We are often asked what we do. It is a valid question. We wouldn't have been able to answer it a few months ago. We are assistants to the Area Auditor, Brother William Sowah. He is a local who works for a bank full time and his church calling is to be the Area Auditor. Since he is busy with his full time job, we help him in training and working with the 14 Assistant Area Auditors (AAA) in the Africa West Area (AWA). There are seven countries in AWA where the Church is officially registered: Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone and Liberia. AWA is divided into 13 coordinating councils, each with an Area Seventy. We have one AAA for each council except for the Nigeria Calibar Council, which has two. Each council consists of two to twelve stakes and districts-- groups of wards and branches(congregations). Some councils have twelve stakes and districts and the smallest has only two (Benin Cotonou Council has one district in Cotonou and one stake in Lome, Togo).
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| William Sowah |
We enjoy working with Brother Sowah. He is very capable and does a good job and provides continuity as senior missionaries come and go. The down side is that he is not here very much and we are sometimes unsure of what initiatives to do on our own. In January we held our annual AAA Training at the area office. All fourteen AAAs were able to come for this training. We were happy about this because when we first arrived, three of our councils had no one called to be the AAA for that area. We made the flight and hotel arrangements for the AAAs coming from other countries.
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| Brother Sowah, Elder Smith, Elder Vinson and Brother Kradolfer |
Elder Vinson, a Seventy, is a counselor in the Area Presidency and Philippe Kradolfer, a church employee, is the Director of Temporal Affairs (DTA) in the Africa West Area. Elder Vinson gave an inspiring address to open our training. He reminded the AAAs that they are not auditors. They are leaders and trainers and this work is spiritual. (D&C 29:34) They were encouraged to remember that the Lord requires honesty and exactness, and they do this work for the Lord. When things are done the way the Lord has taught, he will bless us. Brother Kradolfer closed the training with the positive message that we need to teach our auditors to show appreciation for the efforts of those they come to audit. They should express their admiration of their hard work and acknowledge their efforts. They need to feel our love as we use audits as a teaching moment to encourage correct procedures in keeping the financial records in the Church.
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| Ready for them to arrive. |
We held Friday's training in the conference room at the area office. We had about 23 including the presenters.
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| Taking a break for lunch. |
We worked with Rebecca, a woman who does catering for the Church offices occasionally. She had quite a variety in her buffet to accommodate everyone's tastes.
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| Ten of our AAAs with Robert and Brother Simmons. |
On Saturday we had training for the two coordinating councils in Accra. The Assistant Area Auditors also went to this training for a total of about 65 brothers.
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| Beginning to arrive for the Saturday training. |
Africa has it's challenges in learning and following correct financial procedures. Many of the leaders have never had a checking account. Ghana is still very much a cash society. They cannot make deposits on Sunday so it is impossible for two to take the deposit to the bank. Many places of business do not have or give receipts for things purchased so records for expenditures are difficult. While the wards have computers, they don't always have electricity. Another situation here is that the need (poverty) makes it easier to rationalize misuse of funds. The procedures the Church has set up are for the protection of the Priesthood holders as much as for the protection of the sacred funds of the church. The training we do teaches these principles. These principles reduce opportunity and risk. Audits are done twice a year so we also train in the auditing procedures and encourage them to be quality audits and submitted on time.
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| Front Row: Philippe Kradolfer, Cal Simmons, Kevin Jergensen, William Sowah, Robert and Joan Smith |
These Assistant Area Auditors have an important job of training the audit committees in their coordinating councils who, in turn, train the ward and district leaders. We sometimes help them in their training like we did on Saturday for the two Accra Councils and in Kumasi the following week. The challenge is making sure that the water (training) gets to the end of the row.
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| On the road to Kumasi |
On Tuesday the 21st Brother Sowah, Arnold Odonkor, Joshua Akombo and Robert and I left to do training in Kumasi.
We drove the three hour trip in a Church van. Arnold drove. He drove very well but he drove fast and aggressively. I jokingly asked if he had been a tro tro driver. (Tro tros are vans used as buses. There are tons of them in Accra.) He said no, he used to be a taxi driver! The tro tro and taxi drivers act like they own the road. We all had a good laugh. The picture above shows a taxi with the typical spiritual saying on the back window. All taxis have yellow fenders, front and back. This picture also gives a good view of the alternating paved and dirt road. The countyside was quite lovely with green mountains and farms along the way.
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| Cal Simmons, Robert and Joan |
Cal was fun to travel with, curious about everything he saw so we learned a lot from Arnold, Joshua and William.
We stopped at a rest stop and had some spicy chicken kebabs. Cal also got a mango that a girl (She could have been a mature woman, they don't age here!) cut up for him on the spot. He wanted to take her picture but all his talking was to no avail.
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| Hobnobs! |
We all enjoyed the Hobnobs Robert bought. They brought back fond memories of England.
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| Our hotel room. |
We stayed at the Golden Tulip. Nice hotel but we didn't spend much time there. We grabbed a quick bite to eat and went to the training.
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| Cal, Joshua and William |
Cal was pretty game and ate banku and fish soup like a regular local. Robert and I opted for something else. You eat this with your fingers, grabbing a pinch of banku and dipping it in the soup. The fish has all it's bones so there is a lot of sorting out during the eating. The blue bowls are for washing your hands.
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| Arnold |
This is a picture of Arnold, the MSR area manager. He has been very helpful to us and does some of the training. It is a privilege to work with these good Church employees and traveling together allowed us time to get to know each other better. I broke my camera about this time so I have no pictures of our training in Kumasi but once again I was the lone sister in a group of brethren. I am glad all I have to do is bear my testimony at these meetings. We try to make these meetings as spiritual as possible, using scriptures and quotes from general authorities whenever possible. This teaches the "why" of what we do. We had about 35 brothers at the Kumasi training.
