Emily and Joey

2 Month Stats, Baby Blessing, and Christgiving Thankmas

2012-01-17T16:37:00.001-07:00

Our Christmas Card 2011

Baby Announcement

Theophilus Kwame Stocking is now the name on the records of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints for our handsome little boy. We were able to give Theo his baby blessing on January 7th. It was a wonderful blessing and it was great to have our families there. Those who were unable to make it were truly missed but we know that you would have been there if you could have been.

Theo in his cute baby blessing outfit. Thank you Tricia and Dustin for letting us borrow it. He was a little tall for the pants!

Four-Generation picture. That is LeRoy, Joey's grandfather who will be turning 100 this year! His secret to life is Mtn Dew!

Joey's parents and grandparents!

Daddy and Theo! My handsome boys!

Emily's parents!

Emily's Grandma and Parents. Theo was getting tired!

Emily and Theo with her Grandma and Mom!

Christgiving Thankmas is how Joey's side of the family makes the holidays go a little longer, also it is a way to prevent fighting for time with the in-laws. We celebrate Christmas and Thanksgiving during a weekend in January. We try and set each day to celebrate each Holiday. We have our Thanksgiving dinner one night, Joey's mom has a general store where the children can "buy" different toys. We have a sibling gift exchange. Also there are many birthdays during December and January so we usually have cake to celebrate those. It is a lot of fun just spending a weekend with everyone playing games and catching up on everyone's life. This year we started a new tradition were we compile a video with pictures from all the families of things that happened over the year so that we can hear stories that otherwise we wouldn't hear. Thanks for a wonderful celebration everyone!

Theo is now 2 months! I can't believe it has already been 2 months but at other times I look at Theo and can't believe that he is only 2 months old. He is such a big boy. He has started to smile and coo. He is good at holding conversations it is so cute. Today Joey came home from work and was frustrated but as soon as Theo saw him, Theo started smiling, laughing and cooing which totally brightened Joey's day. It was so cute to watch. Theo still loves his tummy time and is getting really wiggly, by the time he is done being on his tummy he has pretty much moved his body 180 degrees from his starting point. He is starting to grab onto things and hold onto them for a long time. This includes grabbing onto my hair when I lean over him to change his diaper! haha. Here are the stats of my big boy from his Two-Month Checkup:

Weight- 12 lbs: 59%tile

Height- 23.75 in. 80%tile

Head Circumference- 15.9 61%tile

He got his vaccinations at his appointment and did very good with them. He was fussy the rest of the day and had sore legs but overall he was really good. I love him and he teaches me so many things!

Photo Update

2012-01-13T23:16:00.000-07:00

In my posts I keep saying that I will post pictures later and then I never end up doing it so here are some photo updates. These are from our Christmas celebration with the Jacobsens and some other random pictures.

My nephew Caleb wearing Theo's Santa hat- My First Christmas

Daddy decided to play hide-and-seek with Theo

Our Little Christmas Tree

Theo excited for Christmas

Theo in his My First Christmas Santa Hat from Grandma Stocking

Mom and Theo by the Christmas Tree on Christmas Eve

The whole Family. What a wonderful time of year!

Daddy and Theo sleeping together. Notice Joey is the one sucking his thumb!! hehe

Theo smiling in his sleep. He smiles when he is awake but I can never catch in on camera.

Theo's rats tail

Theo and Daddy dancing in the kitchen

They love to dance!

So Cute!

Zailey holding Theo!

Theo with Mr and Mrs Claus

Santa holding Theo

Kayci holding Theo, I love his pose.

Tegan holding Theo. She hates letting go.

Kayci, Tegan and Theo. Kayci was mad at Tegan because she wanted to hold Theo but she stopped to give us a cute pose.

As a new Stocking in our family we tried to have him be a stocking stuffer but our stockings were too small for his big body so we had to improvise.

First Christmas Stocking improvised Stuffer

Turns out that my brother has stocking big enough for Theo to fit in but he wasn't in the best mood so we didn't get that good of pictures of our Favorite Stocking Stuffer!

So Cute!

Grandma consoling him after being in the Stocking. I love this picture!

He is pulling the funniest face right here!

Joey opening his Christmas Stocking- we try and only do presents from our Stockings since we usually go to Mexico each Christmas. You can't really tell from this picture but his stocking is bulging thanks to being stuffed mainly with new socks! He did get some other non-stocking presents too!

Tegan loves holding Theo! Isn't she beautiful in this picture? Her eyes stand out so much.

My nephew Dylon being hilarious. You can see Ethan in the background ready to pounce. Dylon was just taking a short break from wrestling with Ethan. They were so funny to watch.

It was a lot of fun spending time with the Jacobsens on Christmas Day! We had our traditional scone meal which Joey thinks is the best tradition ever! It was great to see and spend time with everyone, although the whole family wasn't there all at the same time we were able to see all of my siblings and their families at some point. The next post will talk about Christgiving Thankmas with Joey's family which we just did this past week. Hopefully that post will be up tomorrow!

Year in Review

2011-12-26T14:14:00.001-07:00

I was going to write a Family Newsletter about the year to go out with our Christmas Cards but with our hectic lives recently we were late getting out our Christmas Cards, let alone trying to get a letter done to go along with it. So I figured I would blog about our year instead of mailing out one.
The 2011 Year started out as it always has for Joey and I, we were in Mexico with Charity Anywhere doing service for the poor and celebrating the New Year with the ward down there. (We are sad that we won't be celebrating New Years in Mexico this year but our new addition is definitely worth giving up the tradition for the year). Emily graduated from USU with her bachelors degree in Family Consumer and Human Development in December and Joey finished up his degree in Business Entrepreneurship in May. Emily tried to stay busy in the Spring searching for a job but had no luck which was fine because on March 23rd we found out that we were pregnant. Luckily Emily's pregnancy was very easy. She was hardly sick compared to other pregnant women we have associated with. Our main focus this year was on the pregnancy and welcoming a new baby into our lives and family.
In May, Joey and Emily were both able to walk at Graduation. It was pretty cool because Emily was able to walk with Joey so that we didn't have to spend the whole day at Graduation. Emily figured that she probably knew more of the professors and the Dean for the Jon M Huntsman School of Business than she would have if she would have walked in the Education Graduation. After graduation we packed up and moved to Bear Lake to work for Chuck and Ginger (Joey's brother and sister-in-law) at Bear Lake Cabin Rentals. Also this was the first time that Emily and Joey have lived somewhere without sharing the house. We moved back into the trailer that we lived in the summer that we were first married. A big thank you to Brent and Randi Hirschi for the place to stay. Joey spent the summer doing maintenance for the cabins, coming up with marketing options for the renters, and building/promoting the brand image. He created this package booklet for renters to book their next stay along with other benefits and activities to do during their stay. Emily stayed busy doing laundry and cleaning some of the smaller rental properties.
In October the trailer was sold and we had to move. Luckily, Joey started working for his cousin Brian who owns Boat/Seadoo/ATV/Snowmobile rentals in Bear Lake. Brian has the "Fun House" for his employee housing and since he doesn't house employees during the winter we were able to move in. Joey is now working on Website and Online Reservation projects for Bear Lake Cabin Rentals and Brian's rentals. He has also done some other website design projects for other people in Bear Lake.
This summer Joey decided that he needed to do something adventurous since we hadn't really had time and with Emily being pregnant it was a little hard to do any rock climbing or caving. Joey and his friend Ryan decided to Kayak across Bear Lake from the North Shore to Rendezvous Beach. On Oct 19th they decided that the weather was good enough and it was past the boating season so they wouldn't have to worry about other watercraft on the water. They had a lot of fun!
Our due date was November 9th as the day came closer we both realized that we were going to be welcoming a baby to our family and that it was really happening. November 9th came and went without any sign of him coming soon. We had a date set up for an induction if he didn't come (Nov. 17th). Many family members really wanted him to come on 11/11/11 but he decided that he didn't want to come until the next day. Theophilus Kwame Stocking entered our life on November 12th 2011. After a few days in the NICU we were able to go home and begin our life as a three person family. We have really enjoyed having Theo in our family and he teaches us something new everyday.
We have had a wonderful time since his birth with our families celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas. In our next post we will post some pictures of Theo's first Christmas!

We wish you all a wonderful holiday season and a Happy New Year! We hope that 2012 will bring everyone happiness and adventures!

Theophilus Kwame Stocking is 1 Week Old

2011-11-20T13:30:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it has been a week since this wonderful little boy has been out of my belly and in my life. It definitely feels like a shorter amount of time due to him being in the NICU for a few days before we were able to bring him home.

Some things we have observed this week:

~Theo has found his thumb on a few occasions and been caught sucking on it. Hopefully this doesn't mean he is already going to be a thumb sucker! hehe
~During tummy time Theo kicks his legs and moves his arms as if he is trying to crawl, it makes him look like he is such a big boy.
~The last two nights Theo has slept a good majority of the night. We are very grateful for this because the first few nights home we didn't get very much sleep. He woke up at 2:00, 5:00, and 9:00 definitely more sleep than the first few nights were it seemed he was awake every hour. I think he had his days and nights mixed up especially since the night nurses at the NICU are the young nurses who really loved to play with the babies. They would get so excited to be able to do the 3:30 night feeding and be able to hold him!
~We can't use the Newborn Diapers with the umbilical cord cutout otherwise he leaks out of his diaper. Luckily we have some Newborn Diapers without the cutout! He hasn't peed on us yet (he did pee on himself the other day though). Also he has pooped on both Joey and I although I think it was worse when he pooped on Joey in the NICU! Even after being pooped on Joey is doing a wonderful job at diaper duty.
~He loves cuddling and especially skin to skin time.

Labor/Delivery and my Baby

2011-11-18T16:59:00.001-07:00

First off I am going to including many details in this post so if you don't want to know the details of my labor and delivery you may want to skip reading this post! I am really bad at writing in my journal so our blog has become my journal.

Our baby was due on November 9th, 2011 but both Joey and I felt that he would be later than his due date. Everyone is Joey's family wanted us to have him on November 11, 2011 (11/11/11) this would have been pretty cool because he is the 11th grandchild on both sides. Well the 9th rolled around and we were staying in Logan at my parent's house so that we wouldn't have to drive through the canyon while I was in labor, a choice I am very glad that we made! While in Logan my mom and sister made sure that I was walking around and doing lots of things. My sister, Tricia came to Logan with her three boys from Arizona to be here for me. We spent our time shopping, playing with her boys, and just waiting for my boy to come. My mom had me raking leaves and sent Joey and me on a walk. I thought it was funny, everyone wanted him here, as did I, but on his own time. I was just beginning to reach a little bit of an uncomfortable stage but overall I didn't feel 9 months pregnant. Many times I felt like I still had a month before I would have a beautiful baby boy in my life.

We went to bed the night of the 11th with many people "mad" at us for not having our baby on the 11th. Joey and I had felt that I would most likely make it till my induction date (Nov. 17) and labor would have to be induced. At 3:33am I felt like I was going to pee my pants so I stood up out of bed and right before I could open the door to our bedroom my water broke. I stopped where I was and turned to Joey and said his name, which he quickly sat up "what? What is going on?" I told him that my water had broke, it was pretty funny because I was staying somewhat calm and Joey being woken rapidly couldn't remember what we were supposed to do. We had to hurry and pack our bags (which we hadn't really done because both of us thought we still had a couple of days) go outside in the drizzling rain (which later turned into a nice big snow storm). We arrived at the hospital and they did an initial check, I was still at 1 cm dilated but effaced to 100%, also he had dropped to a 0 Station. At my last doctor's visit I was 1 cm dilated, 70% effaced, and he was high at a -2 station. Seeing that I wasn't that far along the nurse told me that I should go for a walk. Walking around was funny because there aren't that many hallways to walk down so you walk down a hall turn around and then walk down another hall.
My doctor had the night/day off so instead of having Dr Blackett we had Dr Kirkman. He is an amazing doctor and has delivered one of my nieces so I wasn't too worried about not having my doctor there. While we were walking the halls Dr Kirkman came up to us introduced himself and then we started talking about my options at this point. After your water breaks they like to have the delivery occur within 24 hours, because I was not progressed very far and this was my first pregnancy/labor he advised that if nothing happens in the next little while it would be a good idea to receive Pitocin to help induce me. We decided to keep walking around the halls and see how far I was at the next check. At this point in time the nurse and doctor were trying to nicely talk us into getting the Pit but not pressuring us into it. The reason for this is that almost every (if not all) of the women that were in labor at that time were wanting to go natural. For them this meant no Pit, no Epidural, etc. I had told the nurse that we were hoping that we didn't have to get an epidural but that it wasn't set in stone. These other women had many different techniques they were trying to go natural, one of which we doing Hypnobirthing, and another girl that we passed a few times walking in the hall had been in labor since 7pm the night before but she did not want to receive the Pit. Anyways after walking the halls and having only progressed to 3 cm dilated we decided to start the Pit at 10:30am. (7 hours since my water broke although it felt like it had only been 2 or 3). After I received the Pit I started to feel contractions (which at this point I hadn't really felt any at any point in my pregnancy or labor). At first they were very bearable and Joey and I were able to massage and breathe through the pain. My sister Tricia came to visit and we played Carcassonne one of our favorite games. This helped distract me for some time but as time passed my contractions moved to my back. Back labor became very painful and by 2:30pm I was still only dilated to 4 cm. I decided (felt prompted) that if I kept trying to breathe through the contractions for who knows how many hours that by the time I made it to delivery I would be out of energy and delivery would be very difficult. I say that I felt prompted because I had really had my mind set on delivering without an epidural and I knew that I was doing good focusing and breathing through the contractions but just felt like the best choice would be to receive an epidural. Even the nurse and the anesthesiologist said that I was doing a wonderful job breathing through the contractions ( I think the nurse thought I was as set on going natural as the other women in Labor and Delivery). Usually if someone had said that I was doing a good job working through them I would have stuck with it but I just felt that the right choice would be to get an epidural. At 2:30pm I received the epidural and was given the chance to lay down and rest. (To me the hours were flying by so even though it had been twelve hours at this point it felt like we had been there for 4 tops, also because it felt like time was flying by I can't remember a lot of what occurred that day other than walking the halls, breathing through contractions, and playing games with Tricia and Joey. At about 3:30/4:00pm Joey decided to run to my parent's house to get some food, as he wasn't too excited about eating another hospital sandwich. While he was gone the nurse came in and did another check at 4:30pm. I was dilated to 10 cm (fully dilated). Right after she got done checking me Joey walked in. The nurse and I both laughed and she was like "tell him the good news." "Perfect timing Joey, I am dilated to a 10" Joey started to glow, you could tell that he was nervous for delivery to actually occur but was so excited to become a father.
When you receive an epidural, especially with your first child the Logan hospital has you wait an hour before you start pushing. I can't remember what they called it but it is something like rest and drop. It is a time for the mother to rest and get energy to push while the baby starts to drop on his own. At 5:35 pm I started pushing with the contractions. The nurse helped show Joey when I should push so he was the one that did the counting and told me when to push and breath. At about 5:50 we saw the first little part of the babies head for the first time. It was amazing (we had a mirror at the end of the bed, which other girls that had been in our Prenatal Class thought was so weird but I thought it was amazing to be able to see my baby, it made pushing more worthwhile when you could see what each push was doing). Each time I would push I could see his head more and more. The doctor showed up at the perfect time. His head was crowning and I was able to reach down and touch my little baby for the first time, this as well helped me to continue pushing.
An hour after I started pushing our baby boy was born at 6:35pm! They were able to put him straight onto my belly and I was able to hold him while Joey cut his umbilical cord! After a minute the nurse took him away and started to give him oxygen, I was slightly confused because his color looked good (I guess he had started to turn a little blue-ish, but I was distracted by the thoughts that I had just had a baby). The nurses were good at staying calm although their was some chaos going on because another women was ready to start pushing but the doctor was still finishing up with me and they had asked for someone from respiratory to come help but he was needed in another room. The nurses said that we were a lower priority case and let the respiratory person go to the other room. The doctor was talking to me and I think trying to distract me from what was going on with our baby. After this they weighed him he was 8lbs 11oz and 20 1/2 inches long. He received APGAR scores of 7 and 9 which are really high, very few babies ever receive a perfect score of 10. These high scores made me even more confused at why they were taking him to the NICU. At this point all we knew is that he needed a CPAP for breathing, also at the end of delivery I had gotten a fever but it was too late to be put on antibiotics so they would need to do that for our little boy in the NICU.
After he was carted off to the NICU the nurse brought me some food to help me regain some strength, we went down to the NICU to see our little boy in a heating bed, with oxygen and a lot of wires. It is so sad to see something so little have so many wires (I know 8 lbs 11 oz is not little). At this point they had taken an X-Ray and found that there was air outside of his lungs, the pediatrician on call had called down to Mckay-Dee Hospital to get a second opinion. They both believed that he had Pneumothorax (meaning air in chest cavity) which is the less worrisome of the two things it could be. Both the doctors said that it would be best to just treat him for the infection from my fever and see how things looked later.
We had to leave him at this point to get checked into our Mother/Baby room. Finally at 11:30pm we were able to go back down to the NICU. When we walked in the room we noticed that he was no longer on oxygen! They said that he had only been on it for about an hour or two before he was able to breathe the oxygen in the room. Because he was off of the oxygen we were able to have skin to skin time. I was unable to breast feed him at this time because of the antibiotics and the IV. The IV was provided him the nutrients that he needed at this point so we were sent upstairs to start pumping my breast milk so by the time that he was able to breast feed they would be producing. I was able to breast feed him for the first time the next morning at 9:00 am. We did what was called SNS (supplemental nursing system), this is done by allowing the baby to latch to the breast as if he was nursing to help stimulate the milk to come in but because he would need more nutrients we used a syringe and a tube going into the mouth beside the nipple to give him the colostrum that I had pumped the night before. At about 3:00pm that afternoon we had to start doing SNS with formula because I was not pumping enough colostrum. At this point I was getting slightly discouraged (one of my greatest fears while I was pregnant is that I wouldn't be able to breast feed. As a human development major I am very pro-breast feeding and I knew that I would feel like a failure if I was unable to provide for my child). I was lucky enough to have some amazing nurses to help me feel better and let me know that it is normal to only get a few drops of colostrum the first few times that you pump. This really did make me feel a lot better. The nurses in the NICU were always amazing, they were so good at making us feel self-reliant and that they were just there for support and to help us. A few of the nurses told us that we were their favorite mom and dad in the NICU because we were able to do so much on our own without their help. The nurses told us that they felt like they were neglecting us but that we were doing everything so well on our own that they didn't really need to be there. Because of these nurses I felt blessed to have had our little boy in the NICU. Although it wasn't an ideal situation I believe that we received so much added attention and support that we left the hospital feeling like we really could do this and be great parents.
So Joey and I had not picked out a name for our little boy yet. We had thrown around some ideas but nothing was really standing out to us. My favorite that I have had picked out for a long time was Theophilus (nickname Theo, this was my Great Grandfather's name), Joey's favorite was John which he had liked because we would be naming him after John Jones, our friend's brother whom passed away in Nutty Putty Caves. (Joey was there the night that John became stuck and really made a connection with him that really made an impact in our lives). Some other names included Spencer (Joey's middle name), Stephen (after our "Dad" in Ghana), and Jake. We slowly dropped names that we didn't really like as much as others and when it was down to John and Theophilus we decided that any baby/person could look like a John (ex. John Doe) but that we both really like Theophilus and thought that he looked like a Theo. Then it came to the middle name. We had been planning on using the Ghanian day of the week name and because he was born on Saturday his name would be Kwame which just so happened to be one of our favorites. At the same time we were throwing around the idea of using Spencer as a middle name so that him and Joey would have that connection. We finally decided that Kwame would be his name! It was funny to see how many weird looks we received when we said it and how many nurses we had asking how to pronounce his name and what it meant but overall everyone really liked the name once we explained it.
Back to being in the NICU, on Sunday they had done another X-ray and found that he not only had Pneumothorax (remember how I said this was the lesser of two things it could be?) well he also had the worse of those two things, Pneumomediastinum which means air around the heart. This can be very bad because the air puts pressure on the heart so that it has a hard time pumping. Luckily the doctor still felt that both the Pneumothorax and the Pneumomediastinum were going to be able to work themselves out. Normally if it is bad they will have to go in with a needle and remove/release the air. At this point we were told that the air had most likely escaped from a hole in the lungs which had healed itself right after birth. They had been confused at how this had happened at birth because he hadn't been resuscitated which could be a cause for the air in outside the lungs if it had been pushed in but this had not occurred.
I felt bad for my nurses up on the Mother/Baby floor because I was never there when they needed to take my vitals and to give me my medicine. They would leave us hints that they needed to come check on me by leaving the blood pressure monitor outside our door. We spent most of our time down in the NICU feeding and bonding with our little guy. We only went upstairs to get food, get some rest, and when the nurses in the NICU were changing shifts because they discuss each patient with the new shift and for privacy they ask that only staff be in the NICU at this time. On Sunday and Monday we had a lot of visitors to come see Theo but because he was in the NICU most of them had to see him through the glass window. It was fun to show him off! Monday night our 48 hours were running up and we were released from the hospital but Theo was still in NICU and everyone at this point was telling us that he would be discharged the next day so we were very hopeful. Since my parent's live just up the hill from the hospital we decided to spend the night at their house instead of doing the hotel stay at the hospital. We stayed at the hospital until around 1am Tuesday morning to finish his feeding and then we went to my parent's house for the night. We had no idea what time he would be discharged so we packed snacks for all day and also made sure we had clothes to bring him home in and his car seat ready. We both were sure it wouldn't be until later Tuesday night that he would be released. We arrived back at the hospital at 6:00 that morning, did his first feeding, the tech came in to take an Xray (Oh yeah also at this point he was no longer on the IV which made it a whole lot easier to feed and hold him although he still had monitors hooked to him his IV was always more in the way). Then we hungout for a little bit then his doctor came in said that the X-Rays didn't look perfect but they looked pretty good and over time the air will escape on its own and that we were pretty much good to go. From the time we got the news that he would be coming home that morning to the time we actually walked out the door seemed like it was forever. They had to make sure that we had gone through all the education, do a car seat test/check, pack up all the things that we would need (we got a ton of things to take home with us from the NICU) finally at 11:30am we were able to take our Theophilus home with us! It was so nice to have him off of all the monitors and wire-free. It made holding him and cuddling him so much easier!
Since we have been home we have completely got him off the SNS. Also he had his first check-up two days later on Thursday and he looks really good and his color is amazing! I love leaving the appointments or every time that we had been away from the NICU and came back and were given good news. It seemed like every time they got test results back he was doing better and better. He is definitely a fighter and my little champ. While he was in the NICU all the nurses that would come in would be so surprised at how big he was, because they normally don't see big babies in the NICU.

Things I want to remember about him from the Hospital:

~One of his favorite things while he was in the heating bed was to just lounge out like he was laying out on a beach enjoying the rays! This was one of the first things we noticed when we first went into the NICU after he was delivered. It was adorable.
~The nurses were so surprised at how easily he latched on for breast feeding. He was definitely a natural.
~He loved skin-to-skin time or just cuddling and so did we. We knew that we needed to get back up to our room on the Mother/Baby floor but it was so hard to leave when you were holding him. The world just seemed perfect to have such an adorable little boy cuddling up close against you. I had told Joey about this one day when he wanted to go back upstairs to rest and then the next day when he was holding him he turned to me and told me that he understood what I meant now. It was just too hard to put him back in his bed and say goodbye.

If you made it through this post I am surprised and thank you for caring so much about our experience! Sorry it was so long but as I said in the beginning this is my journal entry and I don't want to forget anything.

Theo Update #5

2011-11-16T11:45:00.001-07:00

Theo is home. He was discharged yesterday at 11:30am. We are staying at Emily's parents until Thursday because he has a checkup appointment then. All is well.

First night out of the hospital. Did very well.

Theo Update #4

2011-11-14T13:45:00.001-07:00

Baby update #4

So we had the nurse write down the big fancy name of the thing about the air in his chest. He had a case of pneumothorax. He also had a case of pneumomediastinum. Essentially at some point in the first few minutes of birth, there was a hole (or holes) in his lung that allowed air to escape into his chest cavity. The air gets trapped there and makes it difficult for the lungs to fill up and so he can't breathe very well. This leads to low oxygen absorption and such. However, within an hour of his birth he was breathing room air just fine and didn't need extra oxygen. This means the holes must have sealed and the air bubbles in his chest must be getting smaller.

Baby Update #3

2011-11-14T10:34:00.001-07:00

Baby Update #3: Theo is doing well. His infection is clearing up and they still feel confident the air will work itself out of the wall of his lungs. Emily is being discharged tonight and Theo will likely be discharged tomorrow if his chest x-ray looks good...he'll probably get that tomorrow morning. We may stay in Logan for a day or two before heading back to Bear Lake. Thanks for all the well wishes everyone.

He loved his tanning bed (aka warming lamp). He'd just stretch out and soak up the rays.

Mulletron: I wish I could have gotten a better picture of his mullet, but you can kind of see it here. Love it!

What's in a name? Lots of stuff.

2011-11-13T13:45:00.001-07:00

Our beautiful baby boy has a name: Theophilus Kwame Stocking

Theophilus is a name Emily has always wanted (and I love it too). It is unique and we like that.

Kwame is a Ghanian name. It means Saturday born (male). While we were in Ghana we learned of this naming tradition and loved it...so we hoped he was born on a day with one of the names we liked...some of them are little hard to say, but this one isn't too bad.

It is fun to hear people's reactions to the name. Everyone keeps asking us to spell it. It is fun.

We will call him "Theo" most of the time.

Baby Stocking is here!

2011-11-13T13:20:00.001-07:00

Emily's water broke at 3:33am (yesterday 11/12/11). I woke up to her informing me she was dripping all over and I immediately started running around everywhere. We headed into the hospital soon there after.

Then our baby boy was born at 6:35pm (yesterday 11/12/11). He is 8 lbs 11 oz. He is 20.5 inches long. He has chubby cheeks and quite a bit of hair (he even has a little rats tail). Emily got to hold him skin to skin when he was born and he was crying good, but then started panting a little so they put him on a CPAP machine to help him. They took him to NICU and found he has a bit of air that is stuck in the wall of his lungs (not the part where air should be). Emily is doing very well.

6 seconds after birth. Isn't his mom good looking?

Babies used to all look the same to me when they were born...not now.

We like this pic. We wonder how many times in our lifetime we will look at it.

Helping him breathe a little better

Official weigh-in. (8 lbs, 11 oz.)


In NICU getting skin to skin time (at midnight).

We are very happy to have him here. The staff was great. Our doctor (Blackett) wasn't available so we had Dr. Kirkham deliver him. We feel very blessed to have him here.

2011-10-24T08:23:00.000-06:00

About a month ago my friend Ryan reminded me that he had kayaked across Bear Lake last year and told me it was a lot of fun. So then he said he wanted to kayak the length of this year. This sounded adventurous to me, since I'd never really done any kayaking, so I told him I'd do it with him. We decided to do it about 5 times but the weather would get bad the day before or one of us would be busy. Finally this week we just decided we were going to do it. I was a little worried the day before because it looked like it was going to be cold. We had planned to start at 8am originally (it would have been 28 degrees!) We drove up to the North Shore about 11am, and by 11:30am we were paddling away from the boat launch area. (Thank you Emily for dropping us off.)

It was sooo nice when we were starting. We had picked the perfect day.

The lake was really glassy most of the day. I am sure that made it a lot easier. After about 2 hours my shoulders really started to ache, but Ryan told me that if you push through it you'll get numb, and luckily he was right. We only had two problems the whole day. Problem #1 - There was no way to go to the bathroom. Problem #2 - My battery in my phone was dying and it was sending out a live feed of our GPS location and also recording the time and distance. So we made pit stop into Ideal Beach where Emily, Ginger, Zailey, Zenick & Zaxton met us to give us a battery charging pack and we used the bathroom. Then it was just 2 more hours to Rendezvous Beach. We finished just in time. It was getting dark, cold, and the lake was getting rough.

Anyway, that was my fun adventure for the summer. Below is a time lapse of the first 2 hours or so (the battery died on the camera too...when you decide to do things last minute you miss details like charging cameras.)

We were excited to be done. Compare this pic with the beginning pic. The weather had changed a bunch.

One more Month and Halloween Party

2011-10-14T13:21:00.000-06:00

You read the title correctly, one more month till we will be holding our little boy in our arms. I can't believe how fast this pregnancy has gone. Although it feels like it was forever ago that we took the pregnancy test and found out that we were pregnant, I definitely don't feel big enough to only have a month left. I have felt very lucky at how easy this pregnancy has been for me. The biggest annoyance that I have had is nightly heartburn but with my new friends Zantac and Tums I am doing pretty good at dealing with that. Other than that nothing has been that bad. I just got back from my 36 Week doctors appointment and the doctor said that we are pretty close to being on schedule so to plan on delivering very close to my due date: Nov 9th!

Since last Halloween Chuck has been talking about being the Teletubbies for Halloween. When we moved up here and decided that we were going to be in Garden City for Halloween, Chuck was very excited because we would have four people to be all four of the Teletubbies. Every Halloween a group of their friends have this big couple's Halloween party with games, food, and a walk-off. Prizes are given for winning games and the walk-off. Chuck and Ginger really wanted to win the walk-off so we went all out. Bought Teletubbie costumes, made a video, learned a dance, and even added accessories to make it the best walk-off yet! It was a lot of fun to see everyone's costumes and little skits. It was nice to get out and meet some new people and get to know others better. (Yes Halloween isn't for a couple more weeks but due to hunting season they had it really early)

The Whole Group from the Party

Our Dance

The Teletubbies!

One of the games was who could kick the highest: It came down to Bro. Pugmire and Joey

Joey won!!! I took third place, everyone was amazed a pregnant women could kick so high, so was I!

36 Weeks

Here are some pictures to catch up from previously.

Joey working at Ideal Beach Resort doing Boat and Sea Doo Rentals

30 Weeks Along

Another 36 Weeks pictures

Moving into our new home and reopening all of our wedding presents!

Bear Lake Calder Raspberries

We were able to pick our own raspberries they were delicious!

End of Summer and Adventures with Friends

2011-09-19T10:10:00.000-06:00

I keep waiting to post a blog because I want to add pictures but now I forget all the details I want to add so I am going to go without pictures in this one.

A couple of weeks ago our friends Emilie and Garrett Wheeler came to Bear Lake to spend their Saturday with us. (Hint Hint We love when our friends come to visit us in Bear Lake, we will definitely make it worth the trip for you!!) Anyways they showed up a little later in the day than they had originally planned but it ended up being just fine because we just crammed everything into the time that we had. We went for a bike ride on the Bike Path through downtown Garden City, the trail ends at the Marina so we rode our bikes to the end of the Marina it was such a beautiful view of the Lake and all the boats! We rode back to town and got some Raspberry Shakes! We went to Blue Water and took out some Kayaks and tried to snorkel, it was a little windy so the waves made it a little murky but Joey loves to snorkel anyways! We also took out a boat and went tubing. It was so funny to watch, Joey's jaw hurt him the next day from laughing so much! Emilie's Blog about the Adventure

So last week Joey and his friend Ryan were going to Kayak across Bear Lake (North to South) but Ryan ended up hurting his hand and wrist so they decided to put that idea on pause for now. Ryan and his new bride Emily came up anyways to hangout with us (Yes we have a lot of Emily/Emilie friends!). We went snorkeling with them, they went over to the Ideal Beach Marina where there a bunch of baby fish. Then they went camping in our front yard.

Then just this weekend Tanner and Amber came up to spend the weekend with us. Being pregnant I have to sit out on a bunch of the adventures but it is still fun to have friends around and to hear the stories when they get back. Friday night we ended up just hanging out and playing games and we also stayed at one of the cabins. Saturday morning the adventures began (along with a little bit of bad luck). Joey, Tanner, and Amber went mountain biking down a trail called Bridgerland. Near the bottom of the path there are a bunch of hills that they decided to play on. Well Tanner went down one of these hills and hit a bump that ended up launching him a little further than expected, which led to him flipping his bike and leaving him in pain and with a lot of scrapes. To make the bike trip even more unlucky, Amber lost her phone somewhere along the trail. These experiences weren't going to stop them from playing still, so we headed over to Blue Water and took out some canoes. We took our Gavin with us (Joey's cousin's little boy) He was so funny but made the adventure more fun, he wanted to see fish and touch all the bouys. After canoeing we decided that we should go check the trail for Amber's phone so we took Brent's Rhino up to the trail to see if we could find it. The back luck came back and we got two flat tires on the Rhino and Joey had to walk back/get a ride to get the truck and trailer to pick up the Rhino. The boys ended up spending some time trying to get the tires back on and filled up with air. We were unable to find the phone. The fun still continued we had dinner and then they went and got in the hot tub. Sunday after church we ended up playing some more games. We miss having friends around to play games with regularly.

That is it for our Friend Adventures!

UPDATE ON US:

With summer being over there isn't much/any work for us to do for the Cabin Rentals so Joey started working for his cousin Brian at his boat rentals. For about two weeks Joey was working on location renting the machines and then after those two weeks he has been working to clean all the machines and get them winterized. Brian has also offered Joey a job for the winter to work renting Snowmobiles. We are very grateful for Brian's kindness. Not only has he offered Joey a job but he has allowed us to stay in the Fun House. The Fun House is used as employee housing during the summer, we are very grateful to have a place to live. We were living in Brent's Trailer but they sold it and the new owners were only able to rent it to us for an extra month. While Joey has been working I have been moving us in to the Fun House. It is a really nice place and will fit us and our baby perfectly! Last week we went to our first Prenatal Class, I can't believe it is getting so close that we are preparing for Labor and Delivery now. I am currently 32 and 1/2 weeks along. The end of pregnancy is getting so close it is pretty crazy.

Well that is it for now. Hopefully I can post up some pictures of our adventures and my ever growing belly!

Jacobsen Baby Blessings and Get Together

2011-08-22T17:31:00.001-06:00

This past weekend we were able to spend some time with the Jacobsen Family. My Brother and Sister-in-law, Brent and Jenni had a Baby Boy, Caleb born on June 15th and then my Sister and Brother-in-law, Tricia and Dustin had a Baby Boy, Devin on July 30th. They ended up having a combined Baby Blessing at my parent's house. This worked out very well because Brent and Jenni live in Provo and Tricia and Dustin live in Arizona. We got together for the blessings and then had some time to spend together.

Brent and Jenni were staying in a hotel and invited us all to go swimming at the pool. Joey and I had not planned on swimming so we didn't bring our swimsuits with us but Joey was able to find a really nice one for cheap at the store and I wasn't able to find one so I was just going to hangout on the side of the pool. We had been there for about ten minutes when my oldest nephew, Dylon decided he wanted to jump in the pool, thinking this look like a lot of fun my other nephew, Ethan decided he wanted to jump in too. Joey says that it looked like Ethan had decided that he didn't want to jump to the middle of the pool as it would be better to be close to the edge to catch himself. Well he jumped a little too close to the edge and ended up cutting his chin.
We spent the rest of the time at the pool trying to calm him down and take care of the cut, luckily both of his parents are doctors (Mom is a physical therapist and Dad is a Physician Assistant). After trying to bandage the cut and realizing that the cut was too big to go without the needed supplies they had to take him into the hospital to get 4 stitches. While he was at the hospital I got some bonding time with my other nephew Ryan whom I haven't had much time with since they live in Arizona. I can't believe how big he is now, he is walking and talking.

Joey and Ryan bonding

Everyone having fun in the pool

Like Uncle Like Nephew

More swimming fun

The gash in the chin

Dad trying to perform surgery but sadly the gash was too big for the supplies he was able to have access to.

Anyways, on Sunday after church we had a family BBQ and just spent time together. It was nice to spend time with everyone, catch up on our lives, and getting to hold the adorable new babies. It was so much fun to just watch my nieces and nephews run around and play with each other. After the BBQ the girls had planned a surprise Baby Shower for me since this would be the only time almost all of our family would be together (we missed Andy and Jessica who weren't able to make it up). Jenni had put together a fun Memory Matching game where if you got a match of a Baby/Labor/Pregnancy term with the name of a Candy you got that kind of Candy. It was very clever and funny. Then they all gave me wonderful gifts, I can't wait to use them when the baby comes. They definitely spoiled me! I feel so loved and blessed to have such an amazing family! (Thank you for the wonderful surprise and gifts- Jenni, Rebe, Leah, Tricia and Mom!)

While the girl's had the Baby Shower the children and the boys had a water balloon fight.

Jens and Kayci deciding if they wanted to play in the water

The pool

They are so adorable!

Dylon loved throwing the water balloons

Ethan really liked it too!

Lilli was having fun too

The girls watching the children and boys play before the Surprise Baby Shower

I also realized that Joey has a lot of random pictures from this summer so please enjoy! We spend a lot of time with Joey's brother Chuck and his wife Ginger and their three children, Zailey, Zenick and Zaxton.

Zailey and Zenick playing in the Laundry at the Office

Riding Zenick's Handlebars, it is a lot easier to ride Joey's bike's handlebars

Zailey the Dinosaur

Zaxton loves getting rides in the Dump Truck

Lightning McQueen in the Raspberry Day Parade

Tow Mater in the Parade

Zailey was in the Miss Raspberry Princess Pageant so she rode in the Parade, the theme was Fairies

Zaxton loves to hide in the cupboards at the office

Zaxton was using the piles of paper as an easier way to stand up and walk. He is still working on both.

Update on our Summer and the Baby

2011-08-16T13:11:00.000-06:00

We have been staying really busy the last couple of months with the summer business. Things are starting to calm down. Although we have been busy we have found some time to have some fun. My brother Cory and sister-in-law Rebeca rode in the Bear Lake Monster Century Bike Ride, we drove up to Minnetonka Cave to see them after their climb.

Rebe and Cory after their climb

We were able to take a couple days off of work and make it to the lake. We had some friends come up and we spent the morning up at Bloomington Lake, they all had fun and used the rope swing (which right now is a really nice waterski rope) then after that we headed over to Blue Water and took out some Sea Doos. It was nice to get out to the lake and enjoy it. Especially after most of our customers mention that we must love it here and must always be out on the lake.

We also were able to go the opening night of Harry Potter 7 part 2, we went to a pre-showing which is way nice because we don't have to wait up till midnight for the movie to start. To prepare ourselves to go see it we had a movie marathon and watched all the other movies over the previous two weeks. For the Harry Potter 7 part 1 we went to our friend's house who had an amazing party with lots of Harry Potter themed Snacks. It was amazing all the work she put into it.

Some of the awesome party treats

Chuck Poppleton adding the finishing touches to the Party Treats

The Baby is becoming quite the kicker. He loves to wiggle around, which is nice because I am supposed to try and count 10 movements within 2 hours but he does about 10 movements in less than 5 minutes! It is fun to have Joey and my niece and nephews feel the baby.

26 Weeks Pregnant

I am so excited for today, we are going to Logan and get to see the two newest additions to the Jacobsen family. Brent and Jenni had a baby boy in July and Tricia and Dustin had their baby boy a couple of weeks ago.

It's a.....

2011-07-03T16:31:00.001-06:00

Sorry this post is delayed. I have been meaning to post this since we had the ultrasound.

Well I guess I won't leave you waiting any longer. We are having a Baby....Boy. We are really excited about it. Joey thought that it was a boy and I had absolutely no idea what gender our baby was going to be.

We have been staying pretty busy in Bear Lake working for Bear Lake Cabin Rentals. Especially since the busy season is just starting we have been Deep Cleaning the cabins, doing all the maintenance work and just making sure that everything is ready for our Renters.

Now that most of the properties are ready I have been in the office doing laundry most the day while Joey is still running around doing maintenance between rentals. Also Joey is working on Marketing so if anyone has amazing marketing skills please let us know, we need some ideas about how best to put together some packages we are trying to make for return customers.

I am going to keep this short because I don't have too much to say. We are just blessed and super excited to have a baby boy. If you have any names that you are dying to share with us please do!

My large stack of sheets keep piling up higher and higher

19 weeks along!

I am currently 21 Weeks and starting to feel large. Hopefully I can update again soon with more pictures.

Anniversary, Birthday, and Baby Bump

2011-06-11T09:14:00.000-06:00

We have been enjoying ourselves in Bear Lake. We are staying busy working and spending time with Chuck, Ginger, Zailey, Zenick, and Zaxton. On May 30th we celebrated our 2nd Anniversary. We had a lot of fun, on Saturday Chuck and Ginger took us out to get Breakfast, it was very nice of them and we really enjoyed the food. Then on Monday we slept in and Joey made breakfast. We lounged around most the morning then in the afternoon we went and got massages! This was amazing especially since it was cold outside and there wasn't much more that we could do. After massages we went to the Bear Trapper and had dinner. Then we went and hung out at a Cabin and watched our favorite TV show Psych while eating a Raspberry Lime shake. It was a wonderful day spending time with Joey.

June 6th is my Birthday so we went to Logan to spend some time with my family and to get some errands done. I got a wonderful present from Kelly, Leah, Tegan and Kayci. It is a Willow Tree Figurine, I absolutely love it. Thanks again. Also my mom is going to take me shopping for Maternity clothes for my birthday on our next trip to Logan, so if you know where to shop for Maternity Clothes let me know! For dinner my parents bought Pier 49 Pizza. It was good I miss having BBQ Chicken pizza from there on a regular basis. hehe. Then we headed back to Garden City where Chuck, Ginger, Randi, Jaimee, and Brian had cake and ice cream for us. It was fun to celebrate with them. After that we headed back to the trailer where Joey had a porch swing setup in our living room to watch a movie. He had originally planned on having the porch swing setup at the lookout in Logan Canyon when you enter Garden City but it was raining on and off all day. We did see a beautiful rainbow on our way in over the lake.

Present from Kelly, Leah, Tegan and Kayci

Gift from Laura and the rest of the Cluff Family.

Rainbow on our drive back to Garden City

Joey has finally agreed that I have a baby bump so here are some pictures of 17 weeks along. Sorry our camera isn't the best quality. Luckily we just bought one so we should have some better pictures coming soon. Also we find out what gender the baby is on June 16th! Can't wait.

Part 2: Explanation

2011-05-16T13:04:00.000-06:00

So you guessed right and the rumors are true!

Joey and I love Prego Sauce.....oh wait no that isn't it.

Oh yeah, we are Pregnant! We are expecting a beautiful baby to become a part of our family on November 9th, 2011. Although Joey is hoping that the baby will come on Nov. 11, 2011, which we told our doctor and she said that she will do all she can to make this happen, hehe.

I am 15 weeks pregnant which means I am in my second trimester. I was pretty lucky and didn't get too sick in the first trimester, just a little bit of morning sickness but I was able to keep it calm if I kept eating little meals/snacks throughout the day. I feel like I am showing but Joey just laughs at me.

We have already had an ultrasound and seen the squirmy little baby and heard its heart beat. It was an amazing experience and made it finally feel real. We are super excited, we will start posting pictures of my baby bump as soon as Joey agrees that I have one!

UPDATE: In the graduatation blog post I forgot to say what our majors were. Joey graduated with a Bachelors of Science in Management with an emphasis in Entrepreneurship. I graduated with a Bachelors of Science in Family Consumer and Human Development with an emphasis in Family and Community Services. Joey and I are now living in Bear Lake for the summer.

Graduation: Utah State University 2011

2011-05-15T21:20:00.001-06:00

Joey and I are officially graduates from Utah State University. I have been done since Dec. but they only do a Spring Commencement and Graduation so Joey and I were able to graduate together. He finished up his semester with all A's which I am very proud of him. He had a busy and stressful semester full of projects and case studies. I didn't really see the point in walking, but I told Joey that if we could find me a cap and gown I would walk. We both had friends with a cap and gown that they let us borrow so we did it. At commencement Joey and I sat across from each other so we were able to sit and make faces at one another. After commencement we waited for my parent's to bring us food (Thank You so much I don't think I would have made it without food). The School of Business was walking at 12 and the Education College was walking at 2. We were planning on having a long day. Well, Joey went to go get his name and find out where he needed to line up when we heard that I could walk with him. We weren't sure if this meant that I could just walk up with him or meant I could walk then and receive my diploma cover. We found out that it meant I would receive my diploma cover so that I did not have to walk during the Education College Ceremony. This actually worked out quite nicely because we were able to sit together during the ceremony, I know the Dean and most of the Professors in the School of Business where I would have only known one of the Professors in the Education Ceremony. It was definitely a wonderful experience to be able to walk together!

Joey is the first sibling in his family to graduate from college so this was a pretty big deal for him. Congratulations Joey, I love you!

We should have gotten rid of the 2nd 'E' in 'MEET' :)

Do you like Joey's green shoes?

Celebrate good times!

Whoopty wooo!

Us sitting in the Spectrum about to walk.

Thank you to my mom and dad for taking our pictures! Also thank you to Joey's parents for coming up and sharing the day with us!

Part 1: The Video

2011-05-08T09:56:00.000-06:00

Joey and I made a video a while ago on YouTube and wanted to share it with everyone.

Here is the link in case the video doesn't work. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWwnZ-Aa2qg

Part 2: The Explanation will be coming in the next couple of days as well as a Graduation Day post. Joey is finally done with school and we were both able to walk together on Saturday.

What are we doing this summer? Bear Lake Cabin Rentals and sun

2011-05-05T14:21:00.000-06:00

My brother and sister in law, Chuck and Ginger, own a cabin rental/property management business in Bear Lake called Bear Lake Cabin Rentals. Last year they were very busy and now they have added even more cabins to the rental pool, so they have hired Emily and I to help take off some of the load. We are very excited. Our first summer after we were married was spent in Bear Lake, so it will be fun to be back up there. I am especially excited. As a soon-to-be college grad with a degree in business entrepreneurship, working in a start-up company is a lot of fun for me. I get to wear multiple hats, implement some new things I've learned, and all that good stuff. One thing I will be helping with a lot is doing more online marketing, especially through social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Chuck and Ginger work really hard to make their customers happy, so it will be a great working environment. If you know of anyone who needs a cabin this summer in Bear Lake send them our way (www.BearLakeCabinRentals.com)

We may not get out on the lake much this summer, but we'll definitely have fun and get a nice tan.

Follow us on twitter: @gobearlake and @bearlakecabins
Like us on Facebook: Bear Lake Cabin Rentals

And come to visit us if you can! Life is good.

Sandbagging for homes along the Logan River

2011-05-05T14:02:00.000-06:00

Emily and I signed up to go help sandbag along the river in Logan. It was good fun. We made about 700 bags. I sat by the big truck with the sand and put the bags in the right spot for the sand to fill it up and then passed it off to be tied shut and then the bag was passed down (with Emily's help) to the stack. If you've never sandbagged, it's a fun little activity.


Emily and the sandbags she stacked, with the river in the back. If you can see the orange stick, that is how high they need to stack the sandbags because that is how high the river might get.

Spring Break and Good News

2011-03-22T19:08:00.000-06:00

This past week was Spring Break for Joey so we headed up to Bear Lake to work for the week. We actually had a lot of fun. We have been going up to Bear Lake on our free weekends to help Chuck and Ginger (Joey's brother and sister-in-law) work on their house. The original remodeling was for the master bathroom but since the house is full of construction supplies and they are living somewhere else for the time being they decided that they wanted to change the texture of the walls and do some other small projects. We spent the week painting closets and skimming and adding texture to the walls and ceilings of the master bedroom, kitchen, and the living room.While there we had a power outage one night, it didn't last too long but it was still fun to sit around in the dark talking about how long we would last without electricity.
Spring Break can't all be about work so we had to have some fun. We invited a bunch of people up to Bear Lake to stay at a cabin and have a movie marathon. Friday ended up being Joey and I just hanging around watching Psych but that night we had some friends show up and we watched movies and chowed down on snacks! It was a lot of fun.

Saturday Morning we saw Moose on the side of the road.

Saturday night we had a Birthday Party for 3 babies turning 1 year old. It was a lot of fun to see all the presents they got and to watch them "eat" their cake. Zaxton and James were a little hesitant and didn't want anything to do with the cake, while Gracie was having fun shoving her hands into the cake.

Zaxton, Gracie, and James with their cake.

Acting a little more interested.

Now to the Good News:

While we were in Ghana, Joey gave a loan to Dompreh who was the manager of a Pharmacy in Abomosu. We got news the other day that he has paid off his loan! We were super excited to hear this wonderful news! We have also got updates on the other loans, almost everyone is making their monthly payments only with a few who have missed a payment here or there but everything looks very optimistic except for the loan for a Sugar Cane farm for Ben Boadu. The rainy season was very bad for him and his farm was flooded and he was unable to save his crops. His family has moved to Accra the Capital of Ghana to find work and Ben still travels to Abomosu once a week to check on his farm and see if there is anything he can do. We knew the farm would be a hit or a miss but since many of the loan candidates were looking into expanding their farms we thought it would be worth while to loan one farm to see how beneficial it would be.

Dompreh's Pharmacy

Abbie, Spencer, Dompreh, Joey, and Em

Picture Update

2011-02-18T11:34:00.000-07:00

Aggie Basketball

Aggie Basketball Again!

At the YSA New Year's Eve Party

The YSA Group

The School made us dinner one night. This girl told Nick that he is crazy and needs to go to an insane asylum!

The Taco Stand!! I crave those tacos!

The Taco Stand again.

The site for the Tijuana Temple

We worked on this bathroom last May. It turned out really well!

We helped sheetrock this room last May!

Jorge's room. We built that closet last May!

Martin Luther King Day Snow Shoeing

Bryce Jensen what a stud!

Tanner and Amber Jones

Getting my snowball ready to roll down the hill!

Tanner and Amber got stuck after they jumped down the hill.

Still stuck.

Tanner fell face first.

These are all of the pictures that I could get from Joey. I still need to find the pictures from our project in Tijuana this year. Once again I will make you wait for some more pictures. Hopefully they will be posted as quick as these ones were.

Catch Up 2: January

2011-02-17T11:23:00.001-07:00

In January after we returned from Tijuana we headed up to Bear Lake to work for the week before school started and also to celebrate Christgiving Thanksmas with Joey's family. We had lots of food, played the XBOX Kinect, played Christmas Style "Minute to Win It", exchanged presents, Grandma's general store, and just lots of fun. Joey was really good at the Minute to Win It challenges while I sat on the sidelines watching feeling kind of sick. (That night a couple of the children and a few of the adults got sick :( No Bueno). Then school started up again for Joey he started out being really busy with some hard classes but then after realizing that one of his classes wasn't needed for his Major and only for a minor that he was tacking on because he had the classes and it was keeping him way too busy and stressed he decided to drop the class and ease his burden. He is now enjoying his classes and learning a lot. Emily has been trying to keep herself busy and trying to find a job. The job hunt isn't going as well as we had hoped but Emily has stayed busy. We are involved with two charity organizations, Charity Anywhere (the organization that we go to Tijuana with) and World Joy Foundation. We learned about the World Joy foundation while we were in Ghana and fell in love with their goal and what they do. When we returned from Ghana we joined the Cache Valley World Joy committee.On February 3rd we held a Dinner/Auction Fundraiser for World Joy. Our goal was to raise $35,000 to build a Medical Clinic in Asunafo a small village just next to Abomosu (where we stayed). It was a lot of work. We had a silent auction, a live auction, raffle, and a big dinner. We spent a lot of time looking for donations, advertising, finding entertainment, and inviting people to come. It ended up being a wonderful night and we made a new friend, Foster. Joey and I were dressed in our Ghanaian outfits and a man walked up to us and started asking if we had been to Ghana. Turns out that he is from Ghana so we refreshed a little bit of our Twi with him and just reminisced about our time their. He had only been in Logan for 2 weeks but he had heard about the fundraiser and had to come. He is a new professor at USU. It was great to talk to him but now we really miss Ghana. The funds raised totaled was over $19,000 we were proud of what we were able to accomplish. If you want to see pictures of the event go to http://lauravanderbeek.blogspot.com/2011/02/world-joy-benefit-dinner-and-auction.html

On Martin Luther King Day we went snow shoeing with our friend Tanner and Amber Jones and Bryce Jensen. It ended up being a great day it was nice and warm but there was still lots of snow. We had competitions rolling snow down the hills and had a great time jumping down the hills. It is fun to have friends around to spend time with.

We have been staying busy going to Aggie Basketball games which are always fun.

(Once again pictures to come once I get my hands on Joey's Laptop)

Playing Catch up: Part 1 December

2011-02-04T13:54:00.010-07:00

It has been quite some time since we have updated our blog. I have either felt too busy to do it or that nothing of importance has happened to write about. Emily graduated from Utah State University in December so she is now trying to keep busy and look for a job. Joey is finishing up his last semester of school, he is excited to be done but is learning a lot this semester.

Back to December:
After finals we headed up to Park City to spend some time at a timeshare that Emily's parents have up there. We were able to relax in the hot tubs, play in the indoor/outdoor pool, watch movies, read, and just lounge around. At this point we had decided that we didn't have the money to go on our yearly trip to Tijuana and since we went twice last year we thought that we should stay in Logan/Bear Lake and earn some money. Well we received a phone call from Gordon Carter (the founder of Charity Anywhere Foundation) and he tells us that he needs us in Tijuana. After discussing it we decided that we had to go. We missed all of our friends, the amazing food, and we love serving the wonderful people in Tijuana. We had about a week to get ready to go, which is the reason I don't like to make plans they change very quickly for us. Every year I am amazed at how different our experience is but still how amazing it is. We worked in an area of Tijuana called La Gloria with Miguel and his family. Miguel's house is built right up next to a wall of dirt (the mountain was cut into for his house to be built). The weather down there has been very wet which has led to a lot of runoff, which has caused the dirt to fall in large clumps and they are afraid that it will fall into their house and ruin it. We attempted to help Miguel build a retaining wall to prevent any damage to his house. This ended up being quite the adventure. We were covered in mud most of the week. We began by digging a trench and bailing out water so that we could begin our footings. It was so wet that this took a lot longer than planned. Then on Wednesday it rained all day so Miguel told us that he did not feel comfortable with us behind his house with the weather and the possibility of falling dirt and rocks. Joey and I headed over to the orphanage and began helping them build a preschool with another group. We were really proud of everyone for toughing out the rain and cold and working almost all day long until Gordon told us that we need to go back to the clinic and get out of the rain. We spent the rest of the week laying the footings. Then Saturday after everyone else left we returned to Miguel's house to find a massive chunk of the wall fallen down onto our re-bar and footings. Luckily the footings were down and dry it made it easier to dig it all out. We really enjoyed this year in Mexico again and we truly are addicted to Charity Anywhere and serving in Tijuana.

(Pictures to come when I get a hold of Joey's laptop or just look on Joey's facebook page).

Thanksgiving and Lessons Learned

2010-11-25T18:49:00.000-07:00

If you are a follower of our blog you may have read the post about Joseph Wilson and our efforts to help him attend school at BYU-Hawaii. Due to the economy and some other reasons we were unable to collect the funds or find a sponsor for Joseph. When we found this out after hearing back from a few of our potential sponsors, I wrote an email to Joseph about how God's will is not always the same as our will and desires. When I was writing this email I truly felt like this statement was true but at the same time felt like I was only writing it to make him feel better. I knew how hard he had been praying and fasting for the opportunity to attend BYU-Hawaii. For the next day or two I felt horrible and very disappointed in myself that I was unable to help Joseph. I felt like I had failed him. I had tried to contact a couple more people that were involved in charities to see if they had any means or contacts to help, both were unable to help financially. One of the emails that I received truly help me understand God's will. I was very grateful to have the lesson that I was trying to help Joseph learn, be taught to me. I now truly have an understanding that the things that we believe to be the "right" choice for us are not always the choice that our Father in Heaven has for us. No matter how hard we pray for something, if it is contrary to the plan that God has for us then we will not receive the answer that we want. We need to pray for an opportunity to know and understand God's will and plan for us. I am so grateful to have learned this lesson. Especially since it has taught me that I need to listen to the lessons I am trying to help teach others.

For Thanksgiving I thought I would make a list of things that I am Grateful for.

I am Grateful for:

My wonderful husband, I have learned so much from Joey and don't know what I would do without him in my life. While he was in Europe I realized how much he does for me. I knew that having him be gone for a month would be very difficult for me because I love having him by my side. I learned a lot about myself but was also able to get through the month by doing things for Joey. While he was gone I was able to stain and varnish his desk as an early birthday present. My ability to stain and varnish his desk leads me to my next gratitude.
I am so grateful for my mom, she does so much for me. Over the years the relationship between my mom and I have changed. While I was at Dixie for school we became best friends, we used to sit on her bed and just talk about life. I miss those days and wish that we did it more often. My mom kept me sane while Joey was gone. She helped teach me how to stain and varnish, she made me dinner, and kept me entertained. I love when we "fight" we will have these little battles of strength. They are too hard to explain but if you ever are around for one I am sure they are hilarious to watch. I love my mom and cannot express my gratitude for all that she has taught me and done for me. She has taught me how to be selfless and to constantly serve others.
I can't talk about my mom without mentioning my dad. He is hilarious, my dad is very shy (I know where I get it from) but when he is around certain people he is very opinionated and is able to make his opinion very funny. While he has been taking classes from USU, especially his English classes, we have been able to talk about the topic of his papers. We start off being kind of serious with the political/ controversial issue and then we end up with the most absurd views. My dad is amazing with computers and is always able to answer any questions I have when my computer isn't working. I am a lot like my dad, we both like a lot of the same weird things (music, clothes, TV, movies, etc). My dad is another example of a charitable person. My parents have hosted a foreign exchange student, they sponsor a child in Mexico, have gone on many service trips to Mexico, work in the Temple, and are always willing to help their children.
My siblings and their spouses. If I were to list each one by themselves this blog post would be super long. I have learned so much from every single one of my siblings and their spouses. They all married amazing people and I love them all so much. As we are all growing older we have grown closer together because we all are realizing the importance of family and we have more in common now. Although we are growing closer we are being to live farther away from each other, which makes me really sad because I love having my family close (although we want to move outside of Utah at some point in our life). I want all of them to know that I love them and admire all that they do. I hope that someday I can be as skilled as my family.
My in-laws (Donna and Von)
In-law siblings
Nieces and Nephews. They always keep me smiling. I love watching them grow and all the cute things that they do and say. I love facebook because it allows me to read the cute things that my nieces and nephews say when I am not able to be around them on a regular basis to hear the things that their little minds come up with.
Education and graduation
Friends
Gospel
Children in Ghana
All the wonderful people I have met over the years that have made an impact on my life. Joey has a list that he writes down the names of the people that have had a positive influence in his life. I admire this list and think that I might make one of my own so that I never forget the people that have influenced me in my life and have helped me to become the person that I am today.
Health
Eternal Marriage
Temple
Living in the United States, although it is easy to complain about the government and everything else that is wrong in America, it is hard to not appreciate everything that we have. Especially after being able to experience how people live in Ghana and Mexico, I am grateful for the comforts I have. We have housing/building codes and requirements to help us live in a safe home. We have toilets for sanitation and we have garbage collection companies and landfills that hold our garbage so that we don't have roads full of garbage or having to burn our garbage. Although we may not like the way that health insurance and the expenses of medical care, we don't have to worry about the level of care that we will receive if we go to the hospital or health clinics. We can be assured that sanitation levels will be followed in hospitals. We were told a story of one of the clinics in Ghana were a nurse rummaged through her utensils with bloody hands and did not wash them afterwards. Running water and being able to drink water from the faucet without fear of getting sick.

As I have been able to experience the lives of those that have much less than me I have been more grateful for the things that I do have. One thing that I have learned while spending time with those "less-fortunate" than me, I have realized that they may be materially less fortunate but in many ways are more-fortunate. They are less likely to worry about possessions and finances but rather they understand the importance of non-worldly objects. Families, Service, and the Gospel are the most important things in their lives.

(This blog post was getting very long so I am sorry that there isn't an explanation on every bullet point)

Craft Time

2010-10-18T22:35:00.000-06:00

Since Joey has been gone I have been trying to keep myself busy so that I don't go crazy. This weekend was Fall Break so I didn't have school on Friday. Leah and her cousin Hayley came home from the store and told me that they had a craft for us to make. So we first cut a 2x4 into different size blocks, cut out letters, sanded the blocks, painted the blocks, mod podged the halloween scrapbook paper and then the letters on, and then to make them unique and personal we all added ribbons to them. I was only able to get a picture of mine completed and Leah's almost complete but without the ribbon. The final product: SPOOKY signs

Help get Joseph Wilson to BYU-Hawaii

2010-10-17T09:29:00.000-06:00

Hello Friends and Blog Followers,

We need your help. This past summer Joey and I were in Ghana with the USU SEED Program. While we were there we met the Wilson family. Sampson Wilson was one of the loan recipients to help further his Kenkey (staple food in Ghana) business. While we were there we met Sampson's son, Joseph, whom Sampson always refers to as his "return missionary." He was so proud that he was able to serve a mission for the church.

Sampson and his wife making Kenkey

The Wilson Kenkey Business

Sampson asked us for help. Joseph has applied and been accepted to attend BYU-Hawaii but, because he's foreign, the school requires a $6,000 deposit before he can apply for his visa. This needs to be paid before December. They have informed us that they have contacted everyone that they know who would be able to help them and that we are their last hope. We know how important it is to further one's education and we also are aware that the schooling that Joseph would receive in Ghana would never compare to the education and knowledge that he would receive at BYU.

Joseph has told us that he is willing to pay back the $6,000 as soon as he is able to. I know that this will put a very large burden on Joseph because as an International Student he is only allowed to work certain hours a week while he is attending school. We are looking for donations to help lift this burden. Also, we are looking for a Sponsor(s) that would be willing to loan Joseph the rest of the money that we are unable to raise in donations.

Joseph Wilson

Joseph was born August 14, 1981. He served in the Lagos Mission and returned in June 2006. He is currently attending Meridian University College of Ghana. While at BYU-Hawaii he wishes to major in Business Administration. We have met Joseph and got to know his parents very well. They are honest people and I know that Joseph truly has a desire to gain an education and is willing to repay as much of the $6,000 as he is able. It may take him quite some time but I know that he is determined to pay back this debt.

Joseph Wilson

Please pass this blog on to any one that you may know that will be willing or able to help in anyway.

One of my biggest desires while I was in Ghana was to know that all the children I met would be able to gain an education. Most children do not make it to high school, and if they do make it to high school they are not likely to finish or gain a further education beyond that. Being presented with this opportunity to help Joseph reaffirms that desire that I had and I really want to make this opportunity possible for him.

Thank you for all your kindness.

Switzerland...is...interesting. Temple, Cars, Drunk Teens, and Raclette

2010-10-10T12:38:00.000-06:00

The past few days has brought a lot of interesting observations of how things are in Switzerland.

I was able to visit the LDS temple in Bern. This site brings together a lot of different people from different countries and culture. While there I met a man from Italy and also another from the UK. Both had been to Utah. The dominant language in Bern is German giving it completely different feel from Leysin. The people and the environment made me feel as if I had entered a new country. While in Bern we visited Einstein's apartment and also saw the bears which make it famous.

While on the train I ask one man if he spoke English so I could ask him questions. He did not, but he did speak Portuguese and one of the other Huntsman Scholars with me spoke Portuguese, so I used him as a translator. He was born in Portugal but moved to Switzerland when he was young. He also spoke Spanish, French, German, and some English. It was amazing!

On Saturday I went to Interlaken. This city is full of high-adventure activities. Hang-gliding, para-gliding, mountain biking, rock climbing, etc. Four of the scholars went para-gliding and loved it. While in the city I visited a cemetery to see if I could find anyone with the last name "Hirschi" which is my mother's maiden name. I did! It was exciting. It made me want to walk around the rest of the day asking people if their last name was Hirschi, but I refrained. There was also a car show in one part of the town. Mostly European cars, but a few American favorites including the Chevrolet Corvette. My favorite though was the 1968 Lincoln Mark III! I have a 1978 Lincoln Mark IV, so it was neat.

It was around 8pm when we got on the train that headed up the mountain to Leysin. On it was a group of teenagers drinking alcohol, dressed in 80's style clothes, on their way to a 80's themed party I presume. They were loud and obnoxious, but the interesting thing was that when the train stopped and someone got on the train that was joining the group the young person would shake hands with all the people they knew. It was such a bizarre action to me. I could never see Americans stopping to greet each person individually when they joined a bunch of friends. It showed me that even though they were out looking for a good time, they still take time to show respect.

I was also able to enjoy some of the world famous Swiss Raclette cheese! This wonderful tradition involves eating a special kind of cheese in melted form. It is eaten with a potato and thinly slice meat. It was gooooooood. As I write about it my mouth waters. Dominique, our hotel manager and chef, was so pleased to share the tradition with us. He smiled the whole night.

All of Switzerland seems very socially responsible. They are environmentally and energy conscience. They are way ahead of the US. Everywhere I go I see things that are"fair trade" and I see wind turbines and such. I like it. Maybe I should come here and work with an energy efficiency consulting company and then take the knowledge back to the US. I really like that they make some concerted effort to take care of the earth.

Chocolate, Castles, Cathedrals and Trains

2010-10-07T05:47:00.000-06:00

We have been busy as Huntsman Scholars, but I have been learning a lot. I believe I said this in my last post but I love Switzerland.

On Tuesday we went to the Cailler Chocolate factory! The best for me was a room with all the cocoa beans. There was one bag from Ghana! It made me so excited. For all I know those could have been the cocoa beans I harvested while I was in Ghana. Of course it was also wonderful to have all you can eat samples....which all the scholars got sick from eating too much. Then everyone went out to the store and bought tons of chocolate to take home to share with friends and family...including me. I spent about about CHF 40 (or $41). All the Scholars together spent about CHF 558 ($580)! Unbelievable.

Yesterday, we went to the IMD campus, a famous business school, and heard about the MBA programs. Some of the scholars were impressed, others weren't. I was impressed but I also felt no desire to do an MBA there. I am trying to leave myself open to all kinds of possibilities, and I constantly ask myself 'what if I did this...' to just try and feel things out. After the entertaining lecture we got to explore Lausanne. We visited a beautiful cathedral and also a chateu (castle). The cathedral was very quiet and reverent. It was nice to have an opportunity to walk around and think without all the noise. The chateu had so many levels to it, and so many intricate things.

All these experiences left me in a reflective mood last night and so once back to the hotel I sat out on the patio, overlooking the city of Leysin, and just thought about where my future could take me. I reflected on the purpose statement I had created for myself and thought about ways I could get the most out of this trip.

My purpose statement:
"My purpose is to create as much value as I can in this world by serving God and following His will. By being Christ-centered, selfless, humble and grateful I can accomplish the most good. I must remember to remember and diligently be diligent."

While in Lausanne we got some crepes that were wonderful. The man making the crepes was so fun. He enjoyed talking to us. I would think people like him might get tired of dealing with tourists, but he was fun to talk to.

So far so good. I am looking forward to the rest of the trip.

Sweet tourist walking around.

A NEAT TRAIN YARD

I thought this was a neat rendition of Adam & Eve.

Travelling to Europe and Arriving in Leysin

2010-10-04T10:26:00.000-06:00

The trip to Europe was fairly uneventful...at least for me. For Shannon Peterson, our Professor, it was a little more adventurous. Every time we went through security she got put in the "sin bin" because they had to scan her wrist/finger brace thing. Then when we got to the airport in Switzerland her bag was missing. They have since found it and she will be getting it., but she had to wear the same clothes today. Poor Shannon.

Once we got to the airport in Switzerland a bus took us to our hotel in Leysin. It was amazing. The road was so slim and the road was quite steep and had a lot of switch backs. It was somewhat scary with such a little bus. I am totally in love with the scenery. As we drove we passed so many kinds of farms. In America it seems a region grows all the same crops, but here I must have seen 12 different crops.

The hotel Bel Air is wonderful. It is like a bed and breakfast. And Dominique (spelling) has the same wonderful Swiss accent that my neighbor, Jenny Leonard, had when I was growing up. I love it.

Right next door is the Gondola lift to the top of the mountain. We went up it today and took a lot of pictures. I have definite plans to mountain bike down the mountain later this week (with the hopes that my knee won't prevent me.) Across the street is a place to rent mtn bikes.

Dinner last night was wonderful! Squash soup, Chicken Cordon Bleu, and flan! Then breakfast is wonderful too! We had delicious meat, Swiss cheese (I know...all cheese here is Swiss, but it is similar to the kind we call Swiss cheese). and toast, fruit, hot cocoa, and OJ/Apple juice from a keg!

The local grocery store is called COOP (like co-op, not like a chicken coop). I bought eggs, of course, but mostly because of what they looked like. They are colored like Easter eggs. I think they are hard-boiled. I also bought some sandwich fixings.

Probably a $4,000 bike to ride down the mtn here.

I love the culture. I don't know if it is just because I am from America or not, but I feel like we have no culture...or it is really lame or something. The culture here just seems so rich and pleasant.

Catching Up

2010-09-22T10:49:00.000-06:00

We haven't updated our blog for quite sometime so I thought I would do a catch up since we have been home from Ghana.

When we arrived home we had a party with Joey's Family. It was really nice to see everyone and spent time with them even though Joey and I were exhausted. Luckily our plane arrived a couple of hours early so we got a shower and a nap in before everyone arrived.

The next day we came home to Logan and babysat my nephews, Ethan and Ryan. They were adorable. Ethan kept asking me, "Where is the other Emily, the Blonde Emily, I like her better." It was hilarious. Ethan loves bowling and could stay entertained all day long if he could bowl. After playing bowling at home with empty soda bottles we decided to take him to the Bowling Alley. He is an amazing bowler, he only used the ramp for the first couple of times and then he told us that he didn't want to us it.

Ethan was very helpful grabbing our balls for us.

Ethan doing his bowling approach.

We also took the boys to 1st Dam to feed the ducks. Ethan had so much fun with this. After we ran out of bread a nice family walked by and gave Ethan another piece of bread to feed the ducks. Ethan got so excited while he was feeding them that he ended up getting all wet. Joey took some really cute pictures of Ethan feeding the ducks but they are on his phone so I will have to post them later.

When Tricia and Dustin returned from Safford, Arizona (Dustin was there for a job interview, which he was offered and now they live in Safford) Joey and I headed up to Bear Lake to work before school started. While we were there we went wakeboarding and Joey was doing an great job at clearing the wake. On his last run he cleared the wake and it looked really good until the landing. Joey ended up with a Level 2 Sprain on his Knee. (I don't really know what this means). He is doing good but it still hurts him at times and he can't straighten his knee all the way.

While we were in Bear Lake we had a Stocking get-together. It was fun to spend time with Joey's family again. We had a lot of laughs, mainly due to children being very sneaky.

This is what happens when two 2 year old lock themselves in a bathroom.
The tub and toilet were full of bubbles.

It had been three weeks since we had been home at this point and I finally decided to take out my Ghanian Hair.

After taking out all of the braids and running a brush through my hair.

School has been going good, I am only taking 9 credits (3 classes) so I trying to find a hobby or a job to keep my busy. Joey is currently in an intensive scholar semester for the Huntsman Scholar Program. I am so proud of him that he was able to make it but I have to remind myself that this is an amazing experience for him. He is very busy writing papers and reading articles all day long. Also on Oct 2 he leaves for the whole month to go to Europe. I am excited for the wonderful experience he is going to have while he is there. I only wish that I was able to join him.

We think of Ghana very often and can't wait until the day we are able to return. Our goal is to return in 4 years. I find myself daydreaming of all of the children that I grew very close to. I can't help but wonder where their life is going to take them. Are they going to make it to high school, will they stay faithful in the church, what opportunities will be presented to them, and on and on. If I could have, I would have brought about 12 of those children home with me.

Part 2: Last Days in Abomosu, Ghana

2010-08-19T11:53:00.000-06:00

Monday is P-Day for the missionaries and Elder and Sister Terry. We had asked the Terry's if they wanted to go on an adventure together for their last P-day with us in Abomosu. They were so excited and started making plans for what we could do. They drive around a lot to check up on all the branches in the district and they said that they saw this big factory and wanted to find out what it was. They found out that it was an Oil Palm Processing Plant. They went there on Saturday and asked if we would be able to take a tour on Monday and setup an appointment for us. Monday afternoon the Terry's picked us up and then we picked up the Elders and started our drive out to Asoum. It is such an amazing factory. They extract two different kinds of oil, which honestly I'm not sure I understand what they are for. I think both are use for cooking (one definitely is and looks just like vegetable oil). They also get fatty acid stuff that is used to make soap. They are trying to go entirely green and use the nut casing that contains the oil as biofuel to run the plant.

Ready with our Hard Hats

Steam Room

Rail-Carts with the Palm Plant

Rail-Carts going into the Steam Chamber

This is the off-season for Palm

The Processing Plant

The many different products (from left to right: cooking oil, fatty acid used for soap, stuff used for biscuits, ice cream, etc, another more pure cooking oil, and another product used for soap.

The last day we spent saying all of our goodbyes. Here are some pictures of us playing with the children for the last time. Thanks to Laura and Ember for the bubbles, the children really loved them.

Some of my favorite village children

We blew bubbles with them as our goodbye

I love their faces.

I hate to pick favorites but she chose me!

I absolutely love this girl!

Finishing off the rest of the bubbles

The children made a song about us. Obroni means white person and Obibini means black person.

George was such a cutie.

Amanda, her mom had her bring out this picture to show us. We weren't sure if we were supposed to keep it or not so we just took a picture instead. She is so adorable and has the most beautiful smile, I wish you could see it.

George and his sister we called her Beautiful Face because we could not understand her name. Also many other children we love in the background.

As a goodbye from Esther she made us Golden Chicken, fried rice, salad, and brought us Alvaro (Joey's Favorite)

Where is this bird?

This was on our way to Accra. The driver gave us an orange and this is how you eat it. You cut off the top and then squeeze the juice and drink it.

This is Stephen Jr's Daughter, Rhea and a girl from an orphanage that is in the process of being adopted, Elizabeth. They are adorable. We spent our last night in Accra with them.

The bird is in a glove box. One our way to Accra we were riding in a Tro-Tro (a van) and this man opens the glove box and grabs this bird out and asks if we like it. He ended up putting it back in the glove box until halfway to Accra when he asks us to grab it for him. We think that he sold it to one of the other passengers because we never saw it again.

We really enjoyed Abomosu and we have set a goal to return in the next 4 years! We have definitely learned and grown a lot from our experience there. Thank you to everyone that helped make this summer possible for us. We are very grateful.

Last Week in Abomosu

2010-08-17T16:51:00.000-06:00

We have been busy since we have been home and so I will be updating our blog with some old posts. This was going to be one long post but I think I will split it up into two smaller posts. I haven't finished the second half so just stay tuned.

On Tuesday, August 3rd Abbie and Spencer left to go to Estonia, which left Joey and me in Abomosu alone for our last week in Ghana. Joey and I had told Stephen that we wanted to go and work on his farm for a day to see if we could survive. We decided that now that the professors had come and checked on everything, loans were given out, and business classes were over that it would be the perfect time to go. Well Stephen is in charge of planning a funeral for a previous member of parliament and funerals are a big deal anyways so he informed us that he wouldn't be able to take us and that due to the drought (it rained quite a bit when we were first there but not as much as their usual rainy season, the farmers and crops and "crying for rain") there wasn't anything that we could do. Stephen told us that he had some workers that were going to harvest cocoa and that he would have Nkansah take us to the cocoa farm and let us watch how they harvest the cocoa. It was such a fun experience. The workers made it look so easy so Joey and I had to take this opportunity to work on the farm. Nkansah gave us some quick lessons and then let us try. Joey said that this is one of the scariest things he has ever done. It is so weird, first you are holding this large knife, second you have to hit the cocoa hard so that the knife cuts into it, and then you hand covers the whole cocoa when you try to hold it. It was quite a difficult task but we are glad we got a chance to try. I admire these workers, they were so fast.

Pile of Cocoa that was ready to be harvested.

Joey attempting to cut open the cocoa!

Emily scraping cocoa out of the shell.

Then we went to play soccer with the children in the village. We had done this a couple of times when we first arrived in Abomosu and then either didn't have a ball or time to go play. We went up to Presby Primary School and played soccer for the afternoon. The girls didn't want me to play and kept trying to get me to play hand games with them, let them play with my hair or carry them around on my back.

Joey still had some students from his business class to meet with that wanted to complete their business plans and also to do some mentoring with the loan recipients so we spent the next couple of days doing that. We had also been asked to put together a profile for the Freedom Fighters- the Abomosu Football/Soccer Club. There is a team in Florida that may be willing to sponsor the team but they wanted pictures and profiles on the players so we went to watch the team's practice and set up a time to put together profiles. These players looked like they were between 20-24 years old but they were all between 16-20 years old.

Soccer Practice for the Freedom Fighters

Freedom Fighters Practice

Freedom Fighters Team Photo

My soccer friends- they kept me very entertained

I knew that I had less than a week left in Ghana and that I needed to truly become Ghanian so on our last Saturday I went to get my hair braided. This is quite the process and is very painful. It took four hours to get braided but I have really enjoyed it. Stephen Jr's wife Sonya told me that if I would have had it done in Accra it wouldn't have been as painful because there are salons there that are used to doing Obroni hair. Joey wanted to see what I would look like as a brunette so we figured this would also be a great way to do it without dying my hair. There were three women braiding my hair at a time and three other women helping prep the extensions. It is strange having that many hands touching my hair at the same time. After they braid a strand they take scissors to it to make sure that there isn't any hair sticking out of the braids. After they braided all of my hair they added some sort of wax/gel stuff to my hair and then they use a candle to burn the wax. This was scary to have a flame to close to my face. After they have burned all the strands of hair they pull it all back into a ponytail and dip it into some boiling hot water to rinse of the wax.

(This is the reason I hadn't made this post earlier. I wanted to surprise everyone when I came home with my hair braided.)

The start of the 4 hour process

Part way through the process

Almost Done

The Hair Saloon Ladies (yes they spell it Saloon)

Close-up of the hair

Joey enjoying taking pictures of my hair

Walking home from Church on our last Sunday in Abomosu

Last Sunday in Abomosu

One of the loan recipients Ben Boadu was starting a sugar cane farm. We had told him that we wanted to see him plant the sugar cane so on Monday, August 9 Joey and I rode our bikes to his farm which was farther than we had thought. We were able to watch him plant his sugar cane starters. It is such a simple process.

These are the Sugar Cane Starters

First you clear away the weeds where you want to plant the sugar cane

then you dig a hole for the starters

Lastly you cover the starters with dirt

If you didn't notice a machete is used as a cutting tool, shovel, and rake.

Hopefully our last Ghana post will be up soon.

Last Day in Ghana and Loan Recipients info

2010-08-14T15:48:00.000-06:00

(THIS WAS WRITTEN THE DAY WE LEFT GHANA BUT I WAS'T ABLE TO POST IT UNTIL NOW.)

This is Joey reporting LIVE from Ghana. This is our last day in Ghana and we are sooooo sad we are leaving but also so grateful for the opportunity to come. Emily wanted me to talk a bit about the real reason we were sent to Ghana - the USU SEED program.

So SEED stands for: Small Enterprise Education and Development. Basically it means we help small businesses get up and going by teaching classes that help people prepare to start a business, then give them a small loan, then mentor them. We also had a special assignment finding contacts and gathering info about Abomosu and see what challenges and opportunities there are.

I think the SEED program will do very well in Abomosu. Those that we helped start businesses were definitely the low hanging fruit (the people ready to start businesses) but there are many more people that with a little more preparation will be able to start a successful business.

So we helped 7 businesses start/expand. They are all doing wonderful so far. Below are short descriptions of them. I hope this isn't too boring!

Esther Mensah - She was our golden child. A couple days after we arrived she showed up with a business plan (she wrote it by hand the night before), which was much more than we had expected from anyone. She wanted to start a catering and fast food business that served 3 dishes unavailable in Abomosu.
We taught her the content of our classes everyday for 9 days and then decided to fund her loan. She started her business and outperformed her projected sales by a ton! So much in fact that instead of paying off the loan in 7 months, she paid it off in 2!!! Which maybe that doesn't sound amazing, but for these people it is incredible. She is doing very well for herself (and her family).

Ben Boadu- Is starting a sugar cane farm. There is a great demand for sugar cane and not enough supply. You have to have a certain kind of land (kind of swampy) to grow sugar cane, and he had the land, so it was a good match for someone who had half the resources to start a business, and we supplied the other half.

Daniel Acheampong - (To pronounce his last name just combine Champion and pong really fast.) He operates a corn milling machine that grinds the corn into flour, but he wanted a loan to also purchase a Oil Palm extraction machine. There are lots of Oil Palm trees that produce this seed thing that contains a bunch of oil. Anywho, there is no one in town who has this extraction machine, so people extract the oil by hand by squishing it. So he'll help save a lot of people a lot of time (everyone uses this oil to cook for most meals).

Dompreh - He is the manager of his brother's pharmacy. The pharmacy lacked the capital to purchase much inventory. They were the largest pharmacy in the village (there are two others), but they still turned away 30 people a day because they did not have the medicine. So with the loan they about doubled there inventory and are very profitable. And it is helping the sick people of Abomosu.

Sampson and his Wife - Sampson's wife does not speak english, so we mostly worked with Sampson, but together they make a food called Kenkey. It the same idea as a tamale (because it is corn based and wrapped in leaves) but the corn is fermented so it tastes disgusting! But the Ghanaians love it and Sampson and his wife are known as the best Kenkey makers. Anywho, their problem is the cost of corn skyrockets between January and May, so there profit margin becomes pennies (actually Pesewas), but if they buy the corn now and hoard it away then they can be profitable year-round.

Philip Twum - He is the LDS branch president and runs a DJ business. DJs are very important to Ghanaian culture because funerals are a BIG deal. He wanted a loan so he could get some new equipment so he could DJ for two funerals at the same time. He was very grateful for the accounting and record keeping skills we taught him.

Faustina - She is probably the person who's income level will be helped the greatest. She has started a very simple business selling tomatoes and onions to her little part of the village. She goes to a town a few hours away to purchase her inventory. Her loan amount was the smallest at GHC200 (about $140).

I can not even begin to describe how wonderful of a learning experience this was. I really feel like we helped these people a lot and helped start something wonderful in Abomosu. We also made some wonderful friends. To avoid making this extremely long I will sum it up and say that I am grateful our Father in Heaven blessed us with this opportunity to learn, grow, and develop.

Teaching a Lesson and Learning a Lesson

2010-08-07T13:05:00.003-06:00

As I have mentioned in some previous blogs we have craved some American foods especially sweets. We have made a couple of treats throughout the summer to satisfy our sweet-tooth. A couple weeks about Spencer, Abbie, Joey and I made Brigham Young's Buttermilk Doughnuts for two reasons: It was the 24th of July weekend so we felt that it was very fitting and we were craving doughnuts. They turned out delicious and the Abu's really enjoyed them, mainly the glazed ones, they didn't really enjoy the cinnamon sugar coated ones. We decided that we could make them again the next week because we still had quite a bit of flour left and they had tasted so good. After we had made them the second time Margaret Abu asked if I would show her how to make them. So this morning Sister Terry came over and we helped Margaret and Gloria make doughnuts. It was so much fun, I don't think either of them had used a rolling pin before. We had a lot of fun teaching them to make doughnuts. My favorite part was after we were done Margaret told Gloria that she needs to make them for her everyday.

Another learning experience that I never expected to learn this summer is how to cut hair. I had helped my brothers cut their own hair with clippers before but their hair was the same length across their whole head. Then when I married Joey he has me cut his hair which he uses different sizes of guides with the clippers so that was a little more difficult. Well Sister Terry asked me a month ago to cut her hair because her husband didn't really like to do it and because she knew that I cut Joey's that I would be able to do hers. I began by using the clippers on the bottom of her hair and then using scissors to blend and layer the top. This made me so nervous, I have never cut women's hair before. I guess I did a decent job because she asked me to do it again before we leave, which I did again this morning. I admire cosmetologists, cutting hair makes me really nervous.

Primary Songs and All Those that We Love

2010-08-04T12:03:00.000-06:00

For the last month, Abbie and I have been helping out in the primary. We have been teaching them the Primary 2010 Theme Song, I Know That My Savior Loves Me. The Senior Primary learned the song in about three weeks but it took about four weeks for the Junior Primary. Although Sunday was Fast Sunday, it was also Abbie and Spencer's last Sunday here, so we asked the Branch President if the Primary would be able to sing the intermediate hymn in Sacrament Meeting. Abbie was playing the keyboard and I sat on the front row doing the actions to the song to help the children sing. I have taken on a couple temporary "church callings." They weren't really callings that I received but that I took part in. When we went to the Temple for Branch Temple Day, I acted as the Young Women Leader helping the young women through the locker room, confirmation room, and the baptismal font. Now as a Primary Music Leader, I felt like the Primary Leaders that are in charge of the Primary Program that sit on the row showing pictures and doing actions as the children sing so that they remember the words.

Singing "I Know That My Savior Loves Me"

We were also able to teach the Senior Primary some other songs such as:

I Belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes

I am Trying to Be Like Jesus

The only songs that they ever sang, especially in the Junior Primary, are:

I am a Child of God

Popcorn Popping

Book of Mormon Stories

Sister Terry teaching the dance for the "Mighty Change" Program
that they will be performing the end of August in Accra

We are going to miss the branch members here. We have grown close to many if not all of them. We are so grateful for their testimonies and the spiritual strength that they have given unto us. I really feel like this summer has so such a spiritual experience for me. FHE, Institute, Sunday Church Meetings, Branch Temple Trip, Baptisms, Seminary/Institute Graduation and other special meetings. Especially being surrounded by missionaries: Stephen Sr and Margaret are missionaries- they proselyte twice a week and attend the different branches throughout the district, Elder and Sister Terry, and the Full-time Missionaries- Elder Hicks and Elder A.

During FHE this week Joey showed a slideshow that he had made of the pictures that we have taken since we have been here. I can't believe how fast these three months have gone. After the slideshow Margaret came out with two big bags that she gave to each of the couples. They gave us each a dress for the girls and a shirt for the boys, as a gift of gratitude for all that we have done. I was about to cry, I had to keep reminding myself that we have another week here. Abbie and Spencer left yesterday for Accra and will be leaving on Thursday. It was weird to watch them leave, I just kept thinking about how soon before we leave. I have met a lot of amazing people and it will be very hard to me to leave. Joey and I have set a goal to return here in 4 years. We have grown so much and are so grateful for all that we have learned and all the people we have met and grown to love.

Joey and Emily in our outfits from the Abu's

Spencer, Abbie, Stephen, Margaret, Gloria, Emily and Joey after FHE

Gloria has become a Professional and A Day of Visitors

2010-07-30T13:27:00.000-06:00

Almost a month ago we posted about teaching Gloria how to ride a bike because she has never learned, she has been too scared. Well since our last post both Gloria and all of us have become too busy or it has been raining outside so we haven’t been able to get her back on a bike. Two days ago we realized that it had been far too long and Joey got Gloria to take a break from her chores around the house so that we could continue our lessons before we have to leave. Gloria and Joey headed over to the World Joy house to start where they left off, and Gloria surprising really was right where we left off. I had been inside for about five minutes before I was able to go outside and help with the lesson, when I came outside she was already riding by herself. I was amazed! We wanted her to be able to ride on a long stretch but there isn't really any flat areas to do this (there aren’t any church parking lots that are perfect for teaching how to ride a bike) so we use the road that we have. Although she could ride the bike by herself, Joey held onto the back of the seat because the brakes on the bikes don’t really work. If we had a bike that had good brakes she would be doing amazingly but she gets scared when she starts to think that she is going fast so she jumps off the bike. Hopefully we can find a bike that has reliable brakes so that she can become comfortable on the bike. She said that as soon as she learns how to ride a bike she is going to learn how to drive the Rhino.

Gloria trying to remember what she has already learned

Joey holding on due to the lack of brakes.

A little wobbly but still doing good.

No hands!! Gloria is so good!

Yesterday we were expecting Stephen Jr. to come up with his wife and children and Dave McConkie. While we were waiting we had many more visitors than expected. First, Dr Emmanuel Abu Kissi arrived, he is Stephen Abu’s brother who brought the church to Ghana. We were very excited to meet him but he ended up only being able to stay long enough to say hello to everyone. Along with him were his two sons and a girl from Germany, it is always weird to see an Obroni (white person) when you aren’t expecting to see one. Then came in two men that are financing a farm project in Ghana that Stephen is in charge of helping with (I didn’t really get all of the details but Stephen seems to be the main contact in Abomosu for a lot of people). One of these men was from Draper, Utah so we talked to him for awhile about what he was doing here. Then as we were outside trying to be out of the way of all the visitors and meetings that were being held inside, Daniel (head master) and Christie (Primary 1 teacher) from the Presby Primary School that Abbie and I taught at showed up. Last Sunday at church Daniel asked us to come to Presby on Monday so that they could get our measurements. We weren’t really sure what to expect but on Monday they presented us with fabric and told us that they were going to have a seamstress make Abbie and I dresses and a tailor make the boys shirts as a thank you for all that we have done. We were thrilled, and yesterday they arrived with the finished product! They are amazing.

Receiving the dress and shirt

The finished products: They turned out so good.

Christie, Joey, Emily, Abbie, Spencer and Daniel.

Then Stephen Jr. and his carload showed up. From his car came Stephen, his wife Sonya, their two children Rheea and Coby, Dave McConkie, and three other men from Idaho. After they arrived we began to eat lunch and during lunch the Terrys arrived and then Gifty (not sure how to spell all of these names, Gifty is Daniel’s, the head master, daughter) showed up with some letters that Daniel had promised to give us that were asking for donations of old computers for the school. We had told him that we were involved with some charity organizations and would be able to get the word out and see what we could do about getting the school computers. Using computers is part of the curriculum for the schools but none of them have access to computers so they have to find abstract ways to teach it or just bypass the curriculum.

Some of the visitors arriving.

About as fast as everyone arrived they were gone just as quickly. The house was so lively and in an enjoyable state of chaos and then it was empty and very quiet. It was fun to meet so many new people and have new conversations. It is always fun when people come to visit the house because it is like a party, Margaret always has to feed everyone that comes so we are all over the living room trying to find places to eat. It felt like an extension of Stephen Sr.’s birthday party, especially because Sonya brought cake and ice cream.

Rheea playing in the "sand" in front of the house. She is adorable!

Stephen's Birthday and Adventure to the Farms

2010-07-28T12:46:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was a wonderful day. The first day that we arrived in Abomosu, Stephen Sr. showed us his "garden" behind his house. He has told us that he has multiple farms in the area and that when the Rhino (heavy duty golf cart) got fixed he would take us to see all of his farms.

All loaded up in the Rhino- Don't worry we all sat down after the picture was taken.

The Rhino was finally fixed a couple weeks ago but Stephen has been very busy, until yesterday. We woke up at 5:30 a.m. so that we could eat breakfast and be ready to leave on our grand adventure by 6:00 a.m. We all piled into the Rhino and were off to see ALL of Stephen's farms. We soon arrived to an area where we could no longer ride any further (because of weed overgrowth during the time the Rhino was being fixed). We all hopped out of the Rhino and headed out on foot. We walked through many farms of people that we have met while we have been here. Farms in Ghana or at least Abomosu are very different from American farms. Most farms don't have fences around them, boundaries are marked by a particular tree that is different than all of the other trees in the area.

First we arrived at Stephen's father's farm, which has been split up between Stephen's siblings. Each sibling received 9 acres of their father's land. Stephen was the only child that was very serious about the farms so he was lucky enough to have the family house on his part of the property.

Stephen's Childhood Home

We were able to see where Stephen grew up and hear some of his childhood stories. He truly had a "walked uphill both ways in the snow to school" story. The house is very far away from the village, Stephen and his siblings would wake up at 5:00 am to start walking to school, their father would walk with them with a headlamp and a shotgun until they could see a light (the forest was so dense that is was very dark at that time of morning) then the children finished walking the rest of the way. The rainy season can be very bad, especially where they had to go near the river that is overflowing often. The most amazing part of this was that they did not have shoes. Stephen received his first pair of shoes which were flip-flops when he was 16 years old.

After we passed the family farm we walked quite aways farther and we reached Stephen's far away farm, which is 60 acres. It is amazing to see the difference between Stephen's farms and the other farms that we saw. He has hired many people to help him with his farms because he is unable to do all the work himself. Stephen's farms were cleared of weeds while the other farms…were very weedy, in those farms you could barely tell what was weeds and what were crops.

I had to use a machete to get through the thick weeds

On this farm he has plantains, cocoa, cocoa yams, sugar cane, corn/maize, and a lot more. Stephen told us that in 3 years he will be the largest cocoa farmer in the region. We visited quite a few more of his farms, I can't remember how many we stopped at but he owns 7 farms with over 100 acres of land. We stopped at his citrus farm where he has hybrid oranges that will grow in the "off season". They tasted so good. Lastly we stopped at his farms that had bananas and peppers.

Gloria with the Sugar Cane on her head

Joey found himself a tie - it is part of the plantain plant

Joey found a cute little chick

Another reason this day was so special is because it was Stephen's 67th birthday. We were so glad that he took us to his farms on his birthday and spent the morning with us. After we arrived home, Abbie and I went over to the Terry's house to make some snickerdoodle cookies to celebrate his birthday. We have made many treats (brownies, chocolate chip cookies, no-bake cookies, snickerdoodles, doughnuts) but because the Ghanaians don't really enjoy really sweet foods they have enjoyed our cookies the most. Then that night Margaret, Gloria, and Nana (who came up to celebrate) made a big meal and invited all of our friends over to celebrate Stephen's birthday. We had fried rice, fried noodles, chicken, watermelon, hard-boiled eggs, sugar cane, cake (made by the Terrys), snickerdoodles, minerals (soda), and soy milk. It was such a fun night just being surrounded by the people we have grown to love. We were especially glad that we were able to celebrate Stephen's birthday, he has been so helpful to us and we were glad that we could have a day to celebrate him and thank him for all that he has done for us. He and Margaret are our Grandpa and Grandma. We are so grateful to consider them as our family.

All of the wonderful food, the snickerdoodles are in the yellow bag

The Birthday Boy: Stephen Abu

Last Day of School and Ghanaian Dress

2010-07-26T01:02:00.001-06:00

Originally to be posted July 24th

The only girl from our Group of 12 at Zion

Yesterday was Abbie and Emily's last day of teaching the ABC and All of Me Program. The original plan was to have our last day of classes on Wednesday but because of Joey and my surprise trip to Accra on Tuesday we had to cancel classes on Tuesday. Then on Thursday we finished at Presby but when we got to Zion the teachers told us that it wasn't a good day to come and teach and asked us to come the next day. Friday we woke up and went to Zion early and finished with our first Zion class and then we headed over to Presby. We had talked to the Head Master (Principal) and asked if our classes could perform the Letter Song for the rest of the school. He was so excited and so we went up there organized our two classes together and the rest of the school came out to watch our classes do their final performance of the song. It was so cute because you could tell that they were nervous to sing it in front of everyone but they did a wonderful job.

Both of our Presby Classes getting ready to perform for the rest of the School.

The teachers from our Presby Classes

We had decided to do this because: 1) We were so proud of our classes that we wanted everyone to see the wonderful job that they had done. 2) The students from the other classes were always hanging around the doors and windows of our classrooms trying to see what we were doing, so we might as well show them. 3) One of the teachers was part of a teacher training and so she wasn't there the last day of our class and she wanted to see how well her class did with the entire song.

The Head Master Daniel saying Thank You

After their performance we went back to Zion and finished with out last class there and our final teaching of our group of twelve students. It was bittersweet, it is so nice to be done and see that the children did such a wonderful job learning all that we have taught them but at the same time I do not want to leave. It was so sad to be leaving, the children just chased us all the way home. They didn't want to say goodbye, it makes me so nervous to have to actually say goodbye in a couple of weeks. It is going to be so hard because I won't know if they understand that I am truly saying goodbye or if they think I am just saying goodbye for the time being.

Final Day with Zion (KG-1 Class)

Final Day with our Zion Group of 12. We pulled out the markers for the last day hoping that they would last long enough for them to finish the activity pages.

Every since I have arrived in Ghana, I have seen some beautiful dresses and have wanted one made for me before I leave. While we were in Accra on Tuesday I finally had the opportunity to find some fabric for the dress. After wandering the streets full of people Joey and I saw a lady with some fabric. We searched through her pile to find one that we both liked and we bought it. Then when I got back to Abomosu we asked the Young Women President, Sister Boadu, if she would make the dress for me. I felt really dumb because I didn't know what I wanted so she pulled out some posters with different dress designs and Joey helped me pick one out. Then two days later I get a phone call telling me that my dress is done and that I can come and pick it up. Everyone was so pleased with it, I have received many compliments and I am so excited to wear it when I get home.

The Fabric we found in Accra

Couldn't be happier with the final product

The Final Product: My Ghanaian Dress

Accra Trip

2010-07-25T15:53:00.000-06:00

This was written July 21st but we have not had internet until now.

Last weekend Joey began to be very sick. He had body aches, a really bad fever, and headaches. He went to the clinic to get tested for Malaria but they were out of the tests but he receive the anti-malarial medication anyways. He began to get better but then on Sunday his throat began really hurting him, he was thinking that it was strep throat. On Monday as soon as the clinic opened we went over there to see if they did strep throat tests but due to how small the clinic is they don't do those sort of tests (They only have those tests when some doctors from a larger facility travel to the clinic once a month but they had already been here earlier this month). Grandma and Grandpa (Margaret and Stephen) were very persistent that Joey should go to Accra to visit Alex, their son-in-law, whom is a doctor. When we returned from the clinic, Joey called Alex and asked his opinion. Alex convinced us that we should probably go to Accra to get everything checked out.

Tuesday morning we woke up around 1:30 so that we could catch the 2 A.M. bus to Accra. While we were waiting for the bus, Joey and I heard some rustling in a shelf in front of Margaret's shop. We look over and there were two people sleeping in this bookcase like thing. It is quite a site to see at any time but especially at two in the morning when you are not awake yet. Then a man that was waiting for the bus turns and tells us that he was just told that the bus had already left, luckily we knew that there are two buses that leave in the morning for Accra, and just then we heard the bus honking (talk about great timing).

We slept most the way to Accra except the time we had to introduce ourselves to the guy we were sitting next to, Eric. When he left the bus he said that he liked us and wanted to get Joey's phone number so that he could call just to say hello. We arrived in Accra at 6 AM which we decided was still too early to call Alex. Joey had found the hospital that Alex works at using his GPS on his phone so we knew where it was and after talking about it for a little bit we decided that if we caught a taxi we would be there in around ten minutes and then just be sitting around there for quite some time. So we decided to start walking from the Accra Central to the Hospital. It was such a great walk, we walked past Ghana's equivalent of the White House, the Accra Ghana Temple, and many other things that you don't get quite the same effect when you drive past them in a car and only get a quick glance. My favorite was this children's park that we walked past, it had a small train track with some boxcars on it, lots of grassy area, and a pretty big playground (although it seemed like it had been there for quite some time because it was pretty worn down). It reminded me of a park in Oregon that my parents and I walked past a couple of years ago.

When it was finally a decent hour of the morning, Joey called Alex letting him know that we were in Accra and would be to the hospital soon. I still thought we had just under halfway to walk still but about 15 minutes later we were at the hospital. It was such an amazing walk and we got to see a beautiful sunrise.

Alex came and picked us up and took us back to his house so that he could check out Joey's throat there before he took us into the hospital. Alex looked at it and decided that we didn't need to go to the hospital but gave him some prescriptions. Then began the waiting, every time we have gone to Accra we have a list of things we need to accomplish while we are there but we end up sitting for a few hours and then in our last hour we are rushed around town trying to accomplish everything on our list so that we can catch the bus back to Abomosu. Luckily we were able to do everything on our list and still were one of the first people on the bus.

Waiting to leave the Bus Station in Accra

Looking at the fabric that I just bought.

On the bus ride home we saw the most amazing sunset. It was amazing to start the day with a beautiful sunrise and conclude it with a breath-taking sunset.

A picture at the Bus Station that Joey had to take a picture of because it is the LDS picture of Jesus Christ.

The random signs while we waited to leave the Bus Station

ABC and All of Me Literacy Program

2010-07-13T07:12:00.002-06:00

The Presby Primary School

Yesterday Joey came to class for a little while to take some pictures so I want to write about what Abbie and I are doing in the classrooms with the children. We are teaching a program called ABC's and All of Me, which is a literacy program that focuses on using as many senses as possible to help children with all learning styles to be able to learn.

The first section of the program, which is all that we will be able to teach because "summer vacation" (it is winter here but it is like our summer vacation) begins at the end of July, is all about learning the letter of the alphabet, the sound the letter makes, identifying words that begin with the letter, and also learning to write the letter.

The Presby Primary 1B Classroom

We have had to be very creative in a lot of aspects of the program, due to not really being aware of the situation here and what supplies would be available to us. Originally the plan was to teach small groups of children, around 12 students in each group. We also thought that the school was prepared for us to come and would have groups of students that needed the extra help ready for us. When we arrived we realized that we had assumed too much. We met with two principals for Presby Primary School and World Joy: Zion Primary School, we told them about our program and asked if we would be able to have a small group of students from either the Kindergarten (KG) or the 1st Grade (Primary 1). They were so excited to have us in their schools to teach the program that they wanted all the students to be taught.

Teaching the letter and the words to the song for T.

We started out at Presby with the Primary 1A & B Classes. The Primary 1A class has about 32 regular students and the Primary 1B class has around 26 students. Knowing that we did not have enough material for this many children we had to come up with ways to teach the program. We knew that we could teach the song with the entire class but weren't sure how to get all the students to be able to trace/write the letter. We decided that we would teach the whole class while we taught the song and then split the class into groups for the rest. We began by splitting the Presby 1A class into three groups but because the Presby 1B class was small enough we were able to do it in two groups.

Teaching Letter B to Presby Primary 1A

Teaching the Letter B Song to Zion KG- 1

One group would stay inside to trace/write the letter on a paper that was laminated so that we could use dry-erase markers and re-use the materials. While they were inside we have classical music that repeats the letter, the sound of the letter, and words from the letter song we taught them. This is to help their minds combine what the letter looks like, what the letter is, and how the letter sounds.

Our second group in the Presby 1A class, would also be inside with a blank laminated piece of paper and they had the option of drawing a picture of something that began with the letter we were learning for the day or free-hand writing the letter.

Tracing and Writing letter T in the new Notebooks

The third group in Presby 1A (and the second group in Presby 1B) would go outside for sensory learning. In the original program Melanie Herrmann has a lot of resources that she uses to do the sensory part of the program. Due to limited resources we use rocks, sticks, and dirt to accomplish the sensory activity. The children write the letter in the dirt with their fingers (both the Capital and Lower-case letter) and then they fill it in with rocks or sticks. The children actually have a lot of fun doing this, I think they enjoy it because they get out of their classroom. Either way they have a lot of fun. After the children finish writing the letter with the rocks we practice the song in the smaller group. This helps the children that are having a hard time understanding what we are saying get a more one-on-one opportunity.

Sensory Activity outside: Writing letter T using rocks

Practicing the songs in the small groups outside

At Zion the classes are even larger than the Presby classes. We are teaching the KG-1 and KG-2. The KG-1 class has the normal kindergarten aged students and also preschool aged students in the classroom. Most everyone in Abomosu works on a farm, so the mothers are on the farm and their is no one home to take care of the children. The children are sent to school, mainly to just sit/ sleep/ eat/ be babysat/ and possibly to learn what the older kindergartners are learning. This classroom has about 80 children in it. The KG-2 class has around 50 students in it. These are the older of the kindergarten aged children. Due to the large sizes of these classes we knew that we would not be able to split the classes into groups to do the writing of the letters or the sensory activities, but they were very eager to learn the songs. These classrooms have been very enjoyable for two reasons. One, the teachers are very helpful and enjoy the songs and participating (which has been very helpful and appreciated because the children have a hard time understanding our American accents, and also it is nice to have them explain what the words mean in Twi (local language) so that the children understand what the song is saying). The second reason is because the children are so excited, especially the little preschool aged children. They may not understand the words to the songs but they love trying to sing and dancing along with the rest of the class. Also, because the teachers are so willing to help, the children are well-behaved.

We wanted to implement the rest of the program at Zion in some way, so we asked the teachers if there were any students that may need extra help before they are able to move onto the next level (grade). We were allowed to take 12 students from the KG-2 class into a small room (storage room) and help them trace/write their letters. We though this would be an easy task with only 12 students but this ended up being more difficult than we planned. Not because of the children in our group but because the KG-1 class is released for break at the same time that we take the group of 12 into the small room. The children want to see what we are doing and they all want to join us, and the children in our classroom want it quiet so that they can work so the children would yell at each other to be quiet and go away while we would try to keep the door shut so that the children could focus.

We were excited to finally have figured out how to implement the program into the situation we were presented with, but we got excited too soon. The dry-erase markers are going through about 70 hands a day, so they eventually had either been hammered too hard by the children or they just dried out. We were only on letter R at Presby and letter P with our group of 12 from Zion. We wanted to finish the program with these classes so we had to be creative again. We decided that we could go to the market and buy some exercise books (really cheap notebooks, with worn out paper and missing some of the lines that should be in them). This has made preparation for classes take longer but the clean-up is easier. Clean-up had become a hassle because the erasers would get so black by the end of the day that the dry-erase markers would just smear instead of erase and it would take some time to erase all the pages between groups. Now in the exercise books we write in the traceable letters just like they had on the laminated Activity sheets and then have rooms to free-hand write the letter. We were lucky because many of the children did not complain about the change from colorful markers to pencils. We were so sad that we had to make this change but we very grateful that we have some resources to work with. A couple weeks before all the markers died we had gone to Accra and knew that some of the markers weren't working and we needed all of them in the Presby 1-A Class so that everyone had a marker while they were in the classroom. We looked all over for dry-erase markers and when we finally found some it was only a four-pack but was very expensive. We bought a pack hoping that the rest of the markers would last until the end of the program but instead they only helped keep us going for a couple more letters, which was just long enough for us to come up with a new plan of action.

Yesterday, Joey and I were walking around town and some children that are not in our classes asked if I would come teach them the songs. It has been so much fun, we can barely walk anywhere without someone singing the songs to us. The best is when it is children that are not in our classes. We were talking to our friend Joe (a boy in the village that has been teaching us Twi) and he was telling me that he has heard about what I teach the children and "how they sing a song and then you take them outside and they use the stones to write Big E and Lower-case e." He has never been around the schools while we teach so it means the children are talking to each other about the program. I always have the older girls asking if I will sing the song for them. Also, the other day I had a parent ask me why I wasn't able to teach in his daughter's class. It makes me smile that they enjoy it so much. Although I do feel bad for the next Obronis (White-People) to come here because the children will stop them and start singing the song to them hoping that they will sing it back to them and they will not be able to. The children assume that if one white person knows something then they all do. When we first got hear a group of nurses from BYU were here and they had gone to the schools and taught the children songs about brushing their teeth and washing their hands, so the children would sing these songs to us hoping that we would sing with them but we did not know the songs.

Teaching Mary how to write the Alphabet using the Big Book (She is the daughter of one of the Loan recipients, she came over with him to talk to Joey and Spencer about his business plan and I wanted to help entertain her so I pulled out the markers and the Big Book)

I have learned a lot about myself while I have been here. I had never wanted be a teacher, especially a classroom teacher, but I am very glad that I have had this opportunity. It has been an amazing experience to see children learn and grow through something that you are teaching them. The children always brighten my day, whenever I am having a bad day and I see a child smile I feel so much better. I still don't want to be a classroom teacher but I have learned a lot about how children learn and how they need encouragement and need to have fun while they learn.

Review Day of Letters R, S, and T

Here is a link to learn more information about the

ABC and All of Me Literacy Program

http://www.allofmeliteracy.com

Abomosu Branch Temple Trip

2010-07-11T13:41:00.003-06:00

The Accra Ghana Temple

Yesterday we had the opportunity to go to Branch Temple Day. It was originally planned for June 26 which ended up being the same day as the Ghana vs USA World Cup Game so they postponed the date until July 10th. The Branch hired two tro-tros (pronounced cho-cho, which are van taxis) the youth, Gloria, Ashford, Spencer, Abbie, Joey, and I climbed into one tro-tro and the rest of the branch members who were coming climbed into the other one. This was at 4:00am so that we could make the morning session at the Temple. The other tro-tro ended up breaking down and they got caught in the rain so they ended up turning around and coming back home. When we got to the Temple we were not aware of this yet so we had waited for them and ended up missing the morning session. The Branch President was in the broken down tro-tro so we didn't have the limited-use recommend for the 3 Young Men and the 5 Young Women and Gloria. He called someone from the Mission Presidency to help get the youth to do baptisms but because the other car wasn't there they didn't have enough priesthood holders to held perform the confirmations and baptisms. Which was nice because we were able to sit on the Temple grounds enjoying the spirit there. Also Gloria is a new member of the church so we were able to help answer questions about the church and the Temple, while waiting I also had the opportunity to get to know the young women.

These are Tro-Tros

When there were finally enough temple workers available to come to the Baptismal Font we went in and I was asked to act as the Young Women leader and help the youth go through the dressing room, escort them through the rooms, and hand them towels. It was such an amazing experience, especially because I had the opportunity to get to know the girls before entering the Temple and serving them. It was the first time being to the Temple for many of the youth and I could see the change in them after entering the Temple and participating in the Baptisms and Confirmations for the Dead. They had been loud and rambunctious while we were outside, when we entered the Temple a calm came upon them. It really touched me to see the dedication of the youth. At home the Temple is so close and readily available, even when we would go for Ward Baptisms it took about two hours from our night. The members of the Abomosu Branch have to dedicate their whole day to make the trip to the Temple, and I know that there are many more in surrounding countries that must make longer trips to attend the Temple. We woke up at 4:00 am and travelled the three and a half hours there, and had to wait till the next session to enter the Temple, after we left the Temple the Branch President's wife had prepared us lunch so we ate lunch and then began our journey back to Abomosu. The trip back from Accra always takes longer than the drive to Accra, due to heavy traffic in Accra especially during the day, we did not arrive home until about 7:30pm.

All of us inside of the Tro-Tro

While in Accra we recommended some books for Gloria to get at the Distribution Center, such as the "True to the Faith" book. She also had looked at a journal, but it was $8, so she put it back. We had been wondering if she had a journal, because this is such an important part of her life (being baptized, first time to the temple, etc). So we secretly bought it for her and gave it to her as a "thank you" for all the cooking and things she does for us, so she can record the

se sacred experiences now. We also purchased the book "Walking in the Sand." It was written by Stephen Abu's brother about the history of the church in Ghana. It has some very touching stories about persecution. Perhaps in a future blog post I can type up some of the stories.

Today I had the opportunity to speak in Sacrament Meeting. Joey spoke in the branch our second Sunday here and Spencer and Abbie spoke a couple weeks ago. All three of them had translators so that the members of the branch that have a hard time understanding our English would be able to understand their talks. I expected to have someone translate for me so I made sure to make my talk a little shorter so that I would not take up too much time. It turned out that I did not have a translator but I was blessed that I was able to speak slowly (which doesn't happen very often when I am nervous). After Sacrament Meeting, Abbie and I went into the Primary to teach the theme song for the Primary this year and also other Primary songs. I love being with the children they always make me smile!

Joey and Emily in front of the Accra, Ghana Temple.

Clinic, Bike Riding, and Adorable Children

2010-07-09T01:26:00.006-06:00

Children from the Village

The past two weeks in the Eastern Region of Ghana has been a festival, that we did not know about until yesterday. Due to the festival, Abbie and I did not have school today so Joey and I decided to go help out at the Health Clinic again. We have been going once a week for the last couple of weeks. We usually help organize their records (hopefully we will remember to get a picture of this so that you can understand how this happens here). When we arrived this morning they informed us that they didn't have very much for us to do but they gave us a sma

ll stack of records to organize. After we finished organizing we asked if we could help out with anything else. They asked us if we could help with registration (checking people in: seeing if they have insurance or been to the clinic before, then you write them into the registration book depending on whether they already have a record at the clinic or not, giving them a folder if they are new, and just filling in basic information about the patient). I thought this is all that they would have us do, but then they came back and asked me to take blood pressure, temperatures and weights. I was so nervous, I have learned how to take blood pressure but I had no idea if I could remember how to do it. Luckily for me, they had an automatic blood pressure taking machine. While I was taking a little girl's temperature she burped but then seemed fine and then all of a sudden I realized something was not right. I hurried and grabbed the thermometer from under her arm and her mother just in time grabbed a cloth to catch the little girl's throw-up. I felt so bad for her, they stood up and ran to the grass where she finished throwing up and then they came back as if nothing had happened.

On a lighter note, Joey has been desiring a bike to help get him around the village. There are many times where the boys are running late to their classes because they were meeting with someone and a bike would be very helpful. After Joey's unsuccessful searches in other villages, Stephen told us that he had some old bikes but they would need a lot of work. We took them into the bike repair shack and got them fixed up for very cheap (compared to how much it would have cost in the USA). After we fixed the bikes we learned that Gloria (a girl that is at the Abu's that helps cook and clean around the house) does not know how to ride a bike. She asked if Joey would teach her when they were both available. So tonight after dinner Joey started to teach Gloria how to balance. Which was quite difficult because there aren't sidewalks or flat surfaces to ride on. Then I remembered that the World Joy house next door had a driveway and that she would learn a lot faster over there. After thirty minutes of practicing balancing Gloria was

doing very well. That was all the time we had before we had to head to the church for the boys to teach their business class but now I am very excited to teach her how to ride a bike.

Gloria and Joey in front of the Abu's house

In front of the World Joy House.

I am loving being here, it is an amazing experience. I wanted to say Thank You to all of those that helped financially to make it possible for me to be able to come here with Joey. We are reminded regularly how important it is for us to be together and I know that I have a purpose here in Abomosu, Ghana. I have been touched by many people hear and have felt and been told that what we are doing here is a great thing. The teachers enjoy the program ABC and All of Me program that Abbie and I are teaching, also many parents have asked why we aren't able to teach in their children's classrooms. Also I know that the business classes and the loans that Joey and Spencer are teaching and giving are very beneficial to the village.

The children from the church (my regular playmates)

I have fallen in love with many of the children and if I could there are a lot of them that I desire to bring home with me. It breaks my heart when they ask me to take them to America with me and I know that I am unable to. There are three sisters (Justina, Bridgette, and Bernice) in the local branch that regularly ask if I will take them home to America with me, that I absolutely would love to.

Below: Girls from Zion (I met them at the market and they walked me home)

Below: Some adorable children at Esther's Restaurant Kiosk

Tini Falls- Ghana Republic Day

2010-07-02T15:29:00.003-06:00

The Tini Waterfalls

We have been in Ghana for six weeks, which means that our time here is halfway over. We have six more weeks here, I can't believe we have been here this long. We have been having an amazing time getting to know the people of Abomosu. When we walk down the roads everyone knows all our names except mine, which they have a hard time saying. They will always yell Joe, Spencer (Spanky), and Abbie (Abigail), especially the children. It is fun to have everyone know who we are. We are always being asked where we are going, how we are doing, where the others are, etc.

July 1st is Ghana's Republic Day, which is a national holiday so there was no school today. Abbie and I did not have to teach and we wanted to celebrate the holiday, even though in the villages they don't really celebrate Republic Day other than not having school. We have been told that in the cities like Accra and Kumasi, they celebrate and either go to the beaches, waterfalls, etc. Elder and Sister Terry (the wonderful missionary couple in our area) told us about some waterfalls that are pretty close to us, about 45 minutes away near the city Anyinam.

We invited Gloria and Susanna to come with us, which was good because Susanna had been to the waterfalls before. We hopped into a taxi, all six of us, it was quite the squeeze but it is always an adventure trying to travel anywhere.

We got to the Tini Waterfalls after a small hike and they looked a lot like there name tiny. They were tall but just small amounts of water, or at least that is what we thought. We decided we wanted to climb up them to play in the water which was quite the adventure. The rocks were very slippery and the water was a lot heavier than we thought, so we were not prepared to be drenched but it was very fun. Gloria told us that the louder you scream the more water comes down the waterfall. This seemed to be true because as soon as Gloria and Susanna got to the top of the rocks they started screaming and there was more and more water. Also a large bus showed up right after us and they were all screaming and blowing horns (if you have been watching the FIFA World Cup, it was the horns that everyone has at those games.) It was because it is a common tale that if you scream more water will fall from the waterfalls. It has been fun to hear of all the old man's tales, such as ifa frog/toad jumps at you and you are a male you will become female and if you are female you will become a male. We love walking home from the church with Stephen because he always tells us Ghanian stories (many of which he is sad because no one has written them down and children are not learning them because families don't sit outside at night talking like they used to).

Joey and Emily in front of the Tini Waterfalls

Joey and Spencer gave their second loan last week. The loan is for a sugar cane farm which we have heard you can make a lot of money from sugar cane. Joey decided that he wants to move here and grow sugar cane. Hehe. Joey and Spencer have been meeting with over 12 other people to set up there business plans and trying to see how much of a loan they would need and if they will be profitable enough to pay the loans back. Sometime in the next two weeks they will go through all the business plans that have been presented to them and decide how many more loans they can give, according to how much money they have received from USU's SEED Program. It has been interesting to hear all the business proposals they range from farms, restaurants, market shops, internet cafes, and many more.

Emily being pounded with water from the waterfall

Adventures in Cape Coast and Accra

2010-06-22T04:49:00.000-06:00

Since arrived in Ghana we haven't done much traveling outside of Abomosu. So this weekend we decided that we needed to go to Accra to do some grocery shopping and that we wanted to take a tourist trip into Cape Coast. The adventure started out at 1:00 am Saturday morning, where we walked into the center of the Abomosu village to catch the government bus. After a little more than an hour of waiting for the bus it finally arrived and we were off to Accra. We arrived in Accra at around 4:30 am, waited for about ten minutes for our ride and we were off to Cape Coast, which was another 2 hour ride.

We arrived at the Kakum National Park first. It is a national forest and has some endangered species including elephants which sadly to say we never saw. Most of the animals in the Park are nocturnal or are scared away from all of the noise of the visitors of the park. While Joey and I were waiting for our tour to begin we wandered off to look at the views. While I was looking up in a tree I noticed a black and white tail hanging down from a branch and instantly got really excited. I hurried and got Joey's attention just in time to see a monkey jump from a top branch of the tree to a lower branch where we were able to really see him. Then we noticed another monkey. I was satisfied with seeing the monkeys and said that it would be okay if we didn't see any other animals (although I would enjoy seeing more). Our tour began a couple minutes after seeing the monkey, we were off to the "bridge in the treetops" or the Canopy Walkway. These are rope bridges suspended in the air at the top of the trees which was about 125 feet above the ground. We enjoyed trying to walk with no hands, dancing, walking backwards, etc. The views were amazing, we tried to capture them in pictures but although they are great pictures they don't do it justice. (Look on our Facebook pages to see pictures, on Joey's computer he can upload pictures straight to Facebook using iPhoto but it takes a long time to upload them to our blog). These bridges were amazing and I really enjoyed the experience, the trees and roots were so cool, they would wrap around each other and make such amazing designs, one grouping of roots even looked like a bicycle (sadly our camera ran out of batteries so we weren't able to get a picture of it).

After the Kakum National Park we were off to Elmina to go to the Elmina Castle (formerly known as St George's Castle). It was a slave trade castle and passed through different ownerships, it was originally built by the Portuguese. We went on a walking tour and heard all about the history of the castle and those that had passed through it. We went into the slave holding cells, the punishment chambers, and the room of no return. It was quite an experience, it was hard to imagine all the people that past through there as slaves. They said that there had been somewhere around 12 million slaves enter the castle and only 1/3 of them left on boats to become slaves in many different countries around the world. The other 2/3 never made it out of the castle most due to self-induced starvation. The soldiers went to the extremes to feed the slaves by breaking off their front teeth so that they could force feed them with a spoon but the slaves did not want to eat, they would rather die. The stories of what occurred in the castle were heart wrenching but worth experiencing. Due to time we ended up not going to the Cape Coast Castle which was another slave castle but built by another country.

After the Elmina Castle it was lunchtime and also time for the Ghana World Cup football (soccer) game. We hurried and found a restaurant that had the Black Stars game playing and sat down to eat and watch the game. It was so much fun to be surrounded by fans that were really into the game, we have been following the World Cup but we just watch it inside of the Abu's house so it was very entertaining to be surrounded by fans and enjoy the excited environment. (Sort of like the feeling of an Aggie b-ball game :)

It was a very long day but very enjoyable, we ended our day by spending the night at Elder and Sister Dickson in the Area Presidency of West Africa. They took us in as family and fed us, gave us a place to sleep and were amazing company. They told us all about their lives and their experiences serving the Church all around the World (although they claim they haven't been very many places, which is true compared to how many countries their are in the World but they have been to pretty much every continent). Hearing all of their stories made me excited to get to that point in our lives where Joey and I can serve a couples mission for the church. This trip has been amazing, we are constantly surrounded by members of the Church and spiritual experiences. My testimony continues to be strengthened and grow each day. Sunday we attended a ward in Teschie which is near Tema, a larger city next to Accra. When we left church the roads were flooded from the rains, it didn't seem like it had rained that much but it never stopped. At points the roads looked like they were rivers with rapids, it was definitely scary. We later heard that there was a lot of damage caused by the floods and more than 11 people died.

Monday we spent in Accra running errands and getting groceries. Then when we got back from running errands the Dicksons took us to the Cultural Center in Accra. This is not like a Cultural Center that you would think of. It is like a giant swap meet. There are just rows and rows of little shops of African wood work, jewelry, clothing, Football (Soccer) jerseys, dolls, and anything else you could think of. It was really cool to see the ability that everyone had. There were many people making the wood work or sewing the clothes right in front of you. Joey and I weren't really looking for anything so it was fun to try and make it through all the people. (If you have ever been to TIjuana Centro and tried going to the shops, it was quite the same experience except these shops were in a very close vicinity of one another). Everyone tries to get you to go into their shop, which ins't necessary because you can see everything from outside of their shops and then they try to barter. It was a great experience and fun to see so many different things but at the same time same things all over the place. Joey got a Ghana Black Stars football jersey (#8 Michael Essien). Now he is set for the game on Wednesday. The other couple also got a jersey for Stephen Abu that we live with.

Today we are headed back to Abomosu as soon as we are able to get some 2 for 1 pizza. There are some foods that we crave while we are in Abomosu. If anyone has some really simple recipes we would enjoy them. The Abu's don't let us cook, but we want to come up with a very simple recipe to make them dinner sometime. They do let us bake so any easy desert recipes would be great as well.

So far we have tried no-bake cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and brownies (all of which we had to improvise in some way but they turned out pretty good.)

We really love it here and are excited to be here for two more months. I wanted to say another Thank You to all those that made it possible for me to join Joey here in Ghana. We have been reminded on a daily basis how important it is for us to be together and how blessed we have been by being able to spend our summer here in Ghana. It has definitely been a life changing experience that will help us better our lives. Thank You again.

We love Africa.

2010-06-13T14:07:00.002-06:00

So, we still remind each other that we are in Africa, because sometimes it still seems unbelievable. We truly love it so much. Today we went on a Sunday afternoon walk and just really enjoyed the scenery. There is a spot down by the river that I wish we could set up our porch-swing....then this place would be perfect. Seriously, if we didn't have school to get back to, we'd be tempted to stay longer, but alas...

Emily is loving teaching more than she thought she would and she is being so helpful to the school. I (Joey) went to school with her on Friday because Abbie was feeling sick...and I am not very impressed with the teachers. Emily even without specific elementary school training would be a huge improvement, but I guess the teachers didn't have much training either.

Spencer (the other intern) and I have found out that our loans are not going to be as "micro" as our director had thought. We'd been told the loans should be between $50 and 300, but we have found they need to be between $350 - 700.
But it is almost impossible for people to get loans here…unless they have a rich Aunt or Uncle. To get a loan you need:
1.) To have a bank account for 6 months at the bank you want to borrow from
2.) Make regular deposits into your account
3.) Have 30% of the the amount you want to borrow in your account
4.) A full business plan

Even making a business plan is very difficult for them. They do not have easy access to computers to type them up…this also means they don't have access to a spreadsheet to help with income projections.

So this is where we come in. We will probably end up helping about 10 people to make business plans that they can use in the future to get loans. And then we will probably give loans to 3-4 people.

Actually big news! We gave our first loan on Wednesday! We provided 800 Ghana Cedis to help a woman start a catering/fast food place here in Abomosu. She will do a wonderful job and should pay back the loan within 6 months. The "kiosk" as they call it here, is a wood structure that resembles a typical shed in America…so it is tiny! Kind of like a "Central Park" but smaller. I will upload pics to facebook.

Lastly, I woke up this morning with these strange blister things. I have no idea where they came from. It looks just like a oil burn blister, but it is a group of 4-5 of them. I have one above my knee cap and one on my calf. I hope they heal and go away soon.

Well, that is all. Oh, and we are enjoying watching the World Cup! Everyone here watches it. So we are all Black Stars (Ghana's team) fans! The power was out so we missed most of the USA vs. England game…which we were ticked about, but really enjoyed the South Africa vs. Mexico game. We hope Ghana and USA will play each other..just for excitements sake. Okay bye!

If we only had unlimited internet...

2010-06-06T01:49:00.002-06:00

We apologize that we do not do a better job writing blog posts...but the other couple that we are with are doing a great job!!! So if you are really curious about what is going on with us, read Abbie and Spencer's blog. They do a really good job. Especially read about what lives in a tree. I was going to do the same post, but eh, it is easier to refer you there.

http://ourblog-dearinger.blogspot.com/

1st teaching, 1st anniversary,

2010-05-31T00:53:00.001-06:00

Yesterday we had the opportunity to go to a funeral here in Abomosu. Which was quite the cultural experience. Stephen Sr. Abu told us that here death isn't feared, everyone is expected to die at some time. Funerals are more of a celebration of the life that the deceased has lived and they are for multiple days. Also funerals are group funerals, instead of being for one person they celebrate the life of multiple people. The funeral that we went to was for four people. When you arrive you walk around and greet everyone, you wave at everyone that is there and then those that are sitting in the funeral area (behind the pictures of those that have deceased) you shake their hands. Then you either sit down and enjoy or you go to the middle and dance to the music. Which was quite an awkward experience, a lot of the people were drunk and trying to dance with us, so they had no bubble when dancing with us. Joey and I made sure that we were very close to each other so that we wouldn't feel uncomfortable.

Joey and Spencer taught their first business class on Friday, it was an introduction course and they got quite a bit of feedback from it already. They are meeting with those that are interested in starting or expanding their businesses. I feel like now that things are setup we will become more busy. Abbie and I will begin teaching two more classes on Monday, so we will teach four classes each day. Which I am excited about, the children are very responsive and enjoy the program that we are teaching.

Our first day at church Joey was asked to speak the next Sunday so Joey spoke in Sacrament Meeting today. It was funny because he didn't know if he would have a translator or not so he didn't know how much to plan for. Luckily he had a translator but at the same time it caused him to not get to all of his talk.

Today is our 1^st Wedding Anniversary, we haven't been able to do a lot to celebrate but it is still a great day. Hopefully tomorrow night we will go to a nearby village that has a “restaurant” and eat a nice Ghanaian dinner. The couple missionaries (Elder and Sister Terry) in our area found out that it was our Anniversary so they brought us some freshly baked brownies to celebrate. It was very nice of them and very much appreciated. We haven't had any baked goods since we have been here.

Due to our internet access it is hard to upload pictures to our blog so if you want to follow us through pictures look at our facebook pages. It is easier to post them on there than onto our blog.

2010-05-28T09:34:00.000-06:00

We have been in Ghana for a week now and have had a lot of adventures but at the same time not a lot has happened. We have been trying to prepare our lessons. Joey and Spencer are working on their business classes, which they will teach their first introductory class on Friday.

Abbie and I taught our first ABC and All of Me classes today. Currently we only have two Primary 1 of First grade classes at the Presby School. We are hoping that we can get two more at the World Joy Zion school. Teaching has been a little harder than expected. The national language of Ghana is English but that does not mean that English is the main language spoken. It is interesting to try and speak to the children when they understand some things and not others. The children are well-behaved and seem to enjoy learning songs and being able to move around in the classroom. Hopefully we become more comfortable with teaching and the children will better understand us as we continue with the program.

Last night we had the opportunity of attending a baptism for Gloria. She is from Tema but is living with the Abu's for awhile. She helps out with the meals and other things around the house, so we have been able to get to know her over the past week. It was a wonderful experience. On our first Sunday at church, Joey received the assignment of speaking in church this week. I am excited to see whether they will have a translator for him or not. At church they speak both English and the native language, Twi, pronounced like Tree.

We are trying to learn the language, the Abu's niece, Esther has been teaching us some words when she comes over to the house to help with food. Yesterday was the first time we tried anything truly Ghanaian. We had Banku and Okra. The Banku is made with corn but tastes like strong sour dough. I had a hard time eating it but Joey really liked the okra. Usually they just feed us rice and chicken, which I can handle. Someday they are going to feed us Fufu, which is pounded cassava and plantains. It is really cool to watch them make. Margaret Abu (Mom Abu), says that they make it about three times a week.

Pictures to come later.

Abomosu

2010-05-21T15:06:00.002-06:00

We have arrived in Abomosu. This place is crazy, but it will be great. Em and I are both sick...her stomach hurts and I have body aches and a headache. We don't think it is any thing serious.

We got swarmed by about 30 children. They all wanted to touch Emily's hair. Some girls braided it. And they wanted to touch her skin. They liked to squeeze her arm and watch it go pink and then go back to white.

We saw a little scorpion thing too (anyone know what they are called). It was dead, but now we know they are here.

Stephen Abu, the dad of the family we are staying with told us many stories about joining the church and starting in this area. Everyone calls him Master Abu or dad. He says we are his children.

"Dad" showed us his farm. It is just like a movie. He has cocoa trees and we had fresh cocoa seed things. They have lots of pineapple, papaya, BIG avocado, bananas (though they say they aren't good), plantains, cabbage, coconut, big potato things and yams. Oh and also lots of goats, chickens, hens, bunnies, and a dog just had puppies three days ago.

The power was out when we first got here, so it was HOT in the house. There is no AC but just ceiling fans.

Sorry we won't be able to post many pictures. Our internet is slow and also limited (we only have 5 gigs of data.

Anyway, life is good.

Akwaaba to Ghana!

2010-05-20T06:20:00.005-06:00

Akwaaba means "welcome" in the Akan language. And we have seen a few signs with that on it as we got here to Ghana! We are so excited to be here and grateful to be safe. Man, we are also grateful we got to stay at Stephen Abu's house last night, because our rooms were air conditioned. It's nice slow transition to be here.

Emily was sick most of the way here. Her and airplanes are enemies. Maybe we'll just walk home at the end of our journey. JK.

Our flight left Tuesday, May 17th from Salt Lake City and then to Minneapolis/St Paul which we got to the terminal right as they were doing the final call for boarding the plane. Where we then flew to Amsterdam, Netherlands. Our layover there was six hours, so we waited for the other couple that is here in Ghana with us (Spencer and Abbie Dearinger) and we took the train into the city center. We spent two hours wandering around, looking at the architecture and just wasting time. Joey wanted to be able to take me to Europe before he goes there without me in October for the month.

After we returned from Amsterdam Central we waited in the airport for our flight and then made it to AFRICA on Thursday, May 20th!!

Charity Anywhere - May Tijuana Expedition

2010-05-17T07:23:00.013-06:00

We just returned from an expedition building houses in Tijuana. This was our third trip together with Charity Anywhere Foundation. This trip was a little different though. A few months ago we had told Gordon Carter, the foundation director, that if he was ever unable to go on the trip that we'd be willing to go in his place, and he told us that he did need someone to go in May. So we were "Gordon" for the trip, which ended up being more stressful than we both imagined...but at the same time rewarding. We did a lot of running around...going from project to project to lumber yard to project to somewhere else and so on. And I've never understood why running errands like that is so exhausting...you're just sitting in a car most of the time. But either way it mentally wore us out.

We had a small group for this expedition, only 13 of us total. Most of which were students from USU, but Emily's parents also came. We split into two groups.

Project #1: was building a latrine and cleaning/painting a house for a single mother with three boys named Azucena. The mother has diabetes and was even blind for 3 years because of it. She must leave early in the morning to go to work and does not get home until late at night, so the 13 y/o son acts like the mom/dad to the younger two brothers. This family had just joined the LDS church a few weeks ago.
Her house is just a two room shack with no plumbing and "borrowed" electricity. The conditions when we got there were VERY poor. They did not have a functioning bathroom, they had a disease infested couch, etc. So we took everything out of the house and exposed every square inch of it to Clorox. Then we painted and repair the walls, built some shelves, built them a table, rearranged the furniture, and lastly built them a beautiful latrine. Honestly, the latrine is nicer than the house.

Project #2: There is a family that has been helping Charity Anywhere for years. The mom, Ellie, has been cooking for groups for about 4 years now, and it wasn't until a few months ago that we discovered that she was living in poor conditions herself. She is a fun but stubborn lady that doesn't want to accept charity. The woman just gives and gives but will not take anything. While she has a small home, she has a big lot (by Mexican standards) and we asked if we could build an addition onto her home so that we could store supplies at her home. The location that we have been storing supplies has been a nightmare and so we were looking for a new place to store stuff. So anywho, we are building a second story onto Ellie's home so that the two children can live up there and we can store our materials downstairs.
Ellie's daughter, Arely (16), had a school talent show while we were there and all 13 of us Americans went to it. It was highly entertaining.

I love these trips so much! I love the fun Mexican families we have come to know! They have such big hearts. I am ready to see how different Africa is from Mexico.

Vetted on CNN

2010-04-13T11:06:00.003-06:00

Joey has been working on a project to bring Haitians to USU. He created a video to put on CNN and was excited because it got vetted (not exactly sure what that means.) Check it out:
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-429936

Hopefully some good will come of it.

Huntsman Scholar, Travel to Europe and Ghana

2010-03-30T13:56:00.003-06:00

It is nice to have things to look forward to that I (Joey) am really excited about. It just makes life exciting.

First an update on our last post about going to Uganda. Well, I are not going to Uganda. However, WE are going to Ghana. I had an orientation meeting yesterday about the SEED program, and they switch us, because instead of having a single guy being stuck with a married couple in Ghana, and the same in Uganda, they put the single guys together in Uganda, and the married couples together in Ghana. And we are 92% sure that Emily is going to go too. Part of the reason is the next big news.

I interviewed for a Huntsman Scholar position back in February. It is kind of the best scholarship in the School of Business. Initially I was told that I didn't get accepted, but then I got an email saying there was another spot open and they wanted to do another interview. So I did that and they said they'd let us know in a few days...well it took them like 3 weeks, and stuff like that makes me anxious. It was nerve racking because it changes when I will graduate, so the whole next year was up in the air. Anywho, to make a long story short I got an email today that said:

Dear Joey,

Congratulations! We are pleased to offer you a position within the Fall 2010 Scholar Class of the Huntsman Scholar Program. Sorry to make you wait for a response for so long!

As a Scholar, you will participate in the fall Semester program which includes an intensive study and travel experience in Europe.

We look forward to receiving your confirmation and welcome you into the program.

Regards,

Stacey Hills & Shannon Peterson

Co-Directors, Huntsman Scholars Program

The intensive semester it mentioned is REALLY intensive I hear. So Em and I probably won't get to see each other as much as we'd like in the fall, so that helped us decide that Em should definitely come to Africa.

In other exciting news, Em and I went to an Extreme Sports Movie night last night and she won a skateboard deck. Go team!

Iganga, Uganda and the SEED program

2010-03-25T07:44:00.007-06:00

I received the following yesterday:

Dear Joe,
I am pleased to inform you that you have been accepted as an intern for the SEED program in Africa this summer. You will be stationed in a village outside of Iganga in Uganda and you will be working with Ben Macey. You will be responsible for identifying microfinance opportunities and educating and assisting those capable of pursuing those opportunities.
The internship goes from May 17 – August 9. You will be responsible to get with Ben, coordinate your schedules, and book your flights so that you can fly together.
We are pleased to have you in this program and look forward to working with you!
Sincerely,
Kaitlin Stewart
SEED Administrative Assistant

So there you have it. And actually this was all a VERY big surprise to us. Two weeks ago my (Joey) professor talked about these SEED internships available in Africa. At that point Emily and I were pretty sure we were going to go to Pocatello, but I've always wanted to go to Africa, so I thought heck, I'll just turn in an application/resume. So I did and forgot about it. Then this past Monday, I got an email from the director of the SEED program (my professor) and he asked if I'd stop by for an interview. So I figured he was just going to interview everyone and then select someone. So I got to the interview and first thing I did was ask for more details about the program, and he gave me the details about the assignments (which took about 30 minutes). Then he ended somewhat abruptly by saying, "Okay, I'll send you an email tonight and let you know for sure." I was confused at this point, because I thought this was an interview, but he hadn't asked anything about me. So I walked out with the feeling that either I had pretty much already been selected, OR screwed something up and he was kicking me out of the office.

But the next day I got the above letter. So all of a sudden I'm going to be in Africa all summer long. I am stoked! This is a dream come true and a once in a lifetime opportunity maybe.

So....we are unsure about what Emily is doing, because I didn't know she could come with me, but I guess she can. So she is scrambling to find an orphanage there that she can teach at to count as her practicum. So she may be coming with me. So we'll let you know.

I am unsure about to many details of the area right now. I know they do have electricity (but it is intermittent). And the main village has some internet cafe's, so I can send home pictures. And they do speak English...sort of. It is British English and a little strange sounding with their accents.

I keep thinking it will be like "The Other Side of Heaven". In fact my professor, when he was doing the recap in our meeting said it like this, "So basically you fly into the capital city (Kampala)...there should be someone to pick you up at the airport...you'll find a bus going out to Igana...find a place to live...and start overseeing microloans....oh, and teach business classes 3 times a week."

It popped!

2010-03-15T15:29:00.004-06:00

So Joey was helping Emily make some curry stuff, and she was heating some oil and then she dumped the chicken in and it splattered on Joey's hand....and he got this big blister. Cool, huh?

Then a few days ago, Joey was shaking someone's hand (I won't say who to protect the innocent) and it popped! It was gross. There was sooo much liquid.

So the moral of the story is: Be good.

The Update of our Life

2010-01-31T12:26:00.006-07:00

I wrote this post a long time ago but just didn't have any pictures to add to it yet.

It has been awhile since we have posted. A lot has happened since our last post. The semester ended, we had our first Christmas together, we journeyed to Mexico again, started a new semester and had to move.

Both of our families celebrate Christmas on different days than Christmas so that we aren't conflicting with the in-laws families and such, which makes it nice so that we don't have to compete for who's family we spend time with. Although at the same time we ended up not having any plans for Christmas. We ended up heading up to Bear Lake to spend Christmas with Chuck, Ginger, Zailey, and Zenick. It was a lot of fun watching the kiddos open their presents and to spend time with them. Because we are Newlyweds and the fact that we were going to Mexico, we decided to only have Stockings for each other and no big presents. We had fun trying to stuff each other's stockings without the other seeing. Joey being the "little boy" that he is, he had to pretend that he was going to peek into his stocking early.

The last three years Joey has been going to Tijuana, Mexico with Charity Anywhere Foundation to build houses and do service for the poor. I was able to go with him last year and we had an amazing time and are pretty much addicted to service in Mexico. This year Joey was in charge of the trip so we spent a lot of time working out the details and going through the drama of hoping my passport would come in time. It was a way fun trip. We will do another post with pictures and with all the details of our Mexico trip at a later date.

When we got home from Mexico, Kelly and Leah told us that they potentially sold the house so we would most likely be moving out before the end of the month. Well we waited to hear from the buyers but nothing until a week after we started school. We got the phone call on Thursday that we had to be out by the next Friday. Then on Friday they called and said they would like to do the final walk through on Wednesday. So we had less than a week to move out. Luckily it was Martin Luther King Day so we didn't have school Monday so we spent the weekend moving in my parent's basement.

It was nice to have a Christmas Break that we spent time with family and friends celebrating the birth of Christ.

John Jones

2009-11-26T09:42:00.007-07:00

I wanted to write some things here before I forget them (because I am away from home and can not write them in my journal) and I want to share my thoughts.

I am almost 26 years old and up until today I have never grieved for anyone. I have been blessed to never have any relatives pass away unexpectedly or while I was old enough to understand. My father made me aware of this fact not too long ago. And so I knew there would be times ahead (sooner than later) where I would lose a loved one.

This morning I am grieving the loss of John Jones. Someone who I knew for only a couple of hours, but who is someone I feel very close to now. Even after his passing I have talked to him in case he can hear me.

I was part of 11 people who went to the Nutty Putty Cave on November 24th, 2009, just two days ago. I was invited by a great friend and old roommate, Josh Jones, to come along with he and a few family members. I have gone on several caving expeditions with Josh and thought it would be an enjoyable new cave to visit.

When we entered the cave Josh, John, Jessica (friend of Josh), and I went first, while two other adults and four teenagers followed behind. The cave is a geothermal hotspot and so it is very warm and moist in there. Because of this it was a little more difficult to breath, but also nice because it was around 30 degree Fahrenheit above ground.

The rest is hard to explain unless I can use my hands, but for simplicities sake: We had a map of the cave and got to a part where we couldn't find where it continued, so we each took a route that looked like it could be the right way. It is this part of the story that I keep recalling over and over in my head, because at this point I asked John if he wanted to explore the spot, which we later would learn is called the "Ed's Push" area. He went in to the spot face first because he was climbing up, but then it curved and started heading downwards, then it got too small for him to push himself backwards up against gravity, so he slid down further and became wedged. We didn't know he was stuck for several minutes. Jessica and I waited for Josh to get out of the hole he was exploring. When he did we told him (without much thought) to go in and see if John needed help, meanwhile Jessica and I explored two other spots where the cave could have continued. The rest of the group joined us at this point. We could not find where it continued, so sat waiting near the area. After about 15 minutes I hollered to Josh if things were okay. He came out in a mix of calm and panic and said he was going to go up and call for help and asked that I go in a comfort John and maybe try to help, because I was the only adult that would fit. So I crawled in above John (it was a very tight spot and I often would panic because it was difficult to move) and John and I tried several things to move him up. I did the best I could to keep him in good spirits by giving him little goals to reach. Mike, John's brother, was outside of the tight spot talking to me, which I much appreciated because it helped keep my spirits up. But after an hour I was becoming tired and scraped up and started to get psychologically messed up. I crawled out and Josh crawled in to see what he could do.
I crawled out of the cave and joined everyone else outside of the cave. They had all been gathered around the entrance praying and singing church hymns. The search and rescue vehicles started to show up and we decided we needed to get the teenagers home. And we felt there was nothing we could do but get in the way, so a group of us left, leaving Josh and Mike and another brother-in-law with John.

For the next 27 hours I followed the news closely and waited...

Then at 2:36 a.m. I received a text from my friend Josh with the unexpected news that John had passed away.

Since then my thoughts have not turned from his family and the way they must be feeling.

I know that God knows best. I know that his family will be reunited with John. The passing of loved ones is part of Gods plan.

Thank you to all those who have been praying for the Jones' and for me.

I want to say one more thank you to one of the teenagers that came on the trip (I don't know which one). As I was leaving the site Tuesday night, before we knew what would ultimately happen, one of the teenagers in the van remarked "Well, we will have something to talk about on fast & testimony Sunday."

My testimony is more real then ever before. God lives and loves us. Thank you.

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_13864973

Baby! And Bear Lake with the Jacobsens

2009-09-27T18:02:00.005-06:00

We are enjoying having a baby........niece to hang out with. Tegan is one cool puppy. Who is having sleeping jerks right now.

Anywho, last weekend we got to enjoy a weekend in Bear Lake with Emily's family. Everybody was able to make it, which made it fun. We stayed at one of the cabins in Harbor Village. Joey was delighted that he got to go wakeboarding one more time before winter. We sat in the hot tub, hung out on the beach, played games, took out some seadoos and a boat, and filled out fun questionnaire that will be fun to read in a couple of years.

One night Emily and I were in the hot tub with our nephew, Dylon, and we were explaining to him the story of the Bear Lake Monster. He loved it, and immediately it became all he would talk about. The best part was the next morning when he said prayer on the food. He said his usual stuff and then said "and thanks for letting us have the Bear Lake Monster." It was hilarious. So after breakfast we took Dylon down to my cousins Boat rental (Ideal Beach RV) because he owns a big pontoon boat that is supposed to resemble the Bear Lake Monster. Dylon was kind of scared of it. He didn't want to "get nears its mouth."