Hey everyone! Our squad arrived in Togo this past Saturday. This is our last month in Africa! I’ve really enjoyed my time on the Race so far. And I’ve absolutely loved Ghana.
To backtrack a little bit, after a few days at debrief all of the teams split up to join their individual ministry hosts. My team traveled from Elmina to Madina which was about a four hour tro tro ride (check out my previous blog to learn what is a tro tro), and shortly afterward met our hosts for the month. We stayed with a pastor, Calvary, and his wife, Abigail, who is the principal at a Christian school, and their kids. A few evenings a week the school is used for church services and bible studies.
Here is what a typical week looked like for us:
On Sunday we went to church in the morning. We all took turns preaching an approximately 15 minute long message. The message was then translated by Abigail into Twi, one of the local dialects. We also sang at least two songs each service. The service was usually about three hours long, with a lot of singing and praying and basically a dance party at the end.
On Monday through Thursday we went to our hosts’ school. We were all split up into different classes. The school is based off of the Montessori school so they have levels rather than grades. The class I was put in, Primary 4 (P4), has nine through eleven year olds. There are six classes a day that are an hour each, with a half an hour break in the morning and a half an hour break for lunch. Each day the class order changes. We have English (split up into reading comprehension, dictation, and grammar), Maths, RME (religious and moral education), Ghanaian language (Twi), Integrated Science, Citizenship, Creative Arts, French, and ICT (I can’t remember what that stands for but it was computer class…with no computers). We also had worship and singing together as a school on two days.
I spent the month as the maths teacher for P4. I also taught RME a few times, integrated science once, and helped with dictation and creative arts. There were a couple of times where I was filling in for the citizenship that I wasn’t sure what to teach. Once I taught the kids a song. Another time I taught them the Korean writing system (actually not as random as you would think. A lot of kids have backpacks with Korean writing on them. Also you can learn to read Korean in about an hour. Won’t be able to understand it though haha).
On Tuesday nights we had Bible college with the topic of leadership. On Wednesday we had church in the evenings which was similar to church on Sunday but about an hour shorter. On Friday we had our Sabbath day, our day of rest. Saturday was our adventure day. One Saturday we went to Aburi Botanical Gardens with the youth group. The other Saturday we went to Boti Falls resort and hiked for about two hours. Then we went to the area with the waterfall, but since it is the dry season here, the waterfall had dried up. It was still really beautiful.
The end of the month was pretty bittersweet. Our alumni team leader, Tayler, who completed the Race last year, went back to the U.S. last Wednesday. Jessica Akland has been raised up as our team leader. I really loved my P4 class and so it was sad to leave them. And our hosts were awesome! It was so great to be able to speak to them in English. Calvary is so funny and loves the Lord and has a community of people that he intentionally builds into. And Abigail is a superwoman. She’s the stern principal that commands respect, the translator at church and worship leader, an amazing cook and wonderful mother. She even cooked for us at 4:30 in the morning on the day that we left.
I really enjoyed the ministry here in Ghana, the people we met and the places we’ve visited. Our host urged us to pray about coming back, and I feel like I really would enjoy going back to Ghana one day.
I’m still blown away when I see how much people have given me so far to be able to travel to all these countries! I remember when I had just started fundraising and I was like, how am I going to ever make it? Thank you to everyone who has supported me in any way. I’m still 7,000 away from being fully funded, so if you are able to give to help me stay on the Race, you can do so here!
Jessica
