Missions

Africa

Recently my family and I went to Ghana, Africa. We had been in touch with a local pastor for about 20 years and he wanted us to minister in a crusade.

Getting There:
We had a flight from Boston, Massachusetts to New York City. That went well. When we got to NYC and arrived at the gate of the departing plane to Ghana, they wouldn’t let us board. It turns out that in order to go to Ghana, you need a visa. We had been to 5 other countries outside of the U.S. and never needed a visa so we didn’t know that one was required. Delta put us in a nice hotel for the night and changed the date of our tickets for no extra cost. This was on Saturday. On Sunday night we stayed in a different hotel because Delta only paid for one night at a hotel and we couldn’t get our visas until Monday. On Monday, we got our visas, with about an hour extra to spare before the plane left. We made the flight and we arrived in Accra, Ghana.

Day one:
Since we missed our first flight, I missed singing at a school and my brother missed teaching on Monday but we did that another day. So we arrived on a rainy Tuesday morning and had the day off to sleep.

Day two:
On Wednesday morning, bright and early, we woke up and went to a school. I sang a few songs and my brother taught about the little boy who helped Jesus feed the 5,000.
As we were traveling back to our hotel that day, it finally struck me. The level of poverty in Africa is not something that one can truly understand without being there. Here is an example: in the U.S.A., we complain about salaries of $20,000 a year being too little. In Ghana, the average salary is about $200 a month. That comes out to be about $2,400 per year. But as we found out later on, the locals who knew Christ were still happy, joyous, and content in the midst of this. Being there helps you learn to appreciate the little things. This appreciation is not grown from text or talk, but from experience.
Wednesday evening was the first night of the crusade. We were supposed to be there by 7:00pm but the traffic was heavy and we got there at 8:00pm. But this didn’t matter. When you’re in Ghana, time disappears. Everyone is about an hour late to every event. So, we were on time for our 7:00pm showing. My mother and I sang and my dad preached.

Day three:
Thursday morning my brother and I went to another school. This was a very nice school. I sang and my brother taught and the kids absolutely loved it. Thursday evening was the second crusade night. We were there early for Africa. While we were waiting, some of the children came up and wanted to touch our skin because they had never been that close to a white person before.



Day four:
Friday morning my brother and I went to yet another school. In the evening we held the last night of the crusade. My mother and I sang; my brother and father did a skit to demonstrate that no man can serve two masters.



Day five:
Saturday, my father, brother, a missionary, and I hung out at the hotel pool for most of the day. My mother and the missionary’s wife, one of the locals, went shopping. At the end of the day, the six of us went to a restaurant.

Day six:
Sunday morning my mother and I sang a couple of songs at a local church. We listened to a testimony from a local woman whose husband had been beaten and robbed the night before. She spoke about how God protected her family from serious injury and death.

Sunday evening my mother and I had about one and a half hours to perform at the church. We did this and gave my father and brother time to do a few skits. The locals enjoyed this and many people were blessed.

Day seven:
Monday, I sang in the school that we missed the previous week and my brother taught. Monday evening we met up with some of the people who were pastors in local churches. We had supper with them and it was a good time.

Day eight:
We went with Miles, the person who organized all of this, to the mountains. We also went to a garden that the English had made when they had colonized Ghana. One of the trees was 500 years old.

Day nine:
We got up early in the morning and went to the airport. We traveled home. Miles went with us to New York (the place of our connecting flights) because he was finishing his doctorate of theology in a university in Miami, Florida. We left a day earlier than we had originally planned.


All in all, from our crusade, many people were saved and many were healed. From the people who were saved, most of them made it to the new church that was started in Africa.