How many goats can fit in one van?

Question: How many goats goats can you fit into a 15 seater tro tro van? 

Answer: Two…if you also fit in 23 adults, 5 kids, and a pig. Legality? Questionable. Probably the craziest three hour ride to church ever. Sundays in Ghana are great; we are able to visit a lot of Harrison’s old missionary areas and meet many wonderful, loving Ghanaian people.

            This week we traveled a bunch to schools, offices, companies and even rubber plantations. Each commute was full of bumpy, dusty tro-tro rides – but each and every one was worth it. We saw the lamps light up lives and the excitement in children’s eyes as they watched their classroom, dark from the rainstorm, flood with light. Just one of our lamps easily lit up one dark classroom.

            A note on these rainstorms in Ghana – when it rains in Ghana, it RAINS. Every path becomes a river, roads are instantly flooded and muddy and the noise of the raindrops is deafening. Rainy days in Ghana make selling and productivity more difficult, and create greater darkness in people’s homes and in schools.

            We have also been able to find more sellers and reliable people that we think will be able to help us continue to make Yenso Solar a success when we leave Ghana. One of our new sellers managed to get 20 orders for lamps in one day! He is an incredibly hard worker and has hilarious marketing tactics. His favorite is to give a “special discount” on the lamps, after initially quoting them at twice the retail price. We were also able to meet with another good friend from Harrison’s mission. He is a stake president here in Ghana and is a major answer to our prayers. We’ve had difficulty trying to figure out how to make Yenso Solar an official business being foreigners in Ghana. As an influential, reliable and trustworthy partner to Yenso Solar he is helping us to make our business an official and fully legalized business in Ghana. He is also working to help us find a more permanent warehouse for us to continue running Yenso Solar out of once we leave. Essentially – this man is helping us to solve all of the most pressing problems that we currently face and is helping to ensure the future success of Yenso Solar.

            Another miracle - we were also able to meet with a man from Greenlight Planet, the manufacturer of our lamps. He came from Nigeria and is in charge of partnerships in West Africa. Basically his job is to help us succeed. Our job is to get his product to the people who need it. He gave us tons of great feedback, suggestions, and ideas and is as excited as we are for the future of Yenso Solar. He invited us to a conference in Accra last week with some of the most influential leaders in Ghana. The conference gave us an opportunity to network with other people concerned about the energy crisis and to spread word about Yenso Solar and our mission here. We met the former Ghana president and other United Nations representatives in Ghana. We handed out quite a few business cards and introduced people to our new website! Check it out HERE!

In other news, the lamps are selling so well that we’ve sold out our entire inventory! We ordered more lamps, but we are struggling while we wait for them to come in. Our sales team is growing, our customer base is spreading, and more people are getting light!