Gearing Up To Be Off Again

I will be leaving Friday for my fourth trip to Ghana this year.

I have a very busy schedule. There are two tasks that are critical to being able to raise funds for the projects. We need to do a second set of video takes and we need to do a community assessment (to make sure we have buy-in from those we propose to help).

Our first cut at the video in September was just 'OK'. Not at all where it needed to be. I will cut all of us some slack on this. I certainly did not provide the leadership necessary in large part because I'd never done anything like it before. But (as with so many things associated with this venture) providence had Daughter #1 and son-in-law 1A visiting us for some alone, adult time last weekend. As professional videographers, 1A took the time to look at the first cut of our video and gave me really excellent advice on how to improve it. I am confident that we will rise to the challenge.

My partner GG is handling all the logistics of the community assessment which involves three different focus groups with about thirty people altogether.

Also, there are the 'proof-of-concept' businesses I am mentoring for the JOBs project. There are five of them and I will be giving them some substantial time as well. There are two more potential virtual assistant jobs for ladies in the THEODORA project group. And the one woman who has done the most is building out a detailed business action plan to get into Virtual Assistant work as her career. That's one woman seeing this as a viable way out of sex work. A tiny victory, not fully achieved but moving tangibly in the right direction. I will be giving her a lot of coaching during this trip as well.

And here at home, work, paying work, keeps up at what seems just the right pace. I have plenty to do but I really never feel that stressed because the work I do is perfect for my abilities. I was looking at our financial reports (Wife is so incredible at giving us great financial information so we always know exactly where we are) for our year-to-date. Amazingly enough, despite all the costs associated with our Ghana venture, we are actually doing better overall than we did last year! How can that be? I have stopped trying to understand. I just go into each day, do the best I can and accept whatever comes.