Day 8 and 9 - 30 and 31/07/09

Day 8
We had our last clinic this morning. It was back somewhere in Accra, in one of the poorer neighbourhoods. The houses were closely built together. We held it in an some administrative building of some sorts, instead of a pole barn church.
It was a bit more stressful today because we were under a bit of time pressure.

When we finished, again people became really pushy to get the mosquito nets and sadly there wasn't enough for all of them again. They still hung around until we were in the buses.

All the drugs we haven't used will be used for a medical mission with a church doctor in August.

In the late afternoon they took us to an Accra market for an hour. Every seller was desparate to get your attention, and once they did, they wouldn't let you go for at least 10 minutes until they were sure you had seen all the goods in their stand and in their friends' stands. Perhaps I should have been less polite. And some of us were better at haggling than others, shall I say - fortunately I was using my parents' money.

In the evening, as a special occassion, we went to a Chinese restaurant. The Americans would be leaving straight after dinner. So when we finished our meals, there was lots of picture taking for at least an hour after. Pastor Skip Nicholls said a word about not forgetting God's finger in this week: how He brought us all together for this medical mission for reasons beyond us.
Pastor Odai then took the word to thank us again for coming, because it is an encouragement to them that God is working. He also told us a story of what he learnt from a missionary when just a child always stuck in his mind throughout his life. He said that what we did this week, the picture of white men building a clinic, the clinic itself, the picture of white men coming with medicine and the water wells would forever stick in the local chidren's minds and be memorials to God's love for them. Arguably, this is even a better legacy than all the physical stuff we accomplished this week.

After waving the Americans out, Alex told us how it all began for him during the drive back. He is one of the worship leaders for pastor Odai and has also been the driver of one of the 3 vans that took us everywhere this week - often in a middle lane our drivers invented for us so we would make more progress. Alex joined pastor Odai's ministry when he was looking for a father in the faith as a young Christian. Back in 1997 pastor Odai asked him to help him when he didn't have a church yet or anything. They would just go out into the bush (I think by foot) and start preaching. The area of the guest house was still bush then. He admitted it was very hard in those early days, but apostle Odai just kept telling him "Don't look at today, think of tomorrow." One night however, it was all too much and Alex packed his bags and ran away - he came across a man he knew however, they talked and helped Alex realise again that pastor Odai was a man of God.
He also told us about he miraculously received the two cars he has ever had, once by tithing for it in advance, and once by selling his old car and giving all the sale money away as an offering - two months later he received the exact amount of money he needed for the car he wanted, which would have been 5 years' wages.
Financial wishes and issues seem to be more prevalent in prayers and sermons in Ghana, but let's not dismiss it, because these are the real issues of the day for these people, and it is a really practical way of God showing his provision for these people.

Most of us then went back to have a good night's rest, or to sort out all the left over drugs into bags in an orderly manner. But five of us decided to go to the weekly Friday night all night prayer vigil.

Day 9
We got there at 12 am while everyone was already praying. Pastor Odai, as ever, with only five minutes warning, got us to say something to the church about how our week had been.
Later on in the service, he asked for testimonies out of the congregation. One lady came forward. She lives with a voodoo-guy and is not a regular church goer. This was her second time in church. After pastor had interviewed her, he prayed for her. He was standing about four metres away (and she had her eyes closed, praying), when he made one hand gesture. She fell to the floor and started rolling around. All the other pastors surrounded her to cast the spirit of voodoo out of her. During more prayer, more and more people around the church would suddenly fall over, sometimes screaming.
I don't really know what was going on, but it looked pretty genuine to me. Pastor Odai saw some of our bewildered faces and came over to explain that the spirit of voodoo was very strong in these people that were on the floor with the pastors around them.

This voodoo business is something we perhaps don't understand in the West. I was aksing pastor Odai's wife Valerie about this earlier in the week. She said that the voodoo can really hinder the ministry sometimes, causing accidents to transport etc. I asked if this was just because people believed voodoo could affect them, but she said no, this was what voodoo does. However, if you're grounded in the Word, it doesn't affect you, she said.

In the bush, this is the main other religion found if there is any Christianity at all. For instance, in Kwasi-Tintin, the half of the village with the water well we dedicated was the Christian half, but there was a voodoo half to the village further back.

We got back to the guest house at 4 am.
At 6 am we had breakfast and left an hour later.

Correction of the day #1: "God is good" in Twi is "Nya me ye", not "nya me de" as reported on day 5. Who writes this stuff up?

Correction of the day #2: I saw there were some unwanted email footers that had crept onto the blog and have removed them. I also got some of the dates wrong in the titles of the blog posts. Because of the sparse availability of the internet, I was never able to see the actual blog site, but had to just satisfy myself with updating the blog by email.

Honorary mention of the day: Faith Purkis, Rosie Booth and Mel Sharpe. I realised I hadn't really given them the credit they deserved, when a family member mentioned it to me upon arrival. They were seeing patients, just like the two doctors, and were a great help to the whole team: Faith with her midwifery experience, Mel with her paediatric skillz and Rosie with her orthopaedic nursing.