Village Projects, Returning to the States
Village Projects
Five of the six boreholes in the village community were broken. They had been drilled sometime in the past, but not maintained.
Pastor George and I met with the community and talked to them about the importance of clean water and borehole maintenance. After the meeting, we found out this was the first time the whole community had come together for several years. The people had let a land dispute cause division. Through this meeting, they realized their fighting was a serious problem in the community.
In the end, we helped repair one borehole, and the community worked together to come up with the funds to help repair a second one.
On the day that we came to work, there was a good group of men that came to help. For several of the men, it was the first time they had talked to each other since the land dispute had started. I felt like God used the borehole project to end the fighting and bring peace to the community.
Since that time, Satan is fighting back and trying to start up another fight and divide the people again. I believe many of the people have seen through one man’s deception, but we need to continue to pray for the community.
Our second project has been the new church building in another village. The 70-100 church members have been cramming into one school classroom for service. Thankfully, we have finished the block work on the new building and hope to start on the roof soon.
During this time in Ghana, God has led me on a completely different path than what I was expecting. It started with God showing me the hearts of the people in our churches, that they had a strong desire to really know God and serve Him, but that what we were doing at the time wasn’t helping them grow spiritually. I knew we needed some sort of training program, and, thankfully, God answered our prayer and gave us the tools and the resources to start our own leadership program back in August.
In our leadership program over the last couple of months we have been discussing what it means to be in fellowship with God. Several of our lessons have been focused on how God speaks through His Word and the importance of meditating on the Scriptures.
We had a fellowship dinner a couple weeks ago, and hearing how God is already working in the lives of our future leaders is absolutely amazing! Daniel, one of our participants, said that he had gotten lazy and distracted with his Bible reading. He saw the Bible kind of like a textbook on how to live life. He testified, however, that, because of the leadership program, this has changed. “I have designed a fellowship plan, and I am spending time in prayer and reading the Bible every day,” he said. “I no longer see the Bible as a textbook, but the Scriptures are starting to come alive to me as I meditate on them. I feel like God is now speaking to me directly during my time of fellowship.”
I encourage each one of you to pray for each our participants. We hope to start our third leadership program in the next couple of months.
Returning to the States
On October 30, I will be returning to the States a little earlier than next summer, as originally planned, due primarily to visa issues.I will continue working with the ministry team as a liaison, and my absence will give George more freedom to step into the role of director. He continues to amaze me with his leadership abilities. I plan to visit Ghana again in 2019 to assess and help implement the next phase of our vision.
Thank you for supporting my ministry. Please continue giving, as it will benefit the work in Ghana under Pastor George’s leadership, even after my departure. I know God is moving here, and in time we will see the rewards of the harvest.
Pray for me as I transition back to the US and into my new role as liaison to Ghana. There are some ideas that I have for what I want to do next, but I’m not really sure which one is God’s plan for my life. I just want to be obedient to Him and His will.
