New Year’s and Christmas witnessed several freak accidents and incidents across the Anglican Communion. The Church of the Province of Melanesia reported that one of its priests was lost at sea as he was travelling by boat from Guadalcanal to Isabel on 28 Dec 2015. A “Fr. Bako, his son and a friend” were travelling by small boat when the engine died at approximately 4:00 pm. Fr. Bako used his mobile phone to call his daughter to ask the Solomon Islands Search and Rescue team to send help. The Marine Safety Administration did not send out a boat until the following day. The bodies of the three men washed on ashore on the island of Malaita on New Year’s Eve, the Solomon Star reported. The director of the Search and Rescue team noted it no longer had any boats of its own and had to rely on raising local support for search operations. As the seas were rough and it was getting dark, volunteers could not be found to search until the next day he explained. The Church of the Province of West Africa reports that a priest conducting a New Year’s Eve vigil at a church in Ghana collapsed and died during the service. The Rev. George Ankrah-Badu, who also serves as a professor at the University of Ghana Medical School collapsed during the service. He shrugged off the help of the church ushers and said he would drive himself home. However, he admitted himself to the teaching hospital and died later that evening.
