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.
