January 20, 2005
  It's hard to believe we've only been in Ghana over 10 days now. So much to assimilate.
  We spent the first two days in Accra (the capital), where Enoch and Amandu took us around to various places.first the Lutheran Headquarters where we met with Rev. Dr. Paul K. Fynn. Just by meeting with him, I know that he holds the Deaf Ministry close to his heart. Afterwards, we went to the Cultural Market, and got bombarded with sellers fighting to sell their wares.
  We finished off at a restaurant, and ate some delicious giant prawns.
  Saturday morning (Jan. 14th), we left around 9 a.m., to head down to Cape Coast, where both Linda and I would be dropped off. The drive down was interesting.. various backgrounds. At first, it was impossibly dry, then we came across land with red dirt.Pastor Reinke said he thought it might be possible that Adam was made in Africa, because his name makes a reference to red dirt. The dirt was a deep terra cotta red, and there was red dust across everything that was green.
  Soon, we drove by acres of land that was spotted by "walls" and unfinished buildings. We learned that in Ghana, if the Chief gives you a piece of land, then you must build a wall to claim that piece of land. If one doesn't, then someone else can claim that piece of land as their own. The wall comes up before the house. The walls came in various sizes.some enclosed fairly large amounts of land.others enclosed such tiny lots of land the size of a one-car garage. There were many unfinished buildings. that is because it costs money to either make or buy your own blocks of cement. It takes years to finish a building in Ghana.
  After about a 4-hour drive, we arrived Cape Coast. It is a former slave export city. We drove by several slave castles on top of hills.it would be interesting to learn more.
  We arrived the school, Cape Coast Deaf, and learned the head master was not there. After Amandu talked with other people on the grounds, we went to the city, and bought towels, sheets and a tea kettle. The experience of going thru downtown Cape Coast was quite an experience. Enoch is an expert (in EVERY sense of the word) at driving, with barely room in between cars to pass. We ate at a restaurant, trying several dishes. The plantains are actually not bad.and we also tried French friend yams. Yum! They also had beans, that both Linda and I took a bite of. When Pastor Reinke started to help himself to some of those beans, Amandu told Pastor not to eat those beans because they were spoiled. Linda and I spent part of the evening worrying that we would get sick from those beans. I guess God decided to protect us from those beans!
  We drove back to the deaf school, and the kids eagerly helped us carry our things to the headmaster's house. And there, Linda and I settled down, and made ourselves at home. The heat is oppressively hot.we have the ceiling fan going constantly. The night is still warm.the breeze offers some relief. I definitely like Pacific Northwest weather better!
  A little bit about the food. We were served a large plate full of rice, and fishstew (with the head!). I ate mostly the rice. I had a hard time tolerating the fish. It's very spicy. I am such a wimp! Thank goodness for my Quakers oatmeal.I ate that for breakfast. Linda is much better at this than I am.
  A funny story: Some of you know that I was pretty worried about the bathroom situation. When the man showed us around the house, I was behind Linda and the man. Linda was not interpreting for me at the time.and I didn't think there was a need to, so I didn't ask. But, he showed us a tiny room with a sink and a small drain with a bunch of small holes in them. I thought that was the bathroom, and I just worried and worried all day long how I was going to "get everything" inside those small holes when I finally caved in going to the bathroom that night. My stomach was hurting more and more as the evening went by, and Linda said well, maybe you have to go to the bathroom, and I said oh Linda, I don't know if I can get everything inside those small drain holes. Linda said "oh my gosh, did you think that was the bathroom? That was the shower room we were looking at! Did you know there is a toilet in the other room?" I don't think I'd ever been so happy to see a toilet in my life!
  There are three dogs on the grounds.one dog came up to us today.and seemed to actually enjoy human company. Shortly, we found out this dog, Madison, belongs to the Peace Corps volunteer named Kate. Kate is a volunteer at Cape Town Deaf School, teaching art classes. She also goes down to the village and teaches the very young children some English and sign language. Her love for children is evident by the way she treats them. Very gentle, and non judgmental.
 

Sunday Morning (Jan. 15th)
  Today was our first efforts teaching bible stories. The hearing pastor (a student from the Episcopalian college nearby) was not available, so the man asked us to take over. I taught about Jesus' baptism. I didn't use props. I don't know if the kids understood very much of what I said. Afterwards, the 4 boys lead a rousing song, rocking back and forth to keep rhythm. The song was called "Are You Ready for the Lord?".very gospel. All the kids clearly enjoyed partaking the song. I asked Linda if she heard anything, and it turns out all was silent.I would have never known! Afterwards we had prayer time, where each child could come up and offer a prayer. Some of those prayers were quite deep, and very mature for their age. They worry about war, illness and general living problems just like the rest of us. They also had offering, and it was unbelievable how many kids came up to give offering.they don't have much money, and the kids who came today were dorm kids.I certainly didn't expect
 them to do the offering.but they did it with great enthusiasm.
  We finished shortly before 9 a.m. (when all of you were still asleep!), and Linda and I spent the rest of the day talking, walking around. We are waiting to meet with the Head Master before setting up plans.
  I am already being eaten up by bugs.thank goodness for Benydryl.
  
  Monday (January 16th)
  I have no sense of time. Life here is rather primitive.but it's not awful. Yesterday, we saw a girl walking to the back of the house with one of those old fashioned irons, where you heat up stones, open the latch, and put the stones in to heat up the iron. Imagine that? Inside our house was an electrical iron.
  The kids take "showers with buckets" and we have a shower inside our house.
  This morning, we met with the Head Mistress, and there were a total of 9 people in her small office. It was kind of scary.rather somber, and very serious. Robert the past Head Master who is staying at the same house we are, (until he transfers in July) was apologizing for making the decision to "accept" us to the school without her permission, but he felt it might be good for the children to hear our stories, and he hoped that she might agree with his decision. It was all spoken and handled with great respect. The Head Mistress, Barbara, did not seem happy to see us there.but we offered gifts of books for her library, two footballs (soccer balls), and some construction paper, crayons, and some money for our stay. She seemed satisfied with this, and turned us over to their "evangeletical committee" and said "They will decide). We then walked to another building, where we explained our lesson plans with 4 people. I explained I wanted to talk about how God uses Ordinary People for His
 Glory, and that I was going to tell the story about Moses' birth, David and Goliath and Esther. David, one of the committee members said he accepted my plan, but would like for me to add about King David's immorality to my story.
  We then agreed to do this for two hours a day, from 12 to 2.. splitting the groups to young vs. older kids. Then David gave us a tour of the grounds.ending up with meeting all the teachers. I met a deaf teacher assistant named Augustina.she hopes to be a professional teacher someday. We met another teacher, Aaron, who has a deaf brother in living in St. Cloud, Minnesota.
  The world is not at all that big is it?
  At noon, Linda and I got ready to set up.the seats were quickly filled up. I started with the younger set, and Linda the older set. While I was telling the story, Augustina offered to help me translate.the kids understood the story of Moses better with her help. But the props I used were very popular.and all the kids wanted to see better. The older kid kept telling the younger ones to sit down.but curiosity got the best of the younger set. I talked with them for a little bit less than one hour. Linda and I switched, and it took me only 25 minutes to go thru the lesson three times with the older set. Tomorrow, I think we will do things differently, and Linda and I will work together, and do the younger set for 45 minutes, and then a half an hour later, do the older set for 45 minutes. We will see what happens.
  Afterwards, Linda and I went back to the house, and sat outside, under the tree to cool off. All the girls came up, and I took pictures of all of them. They had so much fun seeing their pictures on the digital camera! Some little kids came up and wanted to look at the props I used for Moses' story. They retold that story to Linda and I.I was impressed they remembered.
  
  Tuesday (Jan. 17)
  This morning, plans were changed, so that we will be leaving on Thursday morning instead of Friday morning. We asked permission from the evangeletical committee for these time changes.and they accepted.
  I worked on my David and Goliath story last night, and all this morning.making/ gathering props.
  We also asked the committee to change the time to 45 minutes for each group instead of the one hour. Linda and I also worked together as a team instead of being separate.and I think it worked out better. Linda was able to use my props to explain the applications.
  The kids loved the David and Goliath story. One teacher came up to me and said he wished we could stay and tell some more stories. Once again, Augustina helped me out. She did a great job "translating" my words to the deaf kids. Felix translated for Linda. I met another deaf teacher, her name is Comfort.
  I think many of the kids knew the story.but, having it told in a visual way made the story come to life for them. You could see it in their eyes. I had someone measure out 10 feet of paper for me, and we could see that Goliath was over 9 feet tall. Then I picked a boy from the group (his name is Joseph) and said maybe David was the same height. and I had him stand next to that 10-foot long paper taped on the wall. The children could see a difference in size. Then I turned to my story, using clothes pins.and the volley balls we would give to them as gifts.I covered with Linda's new brown skirt wrap she picked up from the market. I had David and Goliath.and then using clothespins as soldiers. When I finished my story, I asked them who the props were.and where did they belong, and what did they say. Then I had a kid come up and re-tell the story for me. They were fantastic!
  Kate invited us to eat an American dinner with her this evening. She made spaghetti with tomatoes. The lights were out in her house, so she had candles.it was so elegant. We met two other Peace Corps volunteer friends, also working in other regions in Ghana. There were at her house, because earlier in the day, they (along with the other Peace Corps volunteers) were in Accra visiting with Laura Bush who was in town.
  When we got back to our house, Linda heard drums down in the all -purpose house. We decided to see what was going on. They were practicing the dance, and invited us to come and watch. It was fabulous! Augustina explained the names of the dances, and that they were from different regions of Ghana.
  P.S. There was no time to add anything about King David's immorality to the lesson plans
 

Wednesday (Jan. 18th)
  I had a hard time coming up with a lesson plan for Esther, so I changed it to Noah. Both Linda and I worked all morning on the props, and by noon, we did our story. Brother David came in earlier and asked us if we could do all of this in one hour instead of two, because they wanted to do a dance performance for us from 1 to 2. We said we accepted his plans, and agreed to combine all the kids together. David also invited us to his place for lunch.
  After we finished our lesson plan on Noah, by now, the kids knew our "style" and eagerly answered our questions. At the end of each lesson, I always had a child come up and "re- tell" the story.and this boy, Benjamin, did a great job. These kids have great memories, because all three boys who retold the story, Joseph, Tani and Benjamin, didn't miss many details.
  After our lesson, they set up for the dance performance. They set up two chairs next to the drums, and WOW! I could HEAR those drums! Hooper, the quiet instructor by day, and a passionate dancer/drummer by night was leaping all over the place, setting the mood for the audience. The deaf kids were graceful, and kept to the beat perfectly. After they did the 2nd dance, the kids pulled both Linda and I to the floor, and taught us some dance moves.so we got to dance with the best of them! How humbling can that be?
  Afterwards, we went with Brother David to his home.found out he lives in a place called Holy Cross.a Catholic home for men serving the community. It was peaceful, and lovely. All those exotic trees and plants were everywhere. David thanked us for coming to teach the children, and hoped we would come back again in the future.
 

Thursday (Jan. 19th)
  An interesting day! In the morning, the Head Mistress finally comes out to meet us, and thanks us for the gifts. She said that we were friends of the school, and the doors were open to us in the future, should we decide to come back and visit. It was all very formal. The plans to get our tickets did not work out.and Linda was trying to figure things out with Amandu, Enoch and Pastor Reinke.but like the quote says: "Too many cooks spoil the soup." We ended up not going to Kumasi that day. The people at the school said we were more than welcomed to stay however long we needed. Kate invited us to the village where she teaches English to the tiny ones. We walked to the taxi out on the streets.it was hot. Once again, I was thankful for the Pacific Northwest weather.I'll take rain over heat/humidity any day!
  At the village, I met a girl from UK who was part of a group similar to Peace Corps. She was helping them build buildings, and studying their culture. When she found out I was deaf, she started signing to me the UK way (fingers on palms).her name was Lucy, and her brother was deaf. She was a very happy person, and she said she loved staying at the village, and that she loved Ghana.
  Linda and I decided to take Kate out to eat, so we ate dinner that evening at the Slave Castle Restaurant, right next to the ocean. It was beautiful, and quite a sight. It was nice to see a part of Cape Coast before we left.
 

Friday (Jan. 20th)
  Linda was on the phone constantly, all morning, til we got on the bus at noon. Amandu's friend, John stayed with us until we left. He was a very nice man. The problem with the bus was getting two reserved tickets. Apparently they don't do reserved tickets.so if you wanted to buy two guaranteed tickets, you had to travel one hour away from the city to buy those tickets. Amandu was able to arrange, thru friends, to go to that station and buy the tickets for us, and the bus driver who was on the 9 o'clock bus, brought the tickets to us. Very un-American way of planning your travels! We got on the bus, and there were people sitting on the steps of the bus. I think there were 6 extra people on the bus.no seats for them.they just sat wherever they could. We arrived Kumasi after 4, and Amandu quickly got us in a taxi, where we drove off to the Lutheran building, where the rest of the group was staying.
  The rest of the night was spent with us three ladies feeling emotional, and sniffling and fighting back tears. We are all homesick for our families.and we were so happy to be in contact with them. Both Linda and Karen were generous assisting my calls to both my parents and my family in Vancouver.
  Today is Saturday.and I am reflecting on how overwhelming this whole trip has been. I am hoping that with a weeks experience behind me, I can be a better missionary to the next school, and do a better job of applying the gospel to the stories about Moses, David and Noah. I am thankful that God is a generous God, and that he allows for our mistakes for the purpose of learning from them. As we go on in our next week, please pray for our efforts teaching the next school. I was watching Karen Hale teaching the group about God's forgiveness, and was touched by her simplicity and her gentleness and patience. Last night we drove by a sign that said, "Jesus is coming soon.are you ready? Read Amos 4:12".Later I pulled out the bible, and looked it up, and gasped at the bible verse.something to the effect of "God will come back and punish you for your sins".and thought what a misrepresentation of Jesus' name! I am thankful I am a Lutheran, and that while my understanding of the gospel is not
 perfect, God can still use me.
  Til next time.Jean