Teaching the Word

Every Tuesday and Thursday I lead a Bible Study at the school. It is a great opportunity to share the Word of God. There are about 185 students at the school; about one fourth of them are Christians and the other three fourths are Muslim. The turn out always varies.

One day we talked about how to pray to God. I taught them the ACTS prayer; adoration, confession, thanksgiving and supplication. We made bracelets with different textured bead that represent each word. Big success!

Another day we talked about Daniel and the lion’s den. I had the students act it out like a movie. They love movies (I know what you are thinking, they are blind they can not see, sure but they can hear and some of the kids have a little vision, you can be legally blind but still have a little sight). They really enjoyed that.

Today we talked about Jesus feeding the multitude and how God will always provide for us. I cut out fish and had them decorate it with different tactile things; pom poms, feathers and I had them color with crayon because you can feel the difference. That was fun.

News of the day:

Evelyn (my pet lizard) no long lives on my ceiling of my bathroom but now in the drawer where I keep my plates, pots and forks. I know this because she left me little presents this morning. She also found my stash of bread; she thought it would be ok if we shared…

Every day the students have breakfast at 8:30am (this is after assembly, devos and one class). Today I was walking past a classroom and saw one of my students, Fuseini, sitting in there by himself. I asked him why he was not at breakfast and he told me he did not feel well. Like a good teacher I asked him what does not feel good, for how long, and if he needed anything. Really he was just happy someone cared; he looked at me and said he will be ok. I asked him if it would be ok if I prayer for him. Fuseini looked at me smiled and nodded his head. I asked if we could pray now and he said yes. Now I do not know if Fuseini believes that Jesus Christ loves him so much He died for him or not but, Fuseini does now that I care for him a really lot and he knows right there in the classroom I prayed to Jesus to heal him and for him to you know Christ. – What a great opportunity God laid out in front of me.

Patsy: to answer your question about the motel, well lets just say that Grandma would not stay there…

Opportunities

I thank God every day for the opportunity to come and teach at the Wa School for the Blind. Each day there are doors open for me to be a great example to the teachers and the students. It is so exciting when I get an opportunity to meet someone new, try a new food, teach a new concept, or ride my bike somewhere new.

Lee (one of the other interns with The Mission Society, the organization I came here as a part of) got a great opportunity to help out at a chicken farm in Lawra. Lawra is about 2.5hrs from Wa. The chicken farm is there to help raise money for an AIDS clinic. Lee’s passion in life is animals and God has given him the opportunity to use all he knows about animals to better this chicken farm. He left Wa a week ago.

Anna (another intern; I was living with her here at the school) got a great opportunity to help out at a hospital in Kwmasi. The hospital is in the middle of Ghana, half way between Accra and Wa. Anna wants to be a doctor. At the hospital there is a doctor that is allowing Anna to come and shadow her for few weeks. This will be great experience for her before she goes to college to get her degree in medicine. She left on Tuesday.

As for me I still have this great opportunity to learn how to be a teacher as well as how schools work in Ghana. I hope opportunities continue to come my way so I can learn more and more.

Elephants

This weekend Lee, Anna and I got an opportunity to go to Ghana’s National Park. It is called Mole; sounds like Molay (Amy it is like when you are cutting my hair and sing molay, molay, molay…)

Mole was build to protect and preserve Ghana’s land and animals. It is about 3 hours east of Wa and the roads on the way to Mole none of the roads are paved. It was a bumpy ride but worth it. We had to leave at 4:30 in the morning to catch our bus so we arrived in Mole around 10am.

After we dropped our things off at the motel we walked to the over look and right there before our eyes was a family of elephants cooling down in the river. I saw elephants! It was so cool, oh but wait it gets better.

We were on our way to sign up for a walking safari (you have to have a guide with a gun that goes with you) and right on the road to the safari office are 5 elephants just standing there eating the trees. Right outside our motel room! COOL!

We walked to the office and found baboons digging through the garbage cans. They are sneaky little creatures. There were monkeys and warthogs walking all over the motel area. These warthogs do not look anything like the one in the Lion King (they are much uglier) but the babies were very cute. (so right now as I am typing this I can hear the family of pigs snorting right outside my window; they must know I am talking about one of their relatives :))

The safari walk was really cool. Our guide was really nice and told use a lot of facts about the park and the animals that live there. There are these deer looking animals that bark like dogs; we saw crocodiles sun bathing and then mischievously lurking in the water; there were birds I had never seen before, monkeys playing all around, a few more elephants and a lot of very large food prints. I liked the food prints…

It was a really fun trip. Fun facts our guide told us: elephants poop about 15 times a day and their average life span is 70 years old.
I sent pictures of elephants to my mom so hopefully she will be able to edit this post so you all can see the elephants; stay tuned...