The Youth Summer Camp in Ghana is something we hold only every other year, so it is a special and much looked forward to event! There have been times when we’ve not been able to get any young adults to volunteer to come and serve on this project. The volunteers are partially funded by Foundation Outreach International, a non-profit service organization affiliated with the Church. This year I have 5 volunteers – and as a special treat for me, my youngest son, Daniel, is one of them!

Daniel and I left Fort Smith at 6:30 am to being our trip to Ghana. It was disconcerting to look out the window of the plane and notice a repair job that had been done on the wing. I'm almost certain this isn't duct tape, but from our vantage point (and at 33,000 feet in the air) it looks for all the world like a repairman just fixed a spot on the wing with duct tape! But, it held just fine, and we landed safely in Atlanta. Perhaps duct tape really does hold the world together...

We connected to Atlanta where Alyssa Degagne had arrived nearly an hour before we did. Then the three of us flew up to New York’s JFK airport where we met up with Gabriella Kroska and both Cliff and Derek Demarest. By 5:30 local time we were onboard a Boeing 767ER and had pushed away from the gate for a flight direct from New York to Accra, Ghana. I had tried to get us all seats together, but due to some unexpected issues we were separated a few rows. But as one of the volunteers said, it might have been better, because we were able to try and sleep rather than feeling obligated to talk through the night! For me, I slept very well by airplane standards – getting just about 6 hours of sleep.