Road Trip - First Stop "Baptism Beach"

 I thought I'd let Jeffrey write this post as he already wrote an email to our children on one part of our trip this last weekend. Reading the story is heartwarming.

Here is the link he gave with the original story on the Church website.

"Your mother and I traveled west from Accra along the coastline of southern Ghana on Friday morning to Cape Coast. We were with friends. Our first stop was to what is now called "Baptism Beach."  I think you will find the article (at the link) about the history of that initial group of baptisms in Africa soon after the 1978 revelation had been announced moving.  Your mother is attaching the pictures we took two days ago at that same location to other e-mails which I will likewise forward to you.  FYI, the "slaughterhouse" is still there and you will see one of our pictures showing a man taking the skin off of a goat in the water after burning that goat hair off.

The ocean is much closer than it was 40 years ago, and the sandy beach is covered over with water.

Jeffrey is standing on a rock at the shore where the first congregation of the church members in Ghana were baptized.

Part of the cove today. The cement in the foreground is where the goats are slaughtered.

 Linda Ann at Baptism Beach

The newly baptized members would have walked back up on these rocks

Today the site is not very appealing as the smell and occupation of slaughtering is intense.

[Not far away a few miles up the road, we next visited a "Castle". That term is a terrible name for this fortress as I associated Sleeping princesses, waltz balls, and kingdoms being run as a definition for castle.]

"When I have a moment, I hope to fill you in on the next stop we had in Cape Coast--the Cape Coast Castle (which we prefer to call by the Cape Coast Slave Collection and Bartering Center--I should call it worse, but that will do for now) where the British collected Africans, treated them horribly--worse than horribly--and then sent the survivors on slave ships--a practice that went over 300 years, we were told.  I came away from that both angry and in wonder--not unlike the feelings I had when I visited Dachau outside of Munich many years ago.  We both have a hard time revisiting the Cape Coast Slave Collection and Bartering Center experience, so we will do that on another occasion."