So, as promised, I will start with the all night “prayer vigil” we attended two nights ago. Through the bumpy roads we drove to church 15 minutes away from our accommodation. We planned to not stay for the whole service so that we would be fresh and ready for the first day of work. It was a service of short prayer with the people around us and collective prayer, broken up with worship and preaching. Each time there was a song, Pastor Odai, ever keen to get everybody involved, would ask Jesse to lead the church in worship. Jesse Grover and his wife are part of the 7 Americans who have joined us and he has an amazing voice. Probably better than Colin – that’s how amazing it was.
It was Fiona’s turn to give her testimony. I don’t think any of us had heard it yet. She spoke to the whole church about how she was brought up in a Christian home, but would attend church for the wrong reasons – because of a man who she liked. Gradually however, God worked a change and she started coming because of Jesus, not for any man. A particularly gripping part was where she told of a bank robbery where a gun man held a gun to her head, but God preserved her life. One of her colleagues however, died a few months later from the trauma of the event.
I am probably not doing justice to anyone’s testimony, wherefore I apologise.
Pastor Andrew Love then started preaching on the story of Hannah at 12.15am. When she was taunted for being barren by Penninah, who did have children, she didn’t turn her back on God, but instead spent time praying in the temple. Where do we turn when adversity comes against us? God works in adversity – God works in suffering. Because when we have a need, He can answer it. God turned Hannah’s situation around, she bore a son, Samuel, and He got all the glory.
The next morning, we got up for our first day of work. I was on the medical team and we went to one of the roads full of shacks in Accra, where tents were set up for us in someone’s front garden. We found people already waiting for us in a line of chairs.
There were three “stations”: one where the people got initial temperature, blood pressure and heart rate measurements, manned by some of our girls; one where the two doctors, Dr Ola and Dr Morris held their consultations using a translator and the measurements and then one pharmacy stall where people were sent to by the doctors to collect their medication. Relatively to what we were expecting to find, these people had minor complaints. Backaches, fevers, digestive complaints and eye problems were what we encountered the most. We treated them the best we could, but with lack of proper diagnostic testing as you have in a hospital, it is sometimes difficult to know for sure what the problem is. Next year, we could really do with an eye clinic – these people have dust-related problems as well as the normal short-sightedness/long-sightedness we get in the West.
In the afternoon I left the medical team with a couple of people to help out with the meeting of youngsters of ages 12 through to 30 in the church complex. It was encouraging to see the youth pastor putting in his time for these people, solely because he cared. He made us also very welcome and some of us shared our stories – Tom about God became real to him and (American) Belinda about God’s faithfulness in the difficult situation she had been in, losing her husband to cancer and her job in a short period of time.
Meanwhile the construction team were working hard an hour and a half from Accra, near one of the 70 churches Pastor Odai has planted. They were preparing the timber and the rafters for the roof they will be putting up this coming week. In the evening they arrived back home, some of them covered in dirt and soot, telling stories about the extreme poverty they had seen. I wish I could give a first-hand account of the impressions they brought back, which no doubt I will encounter myself later on in the week.
I mustn’t forget to mention another two-man team who spent the day assessing a little financial business set up with money from Tulsa, I believe, 3 or 4 years ago. It is a loan company which gives out micro-loans, giving locals a very practical opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty. There is one particular success story of one of the ladies who started by wanting to deposit 2 pennies of Ghanaian CD’s (the local currency) a day, and now has a flourishing business. It is still early days, but the loan company now have 500 clients and 8 members of staff and they are looking into becoming a bank, which is an amazing feat in itself.
After the dinner we all sat round the table while Andrew invited Pastor Odai to share about how everything started here. He was actually a builder in 1994 with no formal bible education when God started giving him dreams, featuring him as a pastor. A recurrent theme was the presence of white people in his dreams. He didn’t understand it all immediately and neither did the church he attended at the time, but he decided to do what God wanted for him. Now nearly all of the funding for his work comes from outside Ghana and he just cannot explain it. God has just never stopped bringing people along to help with the work here. It dawned on us that that includes us as well! Yet there is no particular logic behind why some of the Americans, through a Google search, started coming here some years back, which led to the Love’s coming here last year, which has led to the delegation we have here now. It is just all part of God’s wondrous plan.
In Ghana, the churches are all concentrated around the cities. Indeed, you drive through Accra, and all around our interesting business names such as “Salvation Hair Cut” and “His Kingdom Furniture”. However, in the bush there are no churches whatsoever. Pastor Odai, empowered by Ezekiel 22:30, goes out into the villages, emphasising that he is not a humanitarian organisation, but a “full gospel” one. Everywhere he goes he builds churches and schools, to bring the gospel, as well as drilling water wells. He has built seven so far. One water well, however, can supply ten villages, which adds up to a lot of people.
This gave us more of a context of what we are doing here, and we are looking forward to the rest of the work.
I was delayed putting this blog up last night, which is good news, as this morning we woke up to the fact that Matt gave his life to Christ last night after pastor Odai’s talk! More about that tonight.
Phrase of the day: “Your clapping is sick!” Something pastor Odai says when the clapping isn’t loud enough in church.
Coming up: the church services today, and Accra the Crow!
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