This week I've much much fewer encounters with all of the kids that I have told you about. The van has been busy so I did not make it to the oprhanage even once, which hurts my heart. I am going tomorrow and am anxious to play with them again. Working at Pro-Link has been great so far other than the fact that some of the staff think that I am a certified and trained counselor. It was a challenege trying to explain to them that I am only just beginning to study psychology. I think that it is going to be a job where I am going to have to think on my feet a lot. On friday everyone but one staff member, Kofi, was out of the office. I was supposed to go to a school in a town call Dafour with him, but it turned out that he had to go to some kind of board meeting. So as he's leaving, he tells me that I am to teach a group of nurses about conseling and how to counsel HIV/AIDS patients. I must admit, I was pretty shocked...I don't even know the first thing about conseling! So I stopped, prayed, and began to read up on the conseling training manuel. The session went pretty well, and I thinking that the nurses really understood what I was trying to get across, which was amazing because I'm not really even sure what I said. Needless to say, I do enjoy pro-link and what they do for the community; AIDS is such a stigma here...people don't talk about it. It is seen almost as a disease that you are cursed with. I am excited to see what adventures prolink has for me over the next few weeks.

Also...Pro-Link has a program where it allows someone to sponsor a PL (person living with AIDS). It costs $5 a month to pay for AIDS medication for one person. If any of you are interested in sponsoring someone let me know...there are only 36 more people left to sponsor in Hohoe.

This week seems to have been a reflection week and I've had many amazing converstaions with volunteers about what coming here means...and how it is changing us. We've had to address touch questions here like...are we doing any good? Is it right to help one person and not another? As I mentioned in the last update...i think that the purpose of CCS is not to have volunteers come here and change Hohoe, but it is here to allow Westerners to be changed by another culture, so that we can come back and enlighten other people about what we have learned. I have been so grateful for the other volunteers that have pushed me to think about the hard questions...I know that I still have a lot to learn.

For the first time today, I called Hohoe my home without even realizing it. I've been praying about if Africa is a permanent calling or just where the Lord has me now...honestly I still have no idea, but on with the story. A group went to the coast this weekend, and one woman got sick and is staying in Cape Coast for another day or so. I was talking to one of the staff (Akos...who by the way is one of the most amazing women I have ever met) and she was saying to me that the woman might go home...and by home she meant America. In my head I was thinking....of course she'll have to come back to the homebase...she can't stay in cape coast forever. Hohoe is my home...it is my home.

I cannot believe my time here is halfway through...I'm going home in a little less than a month. I'll probably be ready to come home when 2 months approaches, but right now I am so content in Africa...I still feel like there is so much to do...so much to experience....so many people to know. I have barely scratched the surface here and my time is already winding down. Why does time go by so fast?

Lastly, for those of you who may think that I am only working here in Ghana...namely a certain brother of mine ;), I took a relaxing trip to Lake Volta this weekend (fun fact: it is the largest manmade lake in the world). As weird as this sounds, it was nice to be a tourist...we relaxed, had a soda, and just enjoyed eachothers company without the worries of the week on us. The lake was beautiful...the shoreline was all mountains. It is just like mountains pop out of the lake...my camera battery died, so I didn't get many pictures though.

I pray that everything is going well at home. I miss all of you...but not too much, don't worry haha!