This week has been amazing. I can't believe it's already Wednesday and we leave the Tamale area tomorrow morning to fly to Accra. I wish we could stay longer. Our time here has been wonderful.
Monday was a new and fantastic experience for me - we joined a medical mission team and helped them for the day in a remote mud hut village outside of Tamale. It was a well oiled machine the way that the team set up - they had an area for children's ministry, a tent for triage, an area for doctors to see patients, a pharmacy tent and an area where every patient who came through got prayed for and the gospel shared with them using the nifty tool called "the evangicube". Hundreds of people said they wanted to pray to accept Christ. There was also a prayer area where prayer was going on all day long nonstop by about 8 or 9 individuals and many people went there for more intense prayer also and they reported later that 2 blind people were prayed over and gained sight and one deaf and mute person could then hear and talk and a person walking with a cain no longer needed it. I sooo wish I had been in that tent to witness it but how awesome to even be a part of it. Our team was asked to help count pills - a tedious task but one that we knew was incredibly important. We did that most of the day and we took turns taking breaks to walk around and check out the rest of the work and play with the kids. Later on, we played more with the kids. We had so much fun giving them stickers and we even got to paint some of there nails. There was this one little boy with the most precious smile and he was my buddy for the afternoon. I even got him to repeat words I would say. Of course, he had no idea what I was saying but it was so cute how he would repeat me. I took a ton of pictures of him - I will upload those when I get home. It was hot and some of us got sunburned (back of my neck included) even though we were under a shaded tree, somehow the sun got through. A small price to pay for important work. It was a great thing to witness and hundreds of people were helped.
Tuesday, the VO team split off from Cheryl's team and went to an orphanage called Hands of Mercy run by a man and his wife who have pretty much brought 16 kids into their family. It's an orphanage in some ways but moreso - it's a big family. He and his wife live there and the kids are being cared for by them - he calls them his children which I love. They were so much fun and kept us busy all day long! We played soccer, pushed them on the tire swing, helped them with school stuff like giving the math problems for them to solve and grading them, giving them words to spell, etc. I personally spent most of the morning drawing Disney Princesses for them. They had a notebook with all the Disney princesses and after I drew one - they then gave me one after another to please draw for them so they could color them in. I basically created a coloring book for them on the spot:) It was fun. We brought some school supplies and gave them to them so we had plenty of stuff to use. We also gave them these little glow in the dark bracelets - the ones you crack and the glow stuff activates. I got an 18 pack at Michael's for only $1 - a great small and fun thing to pack. They loved those. We played with bubbles with them and jump rope - although they actually had to show us how it's done here cause they are serious jump ropers:) They can jump high and fast. They laughed at us when we tried to do stuff and then they'd show us how to do it. It was nice becasue all of the kids there speak English so that was so much easier to communicate all day. At one point - they had us come inside and watch Beauty and the Beast with them. How funny - halfway across the globe watching a Disney movie! It was a nice chance to sit down though cause they had so much energy:) They told us they wanted to feed us lunch - we told them we brought lunch - our standard loaf of bread that we break chunks off of and slap some peanut butter on and eat on the go. But they insisted that we eat lunch there. They brought a little plastic table out and put 4 bowls on it and gave us fried chicken, yams (which we didn't know they were yams until later - tasted like a potato and are white) and it had a sauce called red red. It was really good. Cheryl was leary about us or any of the team eating any local food - I think mostly because so many of her team members had been sick when they first got here. But I left it up to the team on this one cause I usually do eat the local food in countries I visit and I didn't want to offend them after they so kindly made us lunch. I did say a prayer for covering and that none of us would get sick and God would bless the food. Me, Grant and Jess all ate some of it. Amanda opted not to which was totally fine. She ate the bread and peanut butter. I had her put some of hers on my plate so it looked like we each ate some. Didn't want to offend. When we took them our plates and said we were full - she just laughed and then handed the kids our leftovers and they scarfed it down. We had a great day there and none of us did get sick - praise God!
Wednesday (today), Grant and Amanda opted to go with Cheryl's team and the medical mission. Jess, Dorcas and I spent the day at an orphanage with all babies under 3 called Anfaani Children's Home. An American woman who now lives here whom our team met last night and invited her to join us for dinner - she joined us today also and that was really need. She's been praying for more Christian fellowship as she hasn't had much of that here and was so thankful to meet all of us and be able to join us. At Anfaani Children's Home - Cheryl's organization does child sponsorships there. There are 3 kids who still need sponsors but the rest have them. (if you want to sponsor, let me know and I'll find out from Cheryl how). We spent the morning holding babies and playing with toddlers. They have 12 kids total and they are super cute. I spent a majority of the day holding a little 6 month old named Mona. She is precious and loves to be held. She's as happy as can be when you just simply hold her. If you put her down, then she cries. We learned how to do cloth diapers and we presented them with a bunch of supplies. The director - Auntie Maria had us poise for a photo with all the supplies piled up on a bench and her and I shaking hands as I held her some of the items. It is very formal here in things like that. Kind of different than other places I've been but I like it. I will post pictures of that later too. We stayed there until 1pm and then took a taxi to the internet cafe so we could update everyone back home with blogs and emails. After this, we are going back to the Guest House and will pack up for heading back to Accra tomorrow morning. Cheryl and her team went on the medical mission again today back to the villages they've gone to so many times in the past 40 or so days that they've been here. Today is their last day in Tamale and it will no doubt be very hard for them to say goodbye today. Please keep them in your prayers. And all of us.
We fly back to Accra tomorrow and then we drive straight from there to Aflao where we will stay 2 nights and visit a school and orphanage there in a heavily voodoo town. Please pray alot for our team as we go there. The Lord is faithful and He is covering us for sure - the more prayer support, the better though. I have felt all your prayers on this whole trip - the presence of the Lord is and has been with us. He is sooo good! And I am so glad to be here. I love Ghana.
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