We left the Salt Lake City Airport on Monday, 28 November, 2011 bound for Freetown, Sierra Leone. We landed in Freetown about 6:30 pm on Tuesday 29 November. We had a layover in New York and changed planes in Ghana. President Roggia and Elder Patterson met us at the airport, but we discovered that Scott's carry-on bag was missing. We had been given an opportunity to check our carry-on suitcases in Salt Lake City because the flight to New York was completely full. We jumped at the chance because our carry-on suitcases were very heavy, completely forgetting that we had put some of our valuables in them. (We discovered later that his bag never came off the plane in Ghana. It flew to Nigeria, then back to New York, to Atlanta, back to Ghana and finally to Freetown again. We received it eight days later, minus a camera, a Leatherman multi-tool and a DVD case with 25 of our favorite DVD's in it. Sad . . . )
But we were happy to finally be in our mission area beginning our work. We took a 25-minute water taxi ride across the bay wearing some interesting life jackets with only one working strap. When we arrived at the wharf, we loaded our suitcases in the back of the truck, and headed to our apartment under the mission home. Our apartment is comfortable and the rooms are quite large. It is a one-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment with a nice-sized kitchen and washer and dryer. Our water is trucked in to fill four tanks outside. There is a pump system to pump the water from a tank on the ground to a tank on the roof. During the rainy season we use collected rain water. Our power comes from a generator. As we've said before on our mission in Kenya: "TIA--This is Africa."
But we were happy to finally be in our mission area beginning our work. We took a 25-minute water taxi ride across the bay wearing some interesting life jackets with only one working strap. When we arrived at the wharf, we loaded our suitcases in the back of the truck, and headed to our apartment under the mission home. Our apartment is comfortable and the rooms are quite large. It is a one-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment with a nice-sized kitchen and washer and dryer. Our water is trucked in to fill four tanks outside. There is a pump system to pump the water from a tank on the ground to a tank on the roof. During the rainy season we use collected rain water. Our power comes from a generator. As we've said before on our mission in Kenya: "TIA--This is Africa."
Hooray for a blog post! I'm so sorry you lost a camera and those DVD's! I can send you some if you would like. Love all the pictures. Now I can picture you guys better in your surroundings.
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