5:50 am – I manage to pull myself out of bed.
6:00 am – We meet downstairs and head to Pastor Isaac’s house.
6:30 – 8:00 am – We do worship, Amy gives a testimony and Christina preaches. The rest of us hand out pamphlets to the people waiting for the vans. It’s not my favorite way to evangelize, but some people actually seem to listen and one woman asks us to pray for her legs.
8:00 am– We tear down the sound system (well, the boys do anyway) and the banner which has a picture of our entire squad on it and start to head home.
8:15 am – We live ten minutes from the van station but we stop to greet everyone we see – including the bus station man, a taxi driver, kids walking to school, random people on their way to work and we even bump into Pastor Isaac’s uncle. We also stop to pray for a woman that has just had a baby and for another woman who is expecting a baby.
9:00 am– We have egg sandwiches and Nescafe for breakfast. We don’t even think about real coffee anymore. We get really excited about the Nescafe. It has become a treat. In fact, later on, we discuss making a video about how much we love it and sending it to Nestle.
9:45 am – My entire team mysteriously disappears so I hang out with some of the neighbourhood kids and we listen to Lecrae. We also learn how to use an Ipod and talk about how Ghana is going to win the World Cup. It’s really nice being in a country where I can actually communicate with the people.
10:30 am – I take a really long, really cold shower and sing Great Big Sea really loudly because my team is still mysteriously missing and no one can hear me.
11:00 am – I discover that my team is holed up in the other girls’ room planning birthday stuff and I’m not allowed in so I go back to my room. I turn up the air conditioning, put on sweatpants, curl up in my sleeping bag and pretend I’m in Canada. I listen to an Andrew Shearman podcast and take so many notes that I might as well have just made a transcript.
1:30 pm – I wander around the hotel for a bit and consider how sad it is that I am spending my birthday alone and loving it. I chat with Amy and she tells me later that they kind of felt bad for leaving me alone all morning until she talked to me. Apparently I was kind of giddy. Hello, my name is Courtney and I am an introvert. I love alone time.
1:40 pm – I head out to the roof, put on my sunglasses, stick my earphones in and hang out with Jesus. It’s basically incredible. And refreshing. And exactly what I need.
3:00 pm – Lunch time! It’s fried yams, chicken and coleslaw. Which isn’t all that African. And it’s okay with me. Ghanaian food is not my favorite food so far…
3:30 pm – I was enjoying the roof so much that I decide to go back out for a bit longer. I get the fastest suntan of my life.
4:00 pm – Amy and I go running around our neighbourhood. I get sweaty in approximately 4.5 seconds, and dehydrated in 7. We have a nice chat about life.
4:45 pm – Get home to find that Team Rhema has arrived to help celebrate my birthday! I decide that I should probably shower before the birthday celebrations.
5:00 – 8:00 pm – Birthday party! We all just hang out and chat. Bill and I continue our conversation from Cambodia about how many heads of state we can name and have a long talk about the World Cup…and how many teams we can name.
My birthday was wonderful. Amy taught the Ghanaian women that cook for us how to make pizza. It actually turned out really well! My team also performed a skit that was a human singing birthday card. And hilarious. They made a video of our past five months together which was awesome. It’s crazy how many things we’ve done and how many people we’ve met in five months. And then it was present time! My presents were really thoughtful and great.
8:00 pm – We head to the internet café and spend the first 15 minutes praying for the internet to work. In a room at the back of the internet place a men’s choir is singing You Raise Me Up by Josh Groban. I realize, once again, that my life is weird.
8:15 pm – The internet actually begins to work and I start singing Jesus Loves Me This I Know….then I get embarrassed and stop. I check my e-mail and find that our contact from Cambodia that we went to the village with has e-mailed me pictures of the village kids holding a sign that says Happy Birthday Courtney that is decorated with their handprints. It’s real cute. I look at it for a good ten minutes (mainly because the internet has stopped working, but also because I love it and I love them). I continue checking birthday messages and then I watch a video from my friend Sarah. She prefaces it by saying that I should only watch it alone because she thinks it’s embarrassing. I’m in an internet café but I figure my team is busy doing their own thing and won’t notice so I watch it. And when it starts playing I realize that the speaker hooked up to my computer is hanging on the wall and is really, really loud. So, we all enjoy the birthday video together. 🙂
10:00 pm – I’m now home and writing this blog and about to go to sleep because we have more bus station evangelism planned for 6:00 am. (This is also the latest I’ve stayed up since we arrived in Ghana! I’m kind of proud of myself. Most nights I’ve gone to bed between 6:30 and 8:00 because of jetlag).
