God, My Heart, and Clothes by C.J. Mahaney

An excellent article on the topic of modesty, written by C.J. Mahaney, taken from his book Worldliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World.  It's a bit long, but SO worth the read!  Enjoy, and let me know what you think.  :)

Look Up

I found this video to be a much-needed reminder, as I am so often guilty of living this way.  Technology is a gift that can be used for the glory and honor of God, but it can also be one of the greatest distractions from living a life consumed with love for Him and those He's placed in our lives.  It's hard to say it better than this!

Finally...

The Ghana Journals

Part 14//Finally...

Good news, we are alive!  Life has been pretty full since we got home from Ghana and I haven't had time to update the blog.  But here, finally, are more pictures from our time in Ghana.  I can't take credit for any of them, though.  Miah is quite a gifted photographer, so I didn't even bring my own camera along on the trip.  Thanks for letting me use your pictures, Miah!

Heading for Home!

The Ghana Journals

Part 13//Heading for Home!

In just a few hours we’ll be heading to the airport to start our journey home.  Crazy!  It’s hard to believe our time in Ghana is over.  At the beginning of our time here, six weeks sounded like forever, but now that it’s over, it feels like such a short time.  We have been so blessed by the friends we’ve met and the experiences we’ve had.  It’s been a great time of learning, growing, and enjoying some good sister time.  We are so thankful for the weeks we spent here together!  It’s going to be so hard to say goodbye to our friends in Ghana, but we are looking forward to seeing everyone back home!  We are blessed!

Thank you, thank you, thank you for praying for us and supporting us!  We would greatly appreciate prayer as we travel--that we would make our connecting flights without any hassle, that we would make it home safe and sound, and that as we travel His light and love would shine through us.

With much love,

~Leah + Miah

Pictures!!

The Ghana Journals

Part 12//Pictures!!

Most of the kiddos at Beacon House

Some of the girls

The older boys

A favorite afternoon activity: coloring

Miah with Kingsford

Fruit seller near our apartment

On the road

The view from our apartment

A beach we went to visit. 

More to come!!

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.  :)

Eight more hours :)

The Ghana Journals

Part 9//Eight more hours

In just under eight hours Miah and I will be on our way to the airport... which means that I really need to head to bed. We will try to keep you all updated as much as possible. Thank you for the overwhelming love and support you have given. We are SO blessed and SO thankful for His goodness and His outpouring of love through you. :)

12 days!!

The Ghana Journals

Part 8//12 days!! 

 

photo credit: Miah Coen

12 days!  Where has the time gone?  Thank you to all of you who have been praying for us.  It is an incredible blessing to have so much love and support.  :)

I am not sure what internet availability will look like while we're in Ghana, but here are a few ways you can be involved in our adventure while we're in Ghana and before we leave:

1. Check this blog for updates.  We will be posting when we can and sharing some of Miah's pictures.

2. Contact us.  We'd love to hear from you.  :)  The best email address to reach us at is: allhisgirl@yahoo.com

3. Donate.  We will be taking some donations over for Beacon House, the ministry we'll be volunteering with, and for my Compassion sponsor child's project center.  If you would like to send something over with us, let me know!  Beacon House is in need of dictionaries (english, new or used), for some of their older children, and both Beacon House and the Compassion project center can use school supplies, toys, and personal toiletry items--construction paper, glue, safety scissors, rulers, crayons, stickers, frisbees, jump ropes, toothbrushes, toothpaste, hand sanitizer...  

4. And last but not least, pray.  I cannot tell you how much your prayers mean to us, and the difference that can be felt because of your prayers.  Pray that nothing would hinder us from clearly seeing and hearing the Lord as we follow Him, that we would be ready for what He has, and that His light would shine brightly through our lives, for His glory.

Thanks!

Leah + Miah

::The joy of new life::

My beautiful sister and her wonderful husband are expecting again.  I am so excited, and so thankful for the miracle of new life.  Isn't it amazing to see the creative, almighty hand of God at work as He knits together each precious little life?  If you want to see Hannah and Josh's super cute baby announcement (plus a bunch of adorable pictures of my niece, Marian) you can hop over to Hannah's blog: throughthelensofgrace.blogspot.com.  Enjoy!  :)

So Thankful!

The Ghana Journals

Part 7//So Thankful!

Last time I updated you all, our visa applications were on their way to be processed by the Embassy of Ghana, and I asked you to pray along with us that our visas would be processed efficiently, approved, and returned quickly.  It is with great joy that I'd like to tell you that God answered those prayers even beyond what we asked for.  We got our passports with approved and ready-to-go visas on Monday morning!  That means it was only ten days total between when we shipped our applications to when we received our visas, and that was over two weekends. (This was almost twice as fast as I expected, even if all went perfectly.)  What a great and faithful God we serve!!  Thank you so much for praying in faith with us.  To God be the glory!

So we're officially, really, truly going to Ghana in just under five weeks.  It still feels a bit surreal, but we're very excited!!  Soon I will be posting an update including a few ways you can share in this adventure with us.  For now, you can read any of The Ghana Journals that you've missed by clicking on the tag at the bottom of this post or on the sidebar of the blog, listen to some Chelsea Moon or Shane & Shane music, drink some hot tea, and bask in the incredible faithfulness of our God.  :)

Until next time,

~Leah

P.S. All the posts on this blog recently have been about my upcoming trip to Ghana, but in the next few days I'm going to be sharing a post about some other exciting news.  You're not going to want to miss it.  :)

Paperwork, Prayer and Praise

The Ghana Journals 

Part 6//Paperwork, Prayer and Praise

Good news!  We have our visa applications complete and they are on their way to be processed by the Embassy of Ghana.  If all goes well, we should be approved and finished with the paperwork side of preparing for our trip in about three weeks.  This is one of the last big things we need to have done, which is great since we are leaving in 46 days.  (We are definitely feeling excited!!)

We would greatly appreciate prayer as our visa applications are processed.  Some who have applied to The Embassy of Ghana have had paperwork and passports misplaced or lost, or have been denied visas for various reasons.  Ultimately we know that it's God's hands, not the hands of the Ghanaian officials, that hold our visas (which is such a sweet reality!), but we would love for you to pray together with us that our visa applications would be processed efficiently, that nothing would be lost or misplaced, and that we would be approved right away.

As a praise report, it looks like we have a date set to meet Rachael, my Compassion sponsor child.  :)  I am so seriously excited to meet this girl!!

And as a special bonus, I wanted to share with you a few of Miah's pictures.  Isn't it amazing that we are called to know, love, serve, and be loved by and satisfied in the God who paints these brilliant sunsets each night and handcrafts every detail of every flower?  He is so good!  (And aren't you excited to see the pictures Miah is going to come home from Africa with??  Me too!)

 

Photo credit: Miah Coen, Given Photography

Photo credit: Miah Coen, Given Photography

Photo credit: Miah Coen, Given Photography

 Thanks!  It is such a gift to be able to take this trip together to Ghana, and we are excitedly expectant to see what the Lord has in store.  He is so good and so faithful!!  We have already seen His hand at work in so many great and beautiful ways, and we know that He will continue to reveal Himself to us as we follow where He leads.

Rejoicing together in His abundance,

~Leah + Miah~