The teacher in the Yendi Village

Yendi was an amazing trip! Sunday morning the 7th of this month my housemate and I met up with a team that was heading to Yendi to work in the same school as us. They had invited us to ride with them so instead of having to take public transportation for the 15 hour trip we had a private driver which was such a blessing!! We spent the entire week and a half at the school working in the class rooms and unloaded the crates that the team had shipped over, over the last year. It turns out this team was responsible for the starting of the school, they have helped with the funding as well as sending them crates of school supplies to get started. They brought with them new ways of teaching and held workshops with all of the teachers after school each day and trained them with some of the best teaching materials available in America. Since I’m not exactly a teacher I worked in the nursery, a little in the kindergarten class and helped out in the office for the majority of the time when I wasn’t moving boxes of books.


The man that started the school’s name is Musstafa and he is a wonder all on his own. He has started over 200 hundred churches in the Northern region from the East to the West as well as a bunch of schools throughout the villages. We visited two of these schools while I was there. The first one had an amazing story that touched me heart. When we arrived at the school we found the first two classes we visited without teachers? We were all a little put back and thought that maybe the teacher were just slacking off (that is known to happen around here a lot). It didn’t take very long before we found out there was only one teacher for all 5 classes that day. After talking with him a little bit to find out what was going on we also found out that he had moved there from a village far away and was working as a volunteer in the school. Then we found out that the school had promised him all these things but he wasn’t getting any of it. They weren’t giving him food or pay or even a place to have a garden and I am not sure about a place to stay. He had been there 8 months working at the school most of the time by himself or with one maybe two other teachers at the most and all he could say was that he was working for the Lord. I could tell by the look on his face he meant it and I knew that God had been providing all his needs. Before we left God allowed Liz and I to bless him with some cash before heading out… when I handed him the money and tried to speak to him I broke out in tears this man truly showed his love for Gods children and that their education and well being was worth the struggle. Musstafa also talked to the head of the school and he will now be taken better care of praise God!



Yendi itself was an amazing village; it is so beautiful and peaceful. It made me wish that I had gone there sooner to work. It was a wonderful ending to my hard 5 months here. I made it safely back to Accra on Thursday the 18th tired and worn out but feeling accomplished.

Eye Exams!

The glasses could barely stay on
What can you see?

She is such a doll

A couple that came in to pick up their child was an eye doctor so she did eye exams for the children. I couldnt help but snap a few cute pictures!

Carnival

On the 21st of May I had the privilage of spending the day with a team that knows the Mozley's. I joined the ladies at OSU childrens home while the men went to the Beacon House to help Romana do some moving and building. After helping with Lunch for the whole group we then all headed to the Beacon House around 3 to set up a carnival for the children. The team is going all over Ghana to set up carnival games for orphanages everywhere, from here in Accra all the way up to WA and Yendi in the North. The children as well as the staff had a great time! If you would like pictures check out : http://picasaweb.google.com/Sweet2thaT

Helping out with the youth...

Thursday the 28th of May was my last time to work with the youth at Agape church where I attend. It has been such a wonderful treat and pleasure on my part to get to spend some time with these great kids. I was allowed to help out at game night where I showed the youth how to do different origami figures. Then on the 21st they were doing a message about Health from a Christian’s perspective. The sermon was in three parts of health: spiritual, emotional and physical, so I chose to speak on emotional health. It had been a while since I had to get up in front of a group so I was super nervous, even after I was up front for a while. In the end I think I did pretty well though, we all did, it turned out really great and we all worked off of each others’ sermons. Afterwards I talked to Pastor Evans about teaching the youth some skits I learned for the trip to the Philippines last year and he really liked that idea. So this last Thursday, May 28th, we broke the youth into two groups and taught each group a skit and they would perform it for the other group. When they were finished I would get up and explain what the skit meant. Then we had the groups switch and taught them the other skit and had them perform it, so it was kind of like a competition. It was so neat to see each one really get into their parts and add their own thing to it. After I turned them back over to Pastor Evans he asked them what they had learned from the skits and I really think they got something out of it. This youth group is the next generation of Ghana and I really am truly blessed to have been a part of teaching them Gods word.

Crazy Ghanaian Wedding!

On Sunday the 24th I got to attend a Ghanaian wedding. It really wasn’t what I expected! The invitation said the wedding was from 7:30-11 and then the reception was from 1-3, I couldn’t imagine a wedding being that long but then again being in Ghana everything is way longer than usual. When we pulled up to a building site at 8 I was a little confused, the building itself was a stone shell and there were piles of building material all around. When we got inside there were literally hundreds of people inside, we were quickly ushered up to the balcony seating area. It didn’t take us long to realize that we were in a church service and became even more confused! We thought that since we were late maybe we had missed it or maybe it would be the last hour or so of the church service. The service itself took us by complete shock! While they were praying the preacher would scream “face your sins” then everyone in the congregation would scream “face your sins”. And by scream…I mean SCREAM! Then he would scream “DIE” and the whole congregation would scream “DIE” then they would start shaking and “praying” really loud! So imagine being in a room of HUNDREDS of people while they are shaking and screaming at the top of their lungs…It was crazy! I figured if I was an unbeliever and this had been my first time to church I would have been scared to death…needless to say we were the only four people sitting in our chairs looking like everyone else had lost their minds! They probably thought we were all sinners that refused to face our sins lol. So none of us really listened to the sermon, we were all ready to get the heck out of there. . That quickly faded when the wedding finally started at 11:30. Once the wedding was over we greeted the new bride and groom and made a quick slip out of the parking lot by 1pm. The whole experience was def not something I would want to do again. However I don’t think that was normal even for a Ghanaian wedding. I have another wedding this coming Saturday so I am hoping it will be a better experience.