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