What to say about Ghana? This is kind of a hard one because there was a lot that went on in Ghana, but I don’t want to start a trend of gigantor posts. Part of the reason behind there being a lot was the fact that we were in Ghana for what felt like forever – there’s a story behind that statement that I’ll get into later, I’m sure.
After coming out of such a hard month in Côte d’Ivoire, but ending it on a bit of a high after being able to give a message that resulted in many people accepting Jesus, I really wasn’t sure what to expect out of our new country. One thing we knew for sure, though, was that our teams were going to change.
A part of the Race that we are all aware of from the beginning is that occasional team changes happen throughout the year. The exact number of changes that will happen is unknown, but we all know there will be at least one – and that 1st one generally happens around month 5, which in our case was Ghana.
We also have occasional periods of debriefing where the whole squad gets together along with some of our leadership from the States, and we take about 5 days together to talk about where we’re at so far on the journey. We have worship sessions and workshops, and give time for people to speak messages from the Lord and encourage us. The beginning of Ghana was the 2nd of such debrief periods.
So, two things happened very quickly moving into month 5:
1 – We had a squad-wide debrief
2 – Team changes were inevitable
Another factor moving into Ghana was a personal one that I felt like the Lord told me was going to happen – I was going to be asked to move into a new role on the squad, and I was going to be completely separated from everyone on my current team. This ended up being true and coming to fruition. I was asked to become a team leader for one of the new teams being created, and that new team had entirely new people on it, so I was separated from everything I had become comfortable with over the first four months.
Side Note: Just because a team changes, it doesn’t mean you will be separated from everyone on the original team. There are some people on this squad who have been together for the entire race, though the teams have changed over the course of the year.
So, now a third thing happened very quickly moving into month 5:
3 – I was now a team leader and responsible for 6 other individuals I knew very little about.
Now, after these intense changes that just happened, came the fun part… boy, was I afraid! I had a new role, new responsibilities, new faces and personalities to learn to work with, and I was terrified of how all of this was going to work out.
Then, the big news. We learned that the next month was going to be another All-Squad month like Ecuador. All 57 of us were going to be living together again and working for the same ministry. Wow!
Side Note #2: Extra all-squad months are not common on the Race at all. We are supposed to have one (Ecuador for us), but additional all-squad months really only happen under special circumstances. In other words, we had a rare opportunity to be together again.
For me, I was somewhat excited. Just like in Ecuador, I was thrilled by the opportunity to get to know other people. There’s a difference in being the leader of a group of people (fear), and just hanging out and getting to know them (fun). However, considering we literally just created these new teams, then we were heading straight into another all-squad atmosphere, it made it easy for people to cling to what/who they were already comfortable with instead of engaging in their new teams, myself included, even though I thrive on getting to know others. We had to be intentional about our time put aside to get to know the new people we were now calling our team.
We ended up in a small town called Sunyani, working for a church call Elim City. It’s a massive church with a huge vision. Our ministry was street evangelism. We learned very quickly that African time, specifically Ghanaian time, is very different from American time. If the scheduled time for us to be picked up for morning ministry was 8:00AM, you could guarantee our ride would arrive AT LEAST an hour late. Sometimes it was 3 hours late.
The laid back atmosphere seemed schway in theory, but in reality it tested the heck out of our patience. For the most part, ministry was pretty awesome, though. It took a bit for my team to find its groove, but we learned that most of us thrived in evangelism and service. We were a group that loved telling people about the Gospel, praying for people and doing our best to love them well. We walked several different neighborhoods throughout this town, breaking up into pairs or threes, and we would just find people to engage in conversation.
We eventually adopted one of the translators as an honorary member of the team – AD. AD was a pretty schway dude. He loved to rap and dance, and while we were with him he had some pretty awesome encounters with God’s power. He received words of knowledge and visions about people for the first time in his life while we were working with him.
There are 2 pretty awesome ministry day stories that I can think of right off the top of my head.
The first one revolves around a woman whose name I honestly can’t remember at the moment. We went to this random neighborhood one evening – I’m fairly confident it was the only day we visited this neighborhood – and we came across a house where some kids were playing outside. We started speaking to the kids and were eventually invited into the home to speak with the lady who owns the house. While talking with her, she began to tell us about her past and her family. She told us that she came from another part of Ghana and had left her family behind. They practiced another religion that involved ancestral worship, and she was not allowed to go visit them. When I asked her why, she said her family did things to prevent her from going out there, spiritual things, and that she was honestly afraid to even try to visit them because they might kill her for becoming Christian.
Not quite knowing how to respond to this yet, we continued to just let her talk. As she continued, she talked to us about her love for music. That she writes songs for The Lord and loves to sing. She also explained to us that she often has dreams that she feels are from God, but she usually is not able to understand them. I asked her to tell us about the most recent dream she had that was like this, so she did.
She had a dream that she was locked inside of a cage to keep her from singing. While in this cage some people came and broke in so they could release her. After she was released, she mentioned another part of the dream that revolved around her seeing the house she grew up in and singing as she journeyed to it. There was also something about her following an army on the way. Some of the details are getting a little splotchy in my memory, so I don’t want to say something that isn’t accurate, but after explaining this dream to us our friend AD had a vision from the Lord about the house that our new friend grew up in. He described for her the image that he saw in his mind, and after listening to it she said that was exactly what her home looked like.
Then, after this moment with AD, the Holy Spirit began to speak to me and give me an interpretation of her dream. He told me that her singing was a weapon and that she had no reason to be afraid. People have been trying to cage her in to keep her from using the weapon God has given her, but He has sent people to release her so she could sing and use her weapon. He was also telling her that she had nothing to be afraid of about going home, and He in fact wanted her to go. She needed to know that He would go ahead of her (the army that she followed) and prepare the way, and there was nothing that could harm her as she went singing and bringing glory to Him.
Naturally, I told her to seek God’s guidance about that interpretation, but the way I felt the Spirit in that moment was unlike anything I had felt for quite some time. It was like He was speaking right through me and those words were not my own.
We prayed for her and her healing, as well. She had a leg that was shorter than another. While we laid hands on her and prayed for her, I watched her leg start to grow out! They didn’t get completely even, but the shorter one totally grew some while we were there.
The second big ministry story that I remember about Ghana involves a man named Steven who I had the privilege of leading to Jesus. It was honestly one of my favorite experiences out of the entire Race – so great that I wrote a blog specifically about this moment. It’s titled Truth? What Truth? In order to keep this already super long post from getting longer, I’m going to ask that you check that one out if you haven’t heard or don’t remember that story.
Outside of the ministry stories, here’s a brief description some of my other great memories that I have from Ghana:
– We had an event called a Leadership Development Workshop (LDW) that lasted about 3 days? Maybe? During this time we had no ministry. LDW is kind of like a conference that we do occasionally throughout the year to give the members of the squad opportunities to lead sessions and breakouts, and really to do anything we want to do to encourage, motivate, or teach one another. God gave me and several of my squadmates some pretty awesome messages that I still find myself listening to my recordings of every once in a while.
– We visited this schway place called Monkey Sanctuary one weekend where I got to let wild monkeys come up to me so I could feed them bananas! One jumped on my shoulder and hung out there for a while as I let her take pieces of the banana from my hand!
– Fan-Ice!! OMGsh, it was this really great ice cream that we got at the convenience store. It comes contained in a plastic bag and you literally suck it out.
– When my team wasn’t sick with malaria (we all had it at staggered moments, with the exception of Trevor), we had some really great team times. For a couple of weeks, we took time every morning to come together and lead Bible Studies that were always awesome!
– Ketchup on salad?? Tuna and ketchup sandwiches for breakfast? Yeah, that’s a thing in Ghana. I wasn’t a fan.
– African roads. That’s an adventure in and of itself.
Oh! And before I forget… the reason behind why Ghana felt like it lasted forever. Soooo… it ended up that we stayed in Ghana for 2 months instead of 1. Because of some security concerns we did not end up going to Burkina Faso in the month of June. We remained in Ghana for that whole month. Six of the eight weeks were spent in Sunyani with the entire squad (which is the part of Ghana that this post is about). Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about the last 2 weeks which were a bit of a separate adventure. Stay tuned for that story!
