long time.

too long. wow since i began the world of blogging i don't think i've gone four weeks without posting. everyday for the past two weeks i have the thought, "i should blog today" and somehow i don't. so it's 11:05pm Ghana time and i should be in the bed becuase i'm tired, but it's just about to get crazier around here and i won't have too much time if i don't just carve it out.

so many things have happened this month, hence the reason i haven't updated my blog. if you are an avid margaret blog reader...which i'm SURE you all are :) you'll remember when i first moved here i didn't have any 'work' persay to do in the video side of ministry. which was good. it was a stretching and breaking time for me realizing what we 'do' doesn't define us. fast forward 8 months and i've had four videos to finish in the past two weeks. however, being i've never been so thankful to be busy and i've never saught the Holy Spirit to fill me as i do now. i've really enjoyed this past year of getting more in depth in the production of videos and it's been such a blessing for me to see missionaries watch a piece of their world come together in five minutes. however, that's just it...it's five minutes of highlighting day in and day out life. i'm finding how difficult it is to capture reality in five minutes and not put too much subjective spin on it that i'm merely making a commercial to buy something instead of seeing a truth that one might want to wrestle with and possibly believe and support. I have had an intern working with me for about two months now, Ari. She's really quick and has a heart for videography and learning. It's funny for me to say i have an intern since i'm pounding away at learning Final Cut Pro, but i'm seeing how God lined up my degree in broadcasting even before i really lived my life for him and how those skills He's now glorifying!

The other really exciting tidbit... there is a short term team coming from my home church, The Orchard, this Wednesday. We are developing a realtionship with a couple villages in the North West part of Ghana called Bole and Tinga. Joel, Jackie and Jackson arrive on Wednesday so pray for their travel and their time here. I firmly believe God does a huge work in people's hearts during short term trips and that is transported and transferred in so many ways back in people's home culture. While Jackie, Joel and Jackson are here we're going to do some fun stuff and they're going to get a glimpse into my life and then we're headed up north but I'm praying this will be a stretching/breaking/filling time for all of them!

I've also posted some new pics. One thing I did this month was head up north to get some footage a video I finished for Mary Kay Jackson, one of our missionaries. During this trip I had we'll say....'a really bad tummy'. I had gotten food posioning the Sunday before we left that Wednesday and by Friday we were pulling over in the bush so i could 'go' J Did i really just share that with the whole world?

end of april.

This past week has been good getting back into daily grinds after our Volta trip. The thing about Ghana is that something always needs to be fixed and this week was no different. There are times when this gets on my last nerve and I get very frustrated to the point, well maybe I shouldn’t express as to what point…But surprisingly this week’s problems didn’t unnerve me. Does that mean I’m making cross-cultural living progress? We ran out of water this week. That’s not uncommon right now for most people. With our crisis of water in Lake Volta Dam they are doing electricity load shedding as well as water load shedding. We ended up buying some water and according to our ‘water guys’ with the lack of water in the dam there’s not enough to go around so unless you buy some from another nearby water source, you could go months without water flowing in your area. Thankfully we are able to purchase water, but most aren’t. However after we got water and filled out tanks the next day mysteriously we had lost over 6,000 gallons? Enter in the fact there’s always something to be fixed here! Sammy, our plumber came over and literally chiseled away the concrete to one of the pipes and replaced a valve that was causing the water to be pumped back out into the water main line out underneath the streets...oh I hope somebody received all that water and it wasn’t lost…!

The rest of the week was good. I finished another video project (thankfully I got one port on my hard drive to work), ordered a new hard drive since the ports on mine have blown out, went to a film festival showing a Ghanaian film entitled “Witches in Exile” (don’t forget I live in Accra…big city with embassy’s and it was The Environmental Film Festival) and then Sunday night came possibly the worst I have ever felt in my whole life. I will now talk about throwing up…so if that grosses you out…stop reading!

Sunday night a friend celebrated her 24th birthday so we went out to eat actually at a very American restuaraunt called Champs. I ordered a chicken burger and thought it was pretty good, it tasted a little ‘different’ but not too bad…Then we got in the car to leave and my friend had to pull over because I felt really sick so I threw up! I did. A lot. Then I felt better and she dropped me off where my car was and I headed home. Once I arrived at my house I got extremely nauseas again and then it started. From 1am to around 7am Monday morning I threw up five times. Then I started getting chills and my fever spiked to 101 so I read my trusty “Where there is No Doctor” book and I had every symptom of … Malaria. There’s something about living in Ghana, maybe even Aftica as a whole, that when you get fever…you automatically think “it’s got to be malaria, I just know it.” Of course I’m reading the book and all the sudden I have every symptom for cholera, meningitis, malaria, typhoid… this is why I could never study medicine I would think I had every thing. Anyway- I went to have my blood tested and thankfully … NO malaria, however this wasn’t without a call to my dad 6am his time to simply ‘let them know’ I was sick! I’m such a baby!! But now I’m back to the land of living. Yesterday I slept more than I think should be humanly possible and today I feel good! I’m very thankful.

Wednesday we’re leaving to go North. I’m going to work on the water video project with Mary Kay, but the trip is for Jim Ramsay, our Director of Field Ministries from home office, to see the Ghana field and all the missionaries’ locations/lives and ministries! I’ll update more when we return.