Stuck

The last last three days have been fairly uneventful. I was supposed
to travel the last two, and plans were cancelled. I was supposed to go
to the Central reigon again but the Tom's Van broke down. Today I was
supposed to travel to Kumasi to see Tom's mom but she cancelled last
minute for some reason. Anyway I needed the time to chill and get some
teachings in order. I have a meeting tonight with the leaders here,
and I am speaking on Easter. The big thing is this Youth rally in
Sampa. It is a small village near Sunyani and we have a pastor friens
there named Stephen. He sort of sprung this youth conference thing on
me. It will be for six days and I have to have six teachings. I will
give more later....

Busy in Ghana

Our schedules have been packed since we arrived in Accra. We did manage
to get a little bit of rest time. One day we went to the beach for a
couple of hours. We all got burned too! It is surprising how little
Ghana has capitolized on its huge streatch of beaches. There is little
development and it remains pretty dirty. There is trash covering most
of the shores, and in some more remote parts where fisherman live on
the beach, they use the water as a latrine. Anyway we did have some fun
there.

We had a bunch more meetings with Tom's church here. We had a study
with the leadership of his church and Andy laid out some of the
foundational leadership stuff from UCF. They had many good questions
and seemed to receive everything shared. We also shared the spiritual
warfare teachings with the leaders here. It was harder to tell what
they took from this, but we gave it a shot. The last night of the
street meetings went well. Many more people came out and responded.
Things flowed better, were more in order, and the sound system worked
better too. Andy spoke an anointed message and we prayed over many
people at the end. I was able to pray with many kids and laid my hands
on a number of sick people as well. God did some cool things that
night. We found that a bunch of people came out to Tom's church on
Sunday as a result of their experiences from these night meetings.

I spoke with the student group at the University at Legon on Sunday as
well. They are a pretty cool bunch of guys. They were excited to learn
some new worship songs and really liked the guitar. They also seemed to
respond really well to the teaching. It was a pretty hard direct word
about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. They all responded with
prayers and seemed to soak everything in.

Andy also spoke at the new Group Tom started at the Arts center. It is
the beach where the artisans and craftsmen live. Many are drum makers.
A few are Rastas, and generally they are all sort of outcasts. There
were about 20 guys there, and I got to play a few songs for them. They
got into it and had some good responses to the teaching.

On Monday we travelled to the central reigon of Ghana. We went with Tom
to visit with a couple of pastors there. The remote villages are quite
different from the city. It was beautiful surroundings. There were palm
trees and green hills all around. It is the 'bush' There are many small
villages all over the place. Many only accessable by dirt roads and
trails. The houses there were mud huts. They are constructed by
building a bamboo frame and covering it in the reddish clay/mud. The
roofs are made of thatch and some coverings are made with palm leaves
woven together. There is no electricity in many of these villages, and
the water comes from cisterns or wells. It was pretty interesting.
Anyhow we met with and prayed with a couple of pastors. We also met
with a lady who had a cool story. She was sick in bed for years and
this pastor (we went to visit) prayed with her and she was completly
healed. She was very happy to see us and we were alble to pray with her
and her family. It is strange to the western world but many people here
still worship idols in their homes. It is very common in the villages.
We also watched a small boy climb up like 100 feet in a tree to cut out
some coconuts! A cool scene really.

We did some more ministry, and met with Tom's youth group one night.
They are pretty cool kids, they like our songs and got into the
teachings about the Father's heart. Andy and Martha flew for home late
Tuesday night. So now I am on my own. I seem to already have a pretty
packed schedule. I will be doing a bunch more teaching stuff with Tom's
church this week, and next week I will be traveling north to do a Youth
conference for three days. I am enjoying the opportunity very much,
though it can be hard at times. Thanks everybody who is praying for me,
it is felt.

Good things in Accra

The street meetings to the homeless went well. I played three songs on
guitar and immediately a huge crowd of kids gathered around. The
amplification was a bit sketchy, it was having some issues. At one
point they held a bullhorn up to where I was singing. It sounded so
ridiculous. Andy spoke a cool message and many responded wanting
prayer for healing and deliverance. We were also able to give
prophetic words for many of the people. During the day we had a good
time meeting with the students. We did a bible study in this guy Nat's
room. They were very glad to have us and had many good things to
share. We went out for a short time (20 min) to do evangelism and
prayed with around 12 students as well. I look forward to more with
them. I will also be speaking at the Sunday church service for the
students while Andy will be speaking at the street church.

Street Church

Last night we went to Tom's street church. They meet in an alley in what
they call the slums. The leaders of the church were there and we had a
time of prayer. They were praying about the meetings on the street for
this week. One thing that struck me was what a woman shared. She said
she was taking a taxi and asked the driver to pull over so she could go
to the bathroom. She went behind a large trash container and heard a
baby crying. She found a baby girl 6-8 months old. She took the baby to
the police and they wrote a report. She is now keeping the baby and we
got to pray for this child. Tom will organise the custody through his
orphanage. It is cool how God worked it out for this child, but a sad
state of things. They shared how this is common here. We drove to the
place where we will be having the street meetings. It was a very dirty
area where many people set up shanty-like shealters and were sleeping on
cardboard. There was a stream of sludge or sewage flowing right through
the center of this place. I also saw just rows and rows of people laying
on the side walks to sleep. There were many small kids too. I found out
that there are some who are second and third generation street people!
Almost a third of the city is considered slums and it seems there is a
huge homeless population. This is the focus of Tom's ministry here. It
is weird because the other parts of Accra are pretty decent and look
fairly modern. It is a contrast from Senegal, which seemed further
behind in technology and moderisation. Although a strange thing is the
cost of living is much higher in Senegal. Ghana is a pretty poor
country. I hope our meetings the next few evenings will be fruitful. We
are praying for some miracles, signs and wonders. Today we are also
meeting with the students here in a couple of hours. We are currently on
ther University campus and have been walking around and praying.

Arrived in Ghana

Well we finally made it! The trip took 8 hours. We stopped in Guniea,
Ivory Coast, Togo, and finally Ghana. We arrived in Accra at around
11PM and we were greeted by Tom. He took us to stay at the orphanage
that he runs. It is pretty nice compared to the set up in Senegal. The
weather is really hot and humid and it was difficult to sleep. Today
we are doing some errands, exchanging money, email, etc. We have a
pretty busy week of minisrty ahead. We will be doing evangelistic
street meetings a few nights this week. Also we will do some
leadership training for Tom's church. In addition we are meeting with
the students from the University at Legon. They want us to pray with
them and do evangelism. I think we will get to teach them the
spiritual warfare stuff we used in Senegal too. Andy will be preaching
for the street meetings as well as the Sunday servives for Tom's
street church. I will be leading worship and may be speaking one of
the evenings. A busy week ahead but I look forward to see what God is
gonna do. Keep praying for us.

Senegal was very cool

Well we have had no internet access for over a week, so I will try to
highlight some points from our travels. Traveling from Dakar to Ossouye
was really pretty hard, it literally took an entire day. The distance
was not really that far but the roads here are terrible. We were in
transit for over 12 hrs. Going through the Gambia was pretty
frustrating too. We paid for a shared taxi to take us the whle way.
When we reached the Gambia river the ferry that was supposed to take us
across was broken and there was a line of cars backed up for quite a
way. We waited for over an hour and came to the conclusion it was time
for plan B. We abandoned our taxi and hopped into a small boat which
took us across. Then we managed to hop a few transports (vans w/ many
seats)to get us the rest of the way. A crazy experience really. I have
found travel in Africa to be like this, very slow and difficult and
nothing is easy. It is always an adventure though.
The church in Ossouye is great. They were happy to see us and took very
good care of us. The food here is great, rice and fish very often. One
major difficulty in all of this is I do not speak French (the official
language) Andy has been pretty much getting us by with his French
skills. A few people at the church speak English, and they have been
translating for us. I have learned a little bit and also some of the
native language (Jolla) I now know most of the basic greetings which
are very important here.
We immediately started prayer shifts through the night, and God gave us
much insight to the issues and battles here. For three days Andy and I
taught on Spiritual warfare, and it went really well. They had many
questions and seemed to be very attentive. There is a ton of idol
worship here and animal sacrafices. The typical Senegalese are very
superstious people, and practice a form of witchcraft and animism. Also
many are muslim and mix the two together. It is pretty strange and
foreign to us. Though the common thing we all face is fighting
deception in different forms.
For two days we also went to a small town near the southern coast
Kabrousse. There we did the same teachings for the new church there and
we also did some street evangelism during the day. It was so cool. The
people are so hungry for something real. I was able to pray with over
20 people to receive a personal revelation of Christ, and Martha did
about he same. God also gave me many specific words for people and I
was able to pray for healing for a bunch as well. The village is fairly
small, and once word got out of what we were doing, many more came
because of the word of their friends. There is so much more to tell,
but I am out of time. We are back in Dakar and will be leaving for
Ghana tomorrow afternoon. We have a stop in the Ivory Coast and will
arrive in the evening. Thanks to everybody who is praying for us, it is
felt!

Finally Here!

Well it seemed to take a long but we are finally in Senegal. The whole
trip took around 30 hrs. We left from JFK and flew into Milan, Italy.
We spent a number of hours there waiting for the flight to Dakar. The
highlight of all the travel was looking out the airplane window and
seeing the sun rise over the Alps. Treacherous and beautiful at the
same time.
We used the time in transit to go over our teachings and coordinate
things. We went into downtown Dakkar to change some money today, and it
was wild! One word, chaos! I am still adjusting to the time difference
too. The spirit of slumber is heavy over this place. If you have been
to Africa, you know what I am talking about. This country is like 95
percent Muslim.
Communication is a challenge here, Andy speaks some French, and the
contacts here in Dakar speak very little English.
We will be traveling south to Oussey soon, the main purpose for our
trip. There we will be teaching the church about spiritual warfare.
There will be some translators for this task. Tonight we will pray and
worship and hopefully tomorrow we will have a guide take us south. [we
will have to travel through the Gambia, hopefully without any issue]
Keep us all in your prayers. So far an interesting adventure!

Map of Africa

Map of Ghana

Map of Senegal