October 1st

Faithfulness. Yep if I had to describe in one word what the Lord is teaching me right now that would be it. The past two weeks have been busy and I have realized I love to be busy. I think of course we have to realize that what we “do” doesn’t define us, but also I know I’m created in a way that thrives on having places to go, people to see and things to do with a healthy amount of alone time mixed in there! I say this because the past two weeks I have had the opportunity to do some things that God hard wired me to love to do. Ama, my language teacher, and I went to the Medina Market Wednesday to get the “fixins” for Ghanaian stew. She cooks it and eats it for the week, so my language class that day was in the market. My favorite part was the meat section! We went into an enclosed area and there was the cow. I took in the smells and thought to myself how cool is it that I’m witnessing an area where meat isn’t kept in a cool refrigerator. Now my family I live with doesn’t get meat at this place, we actually buy it at a local grocery store. Yes, can you believe it…there are a couple of grocery stores, very comparable to the kind you would see in the States.

Anyway- after getting all the ingredients for stew we came back to my apartment and christened my kitchen. I haven’t used it yet so I was happy to be able to allow my new friend a place to cook her stew. Ama’s got a great story and I’m so thankful God has put her in my pathway. She’s a believer but I think we’re good at discipling each other. We share about cultural differences and ways we see things through our cultural lens and I’m learning a lot from her. This is the same Ama that went with us to Akropong to see her great uncle…that story was in a previous blog.

So it’s nice to have her and Gifty as friends, they’re teaching me a lot about Ghanaian culture. When they get together it’s great to see because Gifty seems to help mentor Ama in cooking and then they both gang up on me and try to teach me more about language than my pea brain can soak in…but it makes them laugh to hear me try!

Gifty is doing well. Keep her in your prayers with family issues. She is a great friend the other day she stopped me before I left the house, after I had a bad bad day the day before, and before I left she prayed for me and the day ahead.

Let’s see also this past week I took pictures at AIS. They are trying to do a yearbook so I took individual and class photos. I hope they turn out ok and they can use them!

Here’s the sad part. My GL2 camera is messed up and it’s dishearting because I’m working on a project for the Mozley’s and I’m supposed to shoot for a short term team coming in Sunday the 8th. I sent it back to America via Barry, the interim director for AIS. Hopefully B&H photo/Canon will honor the 1-year warranty. We shall see. But the cool part is God revealed the words unfailing faithfulness to me on Wednesday before the camera broke Saturday. I was playing catch up on reading the Psalms and read Psalm 89 which has the words unfailing faithfulness four times right in the beginning. I cried yesterday when I realized cleaning the heads of the camera wasn’t working and the camera was indeed broken. I just sat there begging God to fix it because that’s one of the main reasons I’m here to use the camera and do documentary videos. Then today at church Michael Mozley was preaching and he spoke about giving everything up. Even as a foreign missionary I hang on to “things.” I think we, as humans tend to do that when we don’t even realize we’re doing it. And the Holy Spirit convicted me right there in my seat about my camera and equipment. It’s not mine and God’s going to be faithful in whatever the situation. In my mind He would have just fixed it and I wouldn’t have to spend all day tomorrow on the phone to Canon trying to figure out what I need to do … but that's why I'm not God!

My friend Lyle sent me a cd with some songs on it of course I don’t know who wrote it. Part of the song basically talks about if we make a move we have to trust the timing was right because if we knew the whole vision then we wouldn’t have to use our faith. So I trust right now that the camera breaking is part of the plan. The Mozley’s and Sims have handheld cameras they have graciously said I can borrow. So in the technical difficulties there are mercies.

So emotionally I’m doing ok. Again. The word faithfulness swims in my head.

I miss my family and friends. But again God’s faithfulness. Brogan, my nephew, played his first soccer game (aka football in Ghana) last Saturday and won. This past week they lost, but I heard he thought tackling was part of the game and this week he didn’t plow anyone down, so it’s a start!

I also got my car fixed this week with the help of a driver from the Methodist Church Ghana named Simpson. The fuel injector, breaks and windows all needed to be fixed. Spent this past Friday at an orphanage for the first time. I didn’t do anything but sit there and watch the kids play and sing. I’ll keep you posted on it.

Here’s the prayer list…Keep praying for Ama my language teacher, Gifty my Ghanaian friend that lives with us, Richard the guy who hit me in my wreck, Simpson who drives for the Methodist Church, Sawaaba a new Muslim Christian, William from AIS who helped me during my wreck and all the Muslims during Ramadan. This is a time in Ghana that statistically more robberies have taken place. Muslims are very spiritual people here and mostly nice so don’t think I’m stereotyping and generalizing that’s not my goal. But with fasting here there seems to be some rather brutal ways to break the fast, which actually goes against the purpose of Ramadan. Anyway- I just pray for all people to know the amazing love of a personal relationship with God through Jesus, not just Muslims but everyone.

I love you all.
Margaret