The same night as Meg's shower, February 3, 2024, Dave and I hosted our good friends, the Emmers, Wildes, and Joneses, to a West African dinner. The table was decorated with treasures from the markets of the eight countries we visited last fall--Ghana, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Gambia, Guinea, and Guinea-Bisseau. I love African textiles, the brighter the better. Our table runners were made from fabric I bought in the market of Dakar, Senegal.
We began dinner with peanut soup. Peanuts, or "ground nuts", as they are called in Africa, are a major West African ingredient and export.
The entree was chicken with jollof rice. Jollof rice is braised in stock flavored with tomatoes, onions, and many spices.
For dessert, Deanne Wilde brought banana bread and a plate of fruit. She said that West Africans love bananas. Deanne also said that my chicken was much more tender than what she and Bob had eaten in Ghana, when Bob served in the LDS Area Presidency there. "The chicken was so tough that we had to cook it in the crockpot all day to make it edible at all," Deanne said.
The LDS Church is growing rapidly in Africa. Lee Curtis, an attorney with me at Jones Waldo many years ago, was the General Authority who presided over the West African Area when Deanne and Bob Wilde were there.
Lee asked Bob Wilde to serve as his Executive Secretary in Ghana.
Our friends and dinner guests, Spencer and Jane Jones, also served the Church in West Africa. Spencer was the mission president in Nigeria. The Wildes and Joneses shared many stories of growing Church congregations in Africa. They loved the African people and were excited that the Church is helping them to improve their lives, both spiritually and temporally. However, they despaired of living conditions in Nigeria and Ghana. The mission home in Lagos, Nigeria, was surrounded by a high wall topped with barbed wire, with security guards posted outside, because of all the violence and crime while the Joneses were there. Deanne and Bob Wilde were repeatedly stopped, as they drove around Accra, by policemen wanting bribes. Deanne solved the problem by pretending not to understand what the policemen wanted, saying, "We're missionaries and we love you," and offering them copies of the Book of Mormon! The policemen let the Wildes go without further demands.
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