Oh Happy Day!

Me with Rachael

The Ghana Journals

Part 11/Oh Happy Day!

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!  (It’s a few days early, but we can still celebrate, right?)  :)  We have so much to be thankful for, do we not?  Family, friends, love, laughter, material blessings, fellowship, and most of all Jesus and the life we have in Him! 

One thing I am SO thankful for is the opportunity Miah and I had this past Wednesday to meet Rachael, my sponsor child through Compassion International, and some of the Compassion staff here in Accra.  It was an incredible experience!  I’m so thankful that I was able to meet Rachael and some of her family, after corresponding for the past year and a half.  We were also very blessed by the integrity, joy, and Christ-centeredness of the Compassion staff, and by seeing the evidence of God’s working through the ministry of Compassion.  Though our visit was fairly short, it was a very sweet time, and a day we will always remember.  I’m excited to continue corresponding with Rachael, and to see what God does in and through her in the coming years.  Thank you so much for praying for our visit, and for supporting us and making this visit possible!  

Me and Miah with Rachael, her mom, and two of her sisters

Miah and I have also been enjoying our time at Beacon House, and we’re looking forward to our last few weeks with the kids.  This past weekend, we went to church with the kids and some of the mamas from Beacon House, which was a fun experience.  We were the only white people there, except one other lady.  The worship was exuberant, and let’s just say I can’t dance like an African (or really at all, for that matter).  It was fun though, and we were blessed by the teaching, which was in English and the local dialect.  We don’t have too much planned for the coming week, but I’m sure there will be lots to laugh about and give thanks for along the way.

Me and Miah with the project center staff

I hope and pray you all have a blessed week, full of the joy of His presence and lots of good fellowship, food, and pumpkin pie!

In His love,

~Leah

Hello from Africa!

The Ghana Journals

Part 10//Hello from Africa

Thank you to all who have been praying for me and Miah during our trip.  It’s hard to believe that we’ve already been here almost two weeks!  Travel went very well and we made it here without any serious complications or delays.  Our first few days here felt quite overwhelming, but we felt much better once the effects of jet lag started to wear off.

During the week we spend most of our time at Beacon House.  There are about twenty kids and teens at Beacon House, ranging in age from about 17 to newborn.  About half of the kids attend local schools, and the other half are schooled at Beacon House.  I know the hope is to be able to send more of the kids to the local schools, but school fees are fairly high, and more sponsors are needed for that to be possible.  Miah and I have both been helping teach, and we’ll be taking over the preschool class in another week when the current teacher heads back to the US.

Weekends are full of free time, which we’ve been using to catch up on laundry (which has to be washed by hand), emails and picture editing, and opportunities to explore.  We were going to get together with a friend of mine who has been in Accra for the past week on a work trip with Compassion International, but Miah was sick in bed all day Sunday.  Thankfully, she’s feeling much better today!

We are living in an apartment a few miles from Beacon House, and we are very thankful to have our own little space to unwind at the end of each day.  A bunch of people from Miah’s circle of friends wrote her notes before she left.   She’s been opening one each evening, which has been a great blessing!

We do not have internet at the apartment.  Sometimes we can connect to the internet at Beacon House, but it’s not very reliable.   The good news is that there is an (air-conditioned!) internet café that is only a ten to fifteen minute walk from Beacon House where we can connect to the internet for about a dollar an hour.  We would love to stay connected with all of you back home, though it may take us a few days to be able to respond to any emails we receive.

Our visit with Rachael, my sponsor child, is coming up quickly.  We get to spend most of the day with her on November 20^th, visiting her school and home, going out to lunch, and getting to know her and her family better.  We are very excited to be able to meet Rachael in person!

We would love continued prayer for things like health, protection and wisdom, and we would especially love for you to pray that this time would be used by God for His glory.  It is our desire that our relationships with Him would be deepened and strengthened, that He would be seen and made known in and through us, that we would display His love and the joy of knowing Him, and that we would follow Him with child-like faith and adoration.

I hope and pray that you all have a blessed rest of your week, full of the grace and life of Christ.

~Leah

P.S. A post with pictures will be coming soon.  :)