In March I went to Ghana along with my brother-in-law, Fred Allen, and Ken Perkins, to be guest teachers at the YWAM base in Tema. It was, for me, an incredibly stretching experience. I have wanted to write a recap of the trip, but so far I haven’t been able to find an appropriate way of wrapping it up in a small enough package.
I will say a couple of things about the trip: One, it was exhausting, in a good way. Fred had asked them to keep us busy, and they had no problem doing that. We hit the ground running, as it were, getting into Tema on Saturday evening (next time I go to a foreign country I’ll try to arrive in daylight, so at least I can see where I am), then speaking Sunday morning at a local church and that evening at the YWAM evening service.
We were scheduled to teach the first week at their normal DTS school (3 sessions per day), the School of Worship (2-3 sessions per day) and a moning seminar. Fred took the majority of the seminar, and Ken and I split most of the other 2 schools. Then, for 4 evenings we held “revival” meetings at a mission church planted in the middle of a shanty town; that story in itself would take a while to tell.
Saturday, we held a worship conference (it was supposed to end around noon, but as I recall it went well into the afternoon). Sunday we had a “day off” as it were, as we traveled to the central coast region and spent some time visiting the oldest slaving castle on the Gold Coast (another story in itself) and discovered our hotel was walking distance from an un-touristed, palm-lined beach. Monday and Tuesday we spoke at a Leadership Conference attended by several key church planters in that region; these days ended in the early afternoon, so Monday afternoon we had a bit more time to relax by the Atlantic. Wednesday Ken and I had a very quick shopping trip to a craft market in Accra, then we were off to the airport for the 30+ hour trip home.
So, it was exhausting.
As this is probably long enough for one blog entry, I’ll continue with pt 2 another day.
hello there…would like to talk more about the Ghana YWAM trip…please email me.
likely we shall be going in March 2006…