I have always loved beautiful things, not necessarily expensive things.

I tried sewing quilts on my own when I was in the Dominican Republic, without a patient teacher. If I did look at a tutorial online, I chose not to follow instructions. The results were not pretty. Yet, only six years laters, I have found the patience to quilt. On the picture above, to the left, I sewed two pieces of fabric to each square thinking I would patch them together afterward. When I sat down to do that, it was clear I had made a mistake, actually, many mistakes, one extra sash on each block. I needed to sew one sash to the square and then attach another AQ to the sash, then attached another sash followed by another block. The correct result is on the right.

Quilts, though inanimate, are good models of what Alma taught his son Helaman: “And the Lord God doth work by means to bring about his great and eternal purposes; and by very small means the Lord … bringeth about the salvation of many souls” (Alma 37:7). Small means, like opening the door to missionaries and listening to one discussion, opened the gates of heaven for us. Small means, like studying every day a chapter or two from the Book of Mormon following the guide of Come Follow Me, lift my spirit. The Lord asks us to do a variety of things; many of them are small: pray, read, study, serve. Together they make up a whole that, if we are patient and persist despite having, at times, to undo what we do wrong, will be pleasing unto Him. Like my quilt.

We plan, we work, we have to rip the seams and sew again and some times we don’t get what we aimed for; some times we get something better. I have put the blocks together with sashes so each African Queen will shine on her own, but, alas, I will not be able to hang my quilt on the wall as I was planning. It is too wide! No problem. I can use it on our king-sized bed as a bedspread. Yay!