Thank You...!

Laci and I just wanted to say thank you to all of our friends, family, and colleagues from around the country who have kept up with our journey to Ghana. The blog statistics show that there have been more than 400 visits to view our blog page. We appreciate all of your emails, phone calls and long distance prayers from all up and down the east coast from Massachusetts to Florida and all the way out to the west coast of California and even in the Caribbean. Tomorrow (Thursday July 19th) we will be traveling to Komasi which is about a 4 hour drive from Akropong. We plan to leave the church at 6am. Gifty one of our personal chefs said that she would be gracious enough to pack us a breakfast and lunch. Gifty and Anoni, our other personal chef have both been great and have gone above and beyond their call of duty! But in reference to Komasi --it is the area where the actual Kente Cloth is made and is known as one of the places you don't want to miss if you come to Ghana. We are planning to meet up with Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright's (Pres. Obama's former pastor) tour group in Komasi tomorrow and join them on their tour. It should be very interesting and I hope to take some more good pictures and videos. But early this morning I went to lead worship at my 7th and final school. It was at the junior high school across from where we live--but down a very large and winding hill. The children were so engaged and had so much energy at 7:30 in the morning!!! Ironically, as I sat down to type this blog a young man on the computer next to me turned to me and said "that was great this morning what you did with the children". When I thanked him and asked him who he was he said he was one of the teachers in the classroom today. It is definitely a small world! But lately I have been running into quite a few students as we walk through town who will see me and then start chanting some of the songs or phrases I taught them when I visited their particular school. They particularly like the Jesus Rap and even some of the teachers are saying it now. But as long as God gets the Glory! Later today we also visited the School for the Blind (which has about 300+ students) and got a chance to meet the director, the assistant director, and other staff--they truly have a heart for their students. While we were there the director asked some of the students to sing a song for us. It was very touching. We also took some time to tour the school and at the end went into their shop to buy some of the jewelry and crafts that the students had created. Afterwards we stopped by one of the all girls high schools which has an enrollment of 1,600+ students. We spoke to the chaplain of the high school and he said he is the only chaplain on staff (bless his heart) for all 1600+ girls plus he is a biology teacher! He said it is a lot of work but that he loves what he does. Before dinner we stopped back at the church and stopped in to meet with the Women's Fellowship Group. There were about 35 women present. Popa Nyarko formally introduced us to the group (even though we've met many of them already)and apologized since we were supposed to visit with them the second week we were in town but our schedule was so busy. Yes, I can't believe we are in our 7th week! Popa Nyarko asked me to greet them in English which I did. He then added some additional comments in the native Twi language which we didn't understand. When all of the women laughed Popa Nyarko said that he just asked them in Twi to inform him if any of them had sons because he was looking for husbands for Ann, Laci, and I. Well, maybe we shouldn't have asked him to translate (smile)for us. In any event, they were glad that we came by to visit with them. We didn't stay too long because Popa Nyarko wanted us to go with him to visit a woman who had recently lost 2 daughter's and a son. Losing one child is I'm sure heart- breaking enough but 3 is as she stated -was "very difficult to imagine that it would ever actually happen to her". When we arrived at her house I realized that it was actually one of the homes that we had visited about a month ago when we accompanied the nurses to visit the sick and shut-in. During our visit we found out that this woman's daughter had just recently got married in the last 6 months and then died unexpectedly. Since her sister and brother had also died recently, the family made a difficult decision to not tell her right away about the loss of this daughter as well. Now that she knows she says that she will just trust in the Lord because He is the only one that will get her through this. But she kept thanking Laci, Ann, and I for coming with Popa Nyarko to visit with her during this difficult time. We prayed and sang with her for about 15 minutes. As she sang the familiar hymn "Blessed Assurance Jesus is Mine"--you could tell that she was as she stated trusting in the Lord to get her through this difficult ordeal. This visit was a vivid reminder of just how precious life is! Thankfully, she was not alone but surrounded by her sister and a few others who were also there to comfort her. Afterwards, we left her house to head back for dinner and as we got in the car, I asked Popa Nyarko how many funerals are scheduled for the end of the month and he said the number is now up to 6. But, as I said in an earlier post that number could go higher before I have to preach on July 28th. I will trust that God will give me the right words of comfort for those families on that day. Well, my time is almost up on the computer so I will close here and try to update the blog with new pictures after we get back from Komasi and we will also be going into Accra on Friday so that we can update our visas. In the meantime, blessings to all of you...Love, Lisa and Laci