Thanksgiving in the Heart

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year, but Thanksgiving for us here on the missionfield has not always been wonderful. Before I came to Ghana, I considered myself a pretty grateful person. I didn't complain (at least not too much), and I thought I was thankful on a regular basis (at least as much as the next person!). When I got to the field, however, my true attitudes began to shine through.
We moved to Ghana the end of August, 2003. The missionary we were going to stay with for a year had to leave because of health problems, and we were the only white missionaries we knew. We didn't know how to go about getting a turkey; we were living with the national pastor that we had come to work with; we were living out of ten boxes - our only possessions in the world; I was 8 1/2 months pregnant; we didn't have a table to eat at; the only appliance I had for cooking was one electric burner; we had a phone connection that never worked, and no internet. Now, I don't write those things to gain pity. I write them so that others can see what our situation was like - exactly how God wanted it. It certainly wasn't how I wanted it to be, but the Lord wanted me to learn what real gratitude was.
At first, all I wanted to do was cry and feel sorry for myself. Poor me - I've given my life to come to tell the Africans the gospel and this is how God rewards me. It was a pathetic attitude, I know, but that is what was in my heart. I realized that I had never really been a thankful person at all...just a comfortable one! It was quite easy to think I was thankful when I was in the States, surrounded by friends and family and all that was familiar and comfortable. It was another thing entirely to be thankful when I was all alone and everything was different than what I expected. And that is when the Lord showed me what true thankfulness was and is.
Real thanksgiving is an attitude of the heart...realizing that God's grace and mercy are the only things that save me from an eternity in Hell. Realizing that every single thing God gives me is a blessing, not a right. Realizing that true contentment is often realized when we have little, not much. And realizing that even when I'm all alone and surrounded with very few things, God is still in control and still showering me with His love.
That first Thanksgiving we spent here is now one of my fondest memories. Because we had so little, we really worked to make it fun. We cut out handprint turkeys, made Indian headbands with paper feathers, splurged to buy Frosted Flakes for breakfast, had a beef roast to eat, splurged again to have ice cream and cookies for dessert, and most importantly of all, really thought about all the things we had to be thankful for.
Since that time, our situation has greatly improved. We live in a beautiful flat (apartment); we have two wonderful little girls; we have furniture and a stove; we had a delicious turkey to eat for Thanksgiving and were surrounded by friends for the holiday this year, but most importantly of all, we once again took time to think about all we have to be truly thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy your turkey and football, but most of all, enjoy the blessings of friends and family!

Our Helpers

When we began preparing to start this new church, we were concerned about helpers. One thing that is very dangerous here is using people to help with a new church that have not been proven (goes along with Paul's admonition to "lay hands on no man suddenly"). Because of language misunderstandings, those who are not deeply grounded in what we believe can cause a lot of confusion in a new church. Well, it was amazing to see how God answered our prayers for help! He sent us Gifty, Evans, and Kofi. All three of them were saved in Baptist churches in Accra when they were younger. They are all students at the university here in Kumasi, and we met them through our campus Bible study we were part of last term. At different times, they all volunteered to come help with the new church plant. Gifty is my soulwinning partner and helps with translating for the children. This is Gifty at the youth activity - there was lots of dust from the broom hockey game!

Evans helps John with translating on Thursday nights and Sunday mornings.

Kofi is the second from the right in this picture. He helps on Sunday mornings and is learning to translate on Sunday nights. Please pray for him as he believes the Lord may be calling him to preach.

What a blessing these young people have been, not only for us, but also for this new church!

Always Coca-Cola

When I was in junior high, I was informed that I needed to start collecting something. Up to that point, I hadn't known that was an absolute necessity!
I was on vacation with my "adopted" family, the Swains, and we were at Smoky Mt. Knife Works outside of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. My best friend Joanna had decided to collect lambs, I think, and Mr Swain was going to buy her one for a souvenir. He asked me what I collected, and I said......nothing. He told me that everyone had to collect something, so I had better start thinking! I looked around, and the first thing I saw was the Arctic display. The polar bears looked cute, so I picked polar bears! Not long after that, Coca-Cola started advertising with several polar bear commercials. Thus, my love of all things Coca-Cola was born, too! Since that time, my collection has shifted from more polar bears to more Coke things, but I really like the two together best!
When we started preparing to move to Ghana, I wasn't sure what to do about my Coke collection. I wasn't sure how a collection of anything would go over in a third world country, and I was also afraid that most of my collection would be broken en route. So, I made a very hard decision...not to bring it with me. Let me tell you, I cried over that one! Afer deciding not to bring it, though, I wasn't sure what to do with it! I couldn't bring myself to sell it. Well, God provided a wonderful alternative. One of the assistant pastors at our church was just getting ready to decorate his office. He's from Atlanta so had decided to do a Coke theme. He found out about my dilemma and offered to "rent" my collection for as long as I would allow. That way it could be used and kept safe until I decided what to do.
Now, fast forward to me here in Ghana. Decorating my home here in Ghana is something I have been doing very slowly. Let's just say our home has been a definite work in progress. We felt it was very important not only to have a home we felt comfortable in, but also a home that Ghanaians felt comfortable in. Since we are here to reach them, they ought to feel comfortable being around us! That said, we worked from the outside in - we started with the common room (front room or living room) and have been slowly adding to each room as we had money and found things we liked. The one exception to this was my kitchen. To put it bluntly, it was ugly. Gray and white. Ugly blue and white boat curtains. Nothing impressive to look at. About a year ago, I finally got tired of it and went looking for something, anything to improve it. I remembered that I had saved some old calendars and thought maybe the pictures from one of them would be okay. To my surprise, I had an old Coke calendar I had forgotten about! I cut up the calendar and went to see how the pictures would look in the kitchen, and.....they matched! I taped them up all over the kitchen, and it instantly looked a million times better! Then, about six months ago, John came home with a clock he had found in town - it was Coke!
He had decided I needed my Coke kitchen back!
Fast forward again to a few weeks ago. We were driving past the Coke plant here in Kumasi, and we saw a woman selling African Batik (a hand-printed material), but with Coca-Cola printed all over it! John had to check that out! It was cheap.....and I now have cool African Coca-Cola curtains hanging in my kitchen. To top it all off, my sweet husband went over to the Coke plant after visitation the other day and got the advertising director to give him a whole bunch of Coke stuff....for free!
In the end, I'm so glad I didn't push to get what I wanted. I now have all these cool Coke things that are not only African in origin, but cost us hardly a pesewa (Ghanaian penny)! And that, my friends, is what is so amazing about the blessings God gives. They are always better than we could ask or think!

A Project for Missionary Wives

Hey, all you missionary wives out there....I've got a great project for you! A fellow missionary wife has been trying to get testimonials from missionary wives about dealing with culture shock. She feels like culture shock is something most veteran missionaries don't talk about with young missionaries, and I couldn't agree with her more! She has been posting these on her blog every Monday (www.StoversinPoland.blogspot.com), and they have been such a blessing to me!
I just sent her my testimony today. I thought I'd include it here ~ I know my fellow missionaries will understand, and maybe it will help some of you who are not missionaries to know how to better pray for the ladies that God has called to countries around the world.
If you're interested in helping with the project, I'm sure that Ginger would love to hear from you! (If you leave a comment and your email address for her on her blog, she can tell you more about the project and how to get it to her).

My Dealings With Culture Shock
I was quite sure when I moved to the mission field that I would be the first missionary never to suffer from culture shock. I had heard it talked about, and I even had one missionary friend try to give me some advice about it, but I was sure I would never have problems like "everyone else." Boy, was I in for a surprise! When we came to Ghana we were supposed to work and live with an older missionary and his wife near the capital for a year; we were not supposed to learn the language, because the national language was English; we were supposed to go live in the Western Region after the first year. Within the first 12 hours, all the plans had changed - the missionary was only going to stay for a short while because of health problems; we learned that even though the national language was English, hardly anyone could really speak it; a problem arose with our contact in the Western Region. Within the first 24 hours, we moved into a "local" apartment in a very poor part of Kumasi, in the Ashanti Region. Needless to say, culture shock hit hard and fast. I was also six months pregnant (that's another story in itself :) ), and my hormones were going wild. I couldn't understand what was wrong with me. Some
moments all I could feel was anger. Sometimes, I was overcome with fear. And sadly enough, I even struggled with hatred. Nothing made any sense. What was up was down; what was black was white. I had come to Ghana to love these people and lead them to know Christ, but most days it was all I could do to drag myself out of bed. I began counting down the days until I could go home! In fact, I was so excited
each morning when I got to tear off another day on my calendar! I think I probably had the worst case of culture shock ever! The wonderful thing about this hard story is that in the midst of one of the darkest times in my life, Jesus was right there with me. There were many days that I took my eyes off Him, but He never took His eyes off me.
One of the first lessons He taught me in this time was that all I needed to figure out was what He wanted me to do each day, and then do them. Psalm 61 was a wonderful blessing, especially verse 8, "So will I sing praise unto thy name for ever, that I may daily perform my vows." The second lesson the Lord taught me was
actually from a quote on my calendar (the one I couldn't wait to see disappear!). It said, "Whatever you can do,...Begin it. ~ Goethe. It seems silly that the Lord would use that, but it really caught my attention. I'd lost sight of the fact that God had brought John and I to Ghana, and He had a reason for everything I was facing. He didn't want me to give up; He wanted me to get up! He wanted me turn to Him in my weakness and seek His strength, not my own. He wanted me to do what I could, not spend all my time and energy worrying about what I couldn't do. I would love to say that after the initial six months everything was perfect, but that wouldn't be the truth. Culture shock often has more than one level. After about two years in Ghana, I started really struggling again with fear. I was scared to death to go anywhere without John, and most days I didn't even want to leave my house at all. This was exceptionally hard for me (and John), because I've never been a clingy person. This is when God taught me another important lesson - that fear is one of Satan's favorite tools! I had to cling to II Timothy 1:7, "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." What freedom that verse brought me! For a time I had to pray that verse almost non-stop, but the wonderful thing is that God proved that verse to me. As I relied on Him to take away that fear, He filled me with the power, the love, and the sound mind I so desparately needed! What a mighty God we serve!
And now, I've learned another reason that God gives culture shock. He gives it to us so that some day we can help others! II Corinthians 1 :4-5 says, "Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ."

On Being a Mom

Well, it has been a while since I've actually written something in a post. The last few have been things that John wrote. I hope you've enjoyed them!
Lately my life has been very full with being a mom. Of course, I've got lots of other responsibilites, but that one - mommyhood - seems to be demanding all of my time right now!
Carey and and Ella are such fun! They are also lots of work! Of course, those of you who are moms already know that!
We've been busy at school - most days both student and teacher enjoy it! Ella comes, too - she thinks she's all grown up - she tries to say all the letter sounds and numbers right along with Carey. When Carey gets something correct, Ella cheers and claps!

We had our family's annual Harvest Party a few weeks ago. It is a fun night of dress-up, games, and food. (And luckily for me, my children don't know that most kids get gobs of candy on that night so they don't know they're missing anything!)

We had such fun making decorations, finding costumes, and baking for it. I was especially excited this year, because I had a surprise for the family. A few months ago, I found something that looked like caramels at the store. They were imported from Brazil, and the writing was all in Spanish, so I couldn't be sure. But, they really looked like caramels to me! I put them in the freezer to save for our party. I was really looking forward to the prospect of having caramel apples! John heated up the caramels while the girls and I decorated cupcakes, but I forgot to tell him to thin them with milk. Everything was great until we tried to pull the dried apples off the tray.........they wouldn't come! We ended up having to pry them off with a knife, and then Ella tried to get all the extra caramel off the tray with her teeth! They were still delicious, though! And I think....that it was actually caramel!


As a mom, I've got the usual mommy jobs to do - cooking, cleaning, laundry - but being a mommy in Ghana means I get some extra-special jobs. I get to haul water, weed with a machete, sweep and mop...a lot, dust...a lot, mend clothes (no Wal-Mart to pick up a new dress), fix just about everything with super-glue (replacements for toys and such are often hard to come by), and cook from scratch! And the truth is...I wouldn't change my job for all the money in the world!
For those of you who knew me when I was younger, these statements probably surprise you. I was not known for being neat or for wanting to cook or doing anything in the housewifely arts (not sure if that is a word, but it fits). Well, a little while back, the Lord showed me that not only is being a wife and mother the highest calling I can have, but it can also be a lot of fun! So, I try to remember that...I don't always, but I try!