Glimpses of our Life in Ghana

Thanksgiving.  All my life there are two things that that day meant. Turkey and Grandma's house.    The turkey wasn't just about eating. It was about the week before the holiday. The catching, butchering, and selling. As a child it involved butchering all day Monday, bagging Tuesday morning, and selling till late Wednesday. The business has grown and now it involves four days of butchering and bagging, and two full days of selling. It's an intense week. Long hours on our feet. Tedious pulling of pin feathers. Hot water in the scalder. Freezing water in the chill tubs. Blood, feathers, and I will refrain from naming the rest. It's a week of give and take. Working together. Joking. Laughing ourselves sick after being up way too long. Making priceless memories. The family is all involved and then we hire extra help for the actual butchering. Many of them come back every year to help, mainly because we are so entertaining!  We do an average of 800 turkeys, some for...

                              Trust. Its such an elusive thing. Every time I think I know what it means I realize it goes deeper then I thought. Life has been teaching me to trust but right now I am being faced with a decision that is asking me to trust farther then I have before. Last night I read the devotional in Beside the Still Waters and was blown away to realize that it was talking about the very thing I was struggling with. Here is my paraphrase to what it said.     Peter and James were fishing all night. They let their nets down in faith and drew them up empty. As they were washing out their nets in the morning a man asked them to push out from the land a bit with him in their boat so he could teach the people on the shore. When he was done speaking, he said to them, cast your nets in the water. They weren’t too sure about this man. They were the fishermen. Who did He think He was te...

   I opened our back door and was greeted with cool, refreshing night air. I stepped out to shake the table cloth free of crumbs from supper and drew a deep breath. Drying leaves scented the fall air and I wanted somehow to bottle it. To soak it in! To hold on to it and pull it out next year when we are living in Ghana and I am homesick. A quiet evening fishing.    I find myself doing that many times these days. Trying to soak up my surroundings like a sponge. So I can squeeze them out and look them over some day in the future; when I am far away from everything familiar. We had revival meetings this past week and we soaked up the teaching and came away revived. But as I sat in the midst of our church family, part of me wanted to weep because I know I will be leaving it soon. And I know just how far Africa is from Pennsylvania.    There is one thing that comforts me though. Even though we will be far from friends and family, God will be just as c...

Africa! I had dreamed of it since I was a teenager. Like all teens, I knew what I wanted in life. About the time I turned 18 I decided I would wait till I was 21, go to nursing school and then do mission work in Africa. There is something romantic about Africa. Poor, sick children. Hot desert sun. Exotic animals. Wild colors. Yes, it was what I wanted! To help people in that culture would be an adventure! But...  Life happened, just before my 19th birthday I started dating and Africa got set on the back burner. Fast forward about ten years. We were attending a church where several of the members were involved in a new mission. Palm Ministries. In Ghana, Africa. Of course it caught my attention. But life was busy, we had a lot going on. But we couldn't deny the tug every time they announced the need for someone to serve. Through a series of events and conversations, we were asked to move to Ghana. Kenny would teach mechanics at New Hope School. We couldn't help being excited!...