Kaleo

Last Sunday afternoon, the associate pastor and his nephew came by to take us to the nearby village of Kaleo. We toured the now-defunct Kaleo Baptist Women’s Agricultural Development Project and an orphanage the pastor is trying to start. We also made a stop at the Kaleo Baptist Church, which just happens to be right next to a giant baobab tree that is the center of feasts to honor a local god. The interesting juxtaposition gave us a good opportunity to discuss the local dynamics of faith (mainly between Islam, Christianity, and indigenous religions) with our tour guides. Then we made an impromptu stop at the pastor’s family’s compound where they were brewing pito, a fermented sorghum drink which is widely consumed here.

Where hurricanes come from

Last week there was a big windstorm. Actually, all the storms we’ve seen here are pretty windy. Sometimes it doesn’t even rain, it just blows the dust into the air. You can tell a storm is coming by the clouds of dust. Anyway, during that storm one of our housemates saw part of a metal roof blowing across the yard. We later found the tops of two trees that had broken off and blown into the yard. We ended up using several branches from the tree-tops to hang our mosquito nets over our beds. Dani even made some clothes hangers out of the smaller sticks and some plastic bags.

Phil’s Research

Phil’s research is progressing well. He spent last Wednesday morning meeting with the farmers who will participate in the on-farm experiment he is conducting. Since then he has gone out several times with a crew from the research station to measure out fields and select appropriate sites for the on-farm research plots. He has gradually picked up a few phrases of Dagaare in the field. While Dani has been learning normal phrases like “Hello, my name is...” and “I am ... years old”, Phil has been learning phrases like, “What kind of soil is this?” and “What crops do you grow here?”

Waale New Testament

Last Tuesday we had some free time so we decided to explore in search of the “Regular Baptist Church,” whom we’ve heard have several area missions. We were hoping someone there could direct us to the Christian bookstore so we could buy a Waale New Testament (the whole Bible has not yet been translated into Waale and no scripture has been published in the Dagaare language). We found the church just as a woman was locking up for the day. The woman was very kind and instead of just giving us directions she led us to the Wa Christian Supply Store herself. It is remarkable how God provides us help just when we need it. (On a similar note, we got lost while trying a new way walking home from church a couple of days ago. We had given up and started to backtrack, but as we turned around a lady we had met at church that day “happened” to be walking by and she very graciously led us to our street. God is so good!)

Prayer Requests:
-We made great progress in language learning this week. Thank you for your prayers. Please continue to pray.
-Witnessing to roommates
-The Lord's guidance in an emerging opportunity to work with under-privileged girls at a church development project

Language learning
We have now mastered the basic greetings in both Waale and Dagaare and the housekeeper here has started teaching Dani some new phrases. We have also learned that the word for “white person” is nasara. Nearly everywhere we go the children shout, "Nasara, How are you?" and then grin and wave.

Setting up research
Phil spent quite a bit of time this week meeting with his local contact and several of the local research technicians to finalize details for his research. He and the technicians spent most of Tuesday morning measuring out field plots. Even though the technicians did most of the work, Phil came back in the afternoon exhausted from the heat.

Prayer service
Wednesday evening we made the one-hour trek to God’s Glory Baptist Church for their weekly prayer service. We sang and prayed together in at least three different languages (Twi, Waale, and English). One of the deacons would announce a topic for prayer (for example, “pray for those you know who are sick”) and then everyone would pray aloud. It was wonderful to join with God’s people to give thanks for what He has done and to raise our requests to Him. (Interestingly, we both prayed for our Muslim housemate who has been suffering from malaria and when we returned we told him about it. He told us he was feeling better and that it must be because we prayed for him.)

Over the next few days
Next week Phil will meet with the group of farmers who will participate in his on-farm research. Since several of the missions opportunities we anticipated have fallen through, we will visit the nearby village of Kaleo with a local pastor to look into some ministries there.

Please pray that:
1) We continue to share our faith with our housemates
2) Dani will find a ministry to be involved in
3) We learn more Waale and Dagaare in order to build relationships with our neighbors

Journey to Wa
After an overnight flight, our plane arrived in humid Accra, Ghana around 8am on Wednesday. A few hours later, Phil’s research contact picked us up at the airport. We proceeded to drive around Accra and north towards Wa, stopping frequently so that our driver could run errands. Early Thursday morning (12:30 am) we arrived in Tamale, a city in north-central Ghana. Because we were delayed, we ended up staying in Tamale two nights. Friday morning we set out for Wa, and after several hours on a very bumpy road(!), we finally arrived at our destination just in time for dinner.

Research Station at Wa
We are staying at the guest house of the research station were Phil will be doing some of his research. It isn’t fancy, but we do have running water and electricity. We have our own room and share a common area with two roommates, a German soil science student and a Muslim accountant from Tamale. We enjoy interacting and have already had the opportunity to discuss matters of faith with them.

Wa
Wa is a multilingual city; the languages spoken here include: Waale, Dagaare, Twi, and (luckily for us) a little bit of English. We are learning Waale and Dagaare, although it’s confusing learning more than one language at once. Saturday morning we practiced our new language skills in Wa’s central market. (Besides that, we needed to buy some food!) We now have a nice store of rice, peppers, onions, plantains, efule greens, and peanut butter.

God’s Glory Baptist Church
Sunday we attended God’s Glory Baptist Church, an affiliate of the Ghana Baptist Convention. We were praying we would find a church. After asking around, we finally found a “friend of a friend” who knew of this church. What an answer to prayer!
Sunday’s service was filled with dancing, singing, shouting, clapping, handkerchief-waving, and other exuberant expressions of worship. At the welcome time, we introduced ourselves and brought greetings from the First Baptist Church, Gainesville, Florida, United States. They received us warmly and were happy to have visitors from so far away.

This week
Phil will begin his research and Dani is looking forward to going to another village to visit a Baptist women’s agricultural development project. Please pray for us to learn the languages quickly and find places to serve in order to meaningfully interact with the people of Wa, Ghana.

We have arrived (finally!)

We have finally arrived in Wa after 4 days of traveling!!! Anyway, we're now starting to get settled and hope to write about some of our experiences on our blog soon.

We're on our way!

Hello everyone and greetings from New York City! We (Phil and Dani) have an eight hour layover between flights, so we thought we'd take this time to write. We are on our way to Wa, Ghana and will be there until August 5th. During this time Phil will begin research for his Ph.D. His studies focus on improving soil fertility via fertilization and crop rotations. Dani will spend her time volunteering with various development agencies and missions, including agricultural projects and orphanages with community gardens. We hope to update this blog weekly, with reports, pictures, and prayer requests. However, we will not send out regular e-mails, so we invite you to bookmark this page or subscribe to our blog (see right side of webpage).
It may take a few days, but we will write once we arrive in Wa. In the mean time, we still have an 8-hour layover, 11-hour flight, and 17-hour road trip before we are "home." Thank you for your prayers for safe travels.
Grace and peace,
Phil and Dani