Ndo ("good afternoon"), Dear Friends and Family,
We hope you are all doing extremely well. We are soaking up every minute of our final week here in Ghana. Wow - God has blessed us with an incredible array of experiences over the last three and half weeks and we have nearly 2,000 photos to accompany them (No worries - they will all be posted for viewing when we return to VA). Here are a few - a taste of life in the Volta Region:
1. (deka) Monday through Thursday we set out around 7:00 am with the Lilimed volunteers and evangelism team to set up the mobile medical and eye clinic in the villages surrounding Ho. Monday we went to Anyiboboe - a community of approximately 500 people.
We actually returned there today with Reverend Bankas for him to continue his planning with the village leaders concerning a school building project. Bankas first visited Anyiboboe 5 years ago. While he was coordinated with the chief and his counselors to bring the clinic, he expected to find the village more developed. Lo and behold, 5 years later they still have no school! It is less than an hour outside Ho and the children (~180 in number) do not go to school! It is rather hard to believe.
So, Bankas is partnering with the people and another organization to erect a school and a clinic. Hallelujah!
2. (eve) Jeremy and I worked at the medication table all four days - we learned a lot and are grateful for the chance to become familiar with those medicines commonly used in mobile clinic outreaches such as this one. This role also required us to learn more Ewe (such as the numbers used in this email) in order to explain the prescriptions to patients as we filled them. While the work was satisfying we are still certain medical school is the place for us, not pharmacy school!
3. (eton) Thursday and Friday evening were filled to the brim with music and dancing! Whew! These people can dance and they can dance for hours on end! Reverend Bankas' church (Christian Life Center or CLC) had a program to introduce their choir and celebrate gospel music on those evenings with the final dedication of the CLC choir on Sunday morning. Bankas asked us to share the sermon and "bring the Word" at each of those gatherings - what an honor! It was encouraging for us to be reminded of the reasons and the ways we can worship God through our preparation and the music. Each gathering was 3-4 hours long and required much "body-moving" as Reverend Bankas put it! Thank the Lord our camera has a video function...
4. (ene) To continue on the "body-moving" strain, Saturday was a day of dancing to go down in the Powers' family history. We ventured to a village called Saviefe with four other American volunteers to attend the Chief's 75th birthday party.
There a woman approached us in a traditional costume - cloth wrapped around her, large clay beads around her neck and wrists, white powder paint on her face and hands, kerchief around her head, a thin cane in hand, and... BIG bottom. It was easy to see this last feature was not natural and we chuckled to ourselves. Jeremy pointed to me and volunteered, "She wants one just like that!"
Before we could say another word, the older woman took my hand and we were jogging through the village, skipping over rocky paths and between flower patches to get to her house. As we ran, she shouted to the ladies we passed in Ewe - probably something to the tune of "I'm going to dress this "yevu" (white lady) up like my daughter (with the big badonkadonk)!" So they prepared me in the entire garb (minus the white paint) and I took part in the ceremony as the second "queen mother." It was an experience of a lifetime. We will surely include a photo of this with the following update... oh, the suspense!
Well, these have been rather lengthy so we will leave it at that for now. As an ewe lesson, we've included the numbers to ten below.
5. (aton)
6. (adin)
7. (adrin)
8. (egni)
9. (sieke)
10. (ewo)
Just two more days in Ho and then we're off to Accra to attend a wedding (in which Paul is the best man) Thursday morning before flying out at 11:00 pm that night. We should arrive at Dulles at 6:30 Friday morning.
We love you all so much and look forward to hearing from you and seeing you soon. We've greatly enjoyed our trip and we come home with fresh resolve to live our lives in "true fasting" (Isaiah 58:5-9).
