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You are the Gift

Earlier this year, Sharon Eubanks gave a devotional at BYU titled “You are the Gift” that has stuck with me ever since. The premise of the talk can be summed up in some of her parting words: “If we change our perspective so that caring for the poor and the needy is less about giving stuff away and more about filling the hunger for human contact, providing meaningful conversation, and creating rich and positive relationships, then the Lord can send us someplace.” This sentiment is powerful to me. Though the whole point of the talk was about how we don’t need to travel great distances or fundraise large amounts of money to make a difference, I found myself thinking about it a lot on my trip (where I had ironically enough, done both of those things). Though that sort of help is no doubt unappreciated, I also recognize there is more I have to offer, especially since I likely won’t be doing these sorts of trips continuously. The clinics I was working with are all clinics found
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Things I Will (& Won't) Miss About Ghana

It's hard to believe that I've only been here for six weeks because so much life has happened in that short amount of time. With my time here up, I've been reflecting a lot about what I've been missing about home and what I'll miss about here. Things I will miss: - The food. Namely the mangoes, the pineapple, milo, boflot, and chocolate FanIce. I will most definitely be suffering withdrawals when I get back home. - How cheap everything is. I'm gonna have a hard time paying more than $1.50 for a full plate of food or $4 for a new shirt. - The humidity. Maybe not the humidity itself, but rather its effects. Okay fine maybe just how curly it makes my hair. - I didn't see this one coming either, but I weirdly like handwashing my clothes. I don't have to worry about clothes getting ruined in the washer or dryer and I can get it done while I'm showering. #multitasking - The constant learning. With hundreds of languages around, a completely new cultu
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Week 6: Accra

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Sunday, June 9th: Last Sunday in Ghana! We went to the same 9:00 ward we’ve gone to in the past so it was fun to recognize some of the members. I hadn’t been to church in several weeks, so sacrament meeting felt especially good. Gabby and I also stayed for Sunday School where they were going over the area plan for West Africa. Comments / discussion are abundant which make any lesson better. At one point, no one was answering a question that the bishop had asked so after a long pause, he asked the group, “Brothers and sisters, are we here? Are we together? This room is too dull. We need some fire!” That was all the group needed to have some more discussion. The rest of our Sunday was pretty relaxed. A group left for an overnight outreach, but four of us volunteers will stay here with St. Thomas Eye Clinic for the last week. I watched several episodes of my TV show, found some waakye to eat for lunch, took a nap, and then cooked dinner with everyone. We made fried cassava (seriou
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Week 5: Accra

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Sunday, June 2nd: For all my talk about being spared from sickness in Tamale, it finally happened last night. I went to bed at 2:30 and woke up an hour later. I laid there and tried to figure out what had woken me up when I slowly realized how nauseous I was. I went to the bathroom and “runny tummy” took over. The nausea persisted and I suddenly realized I had about three seconds to switch which end was on the toilet before I threw up. After an hour or so, my body decided that was enough for now and I went back to sleep. I had 45 minutes before I had to wake up because the driver was going to arrive at 5:30 to take us to the airport. What a night. I was very grateful the nausea didn’t continue in full force once I woke up and I didn’t eat any breakfast to make sure it didn’t get worse. Christian and I said our goodbyes to Foster and we checked our bags. The Tamale airport is easily the smallest airport I’ve ever been in. There was one gate (that I could see at least) where peop
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