Ghana in Review

Siblings Godswill and Quachabia at Haven of Hope Orphanage








When I said I was going to update this blog while traveling, I thought I would be able to post things a little more regularly. Sorry for the lack of updates, but Internet access has definitely not been the greatest. Now that we're in Germany, it's easier to be online.

We left Ghana on Friday night, sad to say goodbye to the kids at the orphanage and the new friends we'd made. We were, however, looking forward to having a wider selection of food than the practically all carb diet we had been eating for three weeks. I'm not sure bread with peanut butter will sound good for awhile after having a daily dose of it for so long. We've also been enjoying warm showers and roads with drivers who seem calm, collected, and willing to follow normal traffic rules.

So to sum up what we did and how the Ghana portion of our trip went, first let me give you an idea of what our schedule looked like. Tuesday through Friday we lived in a hotel in Accra, the capital city. We taught Bible lessons in schools in the morning, which was very successful in that we were able to teach well in teams and that kids really did retain a lot of what was taught. We were also well-received by the teachers and school headmasters, which will hopefully lead to a continued ministry in those schools by our Ghanaian partners.

Most afternoons we visited families living in a slum area about a 30 minute walk from where our hotel was. Our goal with that was to get to know the people we met and to share the gospel with them. I don't have many pictures from that portion of our trip because it was dangerous to have a camera out, but I'll post one we were able to take if I can get the computer to cooperate soon... right now it looks like I'll have to wait.

This was the most challenging part of the day for our team, but it was also very encouraging to be able to talk openly with people about our faith. Everyone we met was willing to listen and asked questions, and our Ghanaian partners who all live in this slum will be continuing to go back and follow up with them. We also had a lot of discussions as a team about what evangelism should like for us back at home and how important it is, so I'm excited to keep in touch with the girls and see how everyone will grow from this experience.

Another goal from our time of family visitation was as I shared with some of you at home to look out for and learn about child trafficking. We did see one very clear example of this - a young girl we met of maybe eight years old was selling pure water while other children were in school. She lives with her "Auntie" - a woman who is most likely not a relative at all and has five or six children living with her, only a few of whom are her own. This woman forces the girl to sell water all day in order to find a place to sleep at night and hopefully get a little something to eat.

I learned that child trafficking doesn't always mean sex trafficking, although a lot of that goes on too in the area we were in (you just have to be there a long time and show up at night to undestand and see it, which we weren't able to do). I also learned that it takes a lot of work to be able to do something about child trafficking and to get children who are forced to work the whole day out of the situation they are in.

There are very few people who want to help these children or who know best how to help. It can be very dangerous to try to intervene, especially for the kids, and it would take a person who knows and has earned the trust of the surrounding community to really do something about it. Thankfully the organization we went with does have a few such people in place. Pray for their success in working to fight against child trafficking in all of its forms.

Signs and Spirits and White Skin

One of my favorite things to do while riding in the car in Ghana is to look for the names of shops we pass by. Some seem normal; others make me laugh out loud or don't make any sense to me at all. Many have Christian words and phrases in the name, from what I hear to ward off bad luck and bad spirits. Here are a just a few examples of the ones I've seen so far:

Almighty Electrical
Taste and See Fast Food
With God All Things Are Possible Cosmetics
In God's Time Power Tools

Another thing I love looking at in our many car rides around the city is all of the people carrying things on their heads. I've seen countless women carrying up to maybe 100 pounds of things on their heads plus a baby strapped to their back, sound asleep. When hiked up Medie Mountain with some of the girls at the home here (on a super narrow, rocky, steep, and overgrown path), we all had to jump aside into the bush as a man carrying a really large bundle of wood on his head passed down the mountain.

I wish I were that skilled, but I've learned that the shape our "Obrunni" (white people) heads and our slippery hair makes it difficult to carry things on our heads. Also most people here use a cloth wrapped up on top of their heads to help balance the load. Maybe the kids can give me lessons at Haven of Hope.

Last cultural note before wrapping this short post up: Everywhere we go, people yell "Obrunni! Obrunni!" if they're speaking Twi and "Yevu!" if they're speaking Ewe. Adam is often adressed as "Mr. White Man". Sometimes I really wish I had brown skin so that I would blend in in a crowd, but instead my super pale skin and light hair stands out like a sore thumb in a crowd. The advantage to having lighter skin, though, is that we're able to do ministry in public schools and to capture the attention of more people simply because we're white. It seems silly, but it's reality here.

More to come about the last week in Accra soon... off to lunch right now.

GHANA MISSION TRIP 2011

Hello from Medie, Ghana! It’s been awhile since I’ve written anything on this blog... and has also been awhile since I’ve traveled, so I figured it might be about time to resurrect it and post a little bit about our current globetrotting adventure. I will upload pictures as soon as I can figure out how to do it on the computer I’m using. For now, I hope a few stories will do.

I’m writing from Haven of Hope (HoH), which is a school and children’s home run by Every Child Ministries. It’s pretty quiet here at the moment, which is a rare occurance. The 50 kids who live here are all taking their daily “siesta,” the many goats, puppies, dogs, and birds aren’t making noise (okay I take it back - one puppy just started crying), and really all I can hear is the ceiling fan above me quietly whirling and cooling us off. And yes, you read that correctly - Ghana has come a long way since I was here four years ago, and the children’s home now has electricity and running water almost all of the time, which is shocking. I feel so spoiled!

Adam and I arrived here with our team of four other Americans (all college girls) late Monday night after 32 hours of travel. This has been our home base and training center over the past week, but we’ll be leaving HoH tomorrow for ministry in the capital city of Accra. The schedule so far has been pretty intense for the Adam and me as trip leaders, even more so than expected because the details of our trip weren’t quite in order when we got here like we had hoped. Thankfully we have gotten a schedule worked out, have completed the team training for our American and Ghanaian team, and are finally feeling prepared for teaching Bible lessons and doing street ministry next week. Our team has also been super flexible and understanding, which has helped us out a lot.

Here’s what our schedule for the next two weeks will look like: teaching two mornings per week (five teams of one American and one Ghanaian each), street ministry and family visitation in slums in Accra four times per week, and weekends off to spend at HoH. Adam will be supervising the teaching, and I will be in classrooms with my Ghanaian partner Emmanuel.

Here are some noteworthy highlights of the trip so far:

-Almost all of the kids here remember me from when I was here four years ago. It’s been great to reconnect with them and to see how much they have all grown up. I love it when kids call for “Miss Stacy” to come out and play. There are at least a dozen kids who I would love to take home with me.

-Yesterday the kids used machetes to cut open big coconuts for us. I actually think the coconut milk in the middle is disgusting, but Kelsey (a team member) challenged me to a coconut milk chugging contest, and for some reason I agreed... it’s all on video should you want to see us fail miserably :)

-Today we snuck up on and chased a herd of goats out of the compost pit... pretty funny until they all charged right at me!

-Playing with the seven puppies of HoH’s guard dogs that are here has been fun. They’re all some huge South African breed, and while the adults look very intimidating, the puppies are cute. Last night, though, two puppies were really sick and were howling and crying for hours. Several of us stayed up with them well into the night and thought for sure they would die, but somehow they hung on until this morning when the vet saw them. As it turns out, both were stung by scorpions. After three shots of antivenom each, they should be okay.

That’s about it for now. We’ll be heading to Medie Mountain soon to hike with some of the older girls, so I need to get ready to go. Thanks for reading and I’ll try to update again a few times while we’re here depending on Internet access. Miss you all back home - thanks so much for the prayers and support! If you think of it, I would love to ask you to specifically pray for safety and effective teaching next week as we begin ministry in Accra.