merry christmas!!

christmas is coming the goose is getting fat...
okay, well we'll be having pork roast instead of goose for christmas dinner, but i'm just glad it's not fufu, a traditional dish here! the girls and i will be having christmas dinner at the hallead's and i'm sure it will be a blast!
nora and i just arrived in accra from a week of travelling, and we got to experience the best and the worst africa has to offer! what sights to see!
nora, leigh and i visited kakum national park, took a walk on the suspended canopy walkway many, many meters above the rainforest, took a "night" (4am!) hike to animals (didn't see anything interesting) and slept in the forest under a mosquito net--props to leigh for really roughing it on her first camping trip!
then nora and i took off on a quest to the other side of the park to see elephants, which didn't really work out, seeing as noone told us they move during the dry season! but we got to see a "bamboo orchestra" which was neat.
then we travelled to the domama rock shrine, an amazing three storey tall rock formation in the middle of the forest. really cool. i climbed to the top using only vines, which was really hard!! but really cool to see the forest from on high.
it was a great trip, but we are glad to be staying in the same place for a few days!
the fall semester at the seminary wrapped up and we are all enjoying christmas holidays now. school will not start back up until mid january, so i am a free woman until then... don't know what i'll do with my time!
some prayer requests i have, if you're looking for some, are...
please pray for the evangelical presbyterian church seminary where i am living. tuition had to be raised this year to $500 dollars a semester for theology students and $200 a semester for music students, and as a result, many students can not pay the neccessary fees. even though some students are recieving some scholarship money from their home churches, it is often not enough to cover tuition. on a good sunday in this area, the morning offereing in a church might be 600,000 cedis, or about $60, often it is much less. you can see how scholarships don't often cover all the costs. because money is not coming in, it also cannnot go out, and seminary professors have yet to be paid at all this school year. so please pray that the oldest theological institution in ghana will be able to sustain it's activities for another 142 years.
please also pray for the students in secondary school, or high school, especially my host brothers, peter and samuel. the public schools are staffed by teachers who are paid by the government, and earlier this year they went on strike for higher wages. while the students enjoyed the break, they are now feeling the pressure as exams approach. at the end of the school year all students wishing to graduate must take a standarized test that is the same across all west africa. since the teachers wer on strike for over two months, the ghanaian students are at a serious disadvantage. these test scores effect the students' ability to go on for any further schooling, so the test is a big deal. please pray that the lack of school, through no fault of their own, doesn't relect poorly on the students.
i would like to offer a celebration that harmatan has arrived, the"winter" of ghana. during this time the dust blows down from the sahara desert, so everything is REALLY dusty, but all that dust hanging in the air blocks the sun a bit, so it's a little cooler, and i am very thankful for that! also, i am starting to feel like peki is home. i have become close friends with some of the students at the seminary, so i am not only relying on the other girls from the u.s. for emotional support. i even got to direct the theology department for a song in church the other day. i taught them "will you come and follow me?" and played my guitar and everything. it was great! i would like prayers for a continued sense of purpose. sometimes it's hard to remember that my work in the library is important when i see the poverty around me everyday. i feel like i should do more or something else. but then other days i can see that my presence is really helpful to the seminary students. all the classes and worship at the seminary is in english, but english is a second or third language for everyone there except me, so i have been able to help a lot with proof-reading sermons and the like.
thanks again to everyone who has written/sent things, i can't tell you how meaningful it is to recieve news from home!
peace and god bless!
-kimberlee