I am so proud of these women!

This morning we went to the CAC Church in town. (Christ Apostolic Church). A lot of the women that are in our class attend there and have been inviting us for a while, so we figured we should check it out. I am so glad that we did.

Mercy was going to come and show us where the church was and bring us there. Church started at 9, so at about quarter to 9, Petra and I were ready and waiting. She got to Auntie Joe’s house around 9:45 and we got to the church at around 10. Nothing like being casually late...

The church was TINY. And packed full. They had tents set up outside the building so that people could sit there since more than half the congregation didn’t fit into the church.

They were dedicating all the children in the church this morning, so they lined up and the pastor prayed over each one and sprinkled water on their heads. I swear every child in Asamankese was there...there were SO many!

Immediately after getting there, I started spotting familiar faces. More than half of my level one ladies go to this church; more than I even knew about before going there! It definitely made me feel more welcome seeing the beautiful faces of the students that I am starting to really love.

As usual, with the offering is dance time. Usually we can get by by just clapping our hands and kind of moving on the spot...not here. The pastor knew English and had us come to the front with everyone else and dance in the circle for each offering. I cannot dance. Wow. Generally, if you move your body to the music and have a huge goofy smile on your face, they accept you. I am good at goofy smiles.

Class this afternoon was fantastic. I think I made the most progress today than in any class that I have had so far. I say this because both of the ladies did fantastic!

There is a distinct difference in the learning abilities between the two women in my class; Cynthia knows quite a lot and is learning extremely fast, while Anita still struggles with reading and writing English at times. So it can be difficult for them to be in the same class sometimes when Cynthia catches on a bit more quickly.

My students and I; Cynthia, myself, and Anita. 

Today was not the case, I am SO proud of both of them! We started learning about Finances last week and I introduced to them their little books to keep records of everything. This seemed to be harder for them to start doing than I had thought because neither of them had done it this week.

I introduced making budgets this week, and we walked through what expenses needed to be recorded and figured out the values of each of the expenses for each individual woman; costs of their product, transportation costs, packaging, etc.

Seeing each of their own costs laid out in front of them helped a lot and it gave me a really good idea of how much they spend each week, and on what they spend it.

I bought calculators in Canada before I left and brought them with me, so today I gave each woman a calculator of their own as a gift. I am hoping that this will be incentive for them to keep tabs of their money and they were SO happy to get them.

Cynthia has been AMAZING to teach; she is such a strong woman and is such a blessing to have around. She got to class about a half hour before Anita did today, and we just sat down and talked about her dreams of expanding and having her own personal shop to sell at so that she can sell more than one kind of fruit at a time and not have to walk around with fruit on her head.  

She talked to me about loans and how the banks work around here, she talked to me about how hard it can be to pay the loans back and how much the interest charges usually are.

Talking to her is giving me so many ideas of how we can help her and I am really excited about her progress and the future that she has! She will do SO many great things.

Mel, if you are reading this, we showed her your blog post about her and she loved it! She replied through Petra’s blog to comment on your post. I honestly had tears in my eyes as I watched her reaction as she read it. So, thank you for that!

A week from today is our last day before our week off. Petra and I spent the evening planning that, which was super exciting. Time to see Africa!