The Orchard Vision Trip

As I write this the Hawkins are sitting in Germany enduring a four hour layover from 5:45am- 9:45am. It’s not fun, I’ve done that one before. So continue your prayers for their safe journey to America.

The past 13 days have been exciting, challenging, exhausting, stressful but full of joy! Overall I think Jackie, Joel, Jackson and I would agree the first vision trip for The Orchard was wonderful.

I want to first thank everyone who has prayerfully and financially supported the Hawkins coming to Ghana. Their time here I believe was fruitful for their hearts as well as those they started a relationship with. If you ask them about the trip they will probably tell you the first couple of days were very stressful! You face emotional stress. You arrive in a new culture after traveling for over 20 hours and you are exhausted when you get off the plane in the host culture, in this case Ghana. Then you ride in a car where you are bombarded by all your senses as you hear, smell and see everything new for the first time. You ride in a car, not knowing at all where you’re going but trusting that the person leading you is taking good care of you. You have thoughts that you didn’t even know existed and wonder where those thoughts came from. Sometimes these aren’t nice thoughts so the stress that you could possibly conjure those up is a little scary, after all you are Christian J You remove all of your comforts of how you know culturally to do things and then become worried that what you might say or do could possibly offend the very people you want to learn about. You virtually start as a baby in this new culture dealing with the stress of wanting to know everything, know the cultural ques and how they differ from your home culture, know the language and be able to speak proficiently, know how to ‘be’ exactly as those you’ve come to learn about. All of this creates an uncomfortable amount of stress. I believe it’s how you deal with these stresses that determines what you learn from the experience. This past week Jackie, Joel and Jackson dealt with uncomfortable situations and from my perspective God has and will use every moment of their trip here to glorify Himself.

Missions short term and long term can easily be about people coming from outside to bring in what you know to be ‘right’ and the ‘best’ way to do something whatever area that person is working. I believe it’s much harder to be a learner and be ok with the fact you don’t know everything. I love the saying, “people don’t care about how much you know until they know how much you care.” As Jesus loving and believing people, and I like how Rob Bell puts it, we help people see God and how he’s already working here. We don’t save people. That is what Jesus does. And I am going to add we ‘strategically’ help people see how God is working. Here in Ghana that strategy looks different than a strategy in America. So we have to learn this culture before we are strategic.

This past week and a half Jackie, Joel and Jackson learned an incredible amount about Ghanaian culture. They asked great questions, (some I didn’t know which encourages me to continue to be a learner!) they tried a little food outside their comfort zone without eating things that would make them too sick, but most of all I saw them really trying to build relationships with people. I saw them desiring to know about family life of those we met, know how they work in the jobs they do, know how they worship God in this culture and how they show love to each other. We visited and greeted, the Ghanaian cultural way, many people. As the week continued, I saw them praying about beginning this partnership here and what would God have it look like for years to come. We were blessed to have Bishop Atto Brown of the northern diocese of the Methodist church with us…what does that mean for those who don’t know Ghana Methodist church lingo? That means there was an older respected Ghanaian man in the leadership of the church who spoke truth to places we went, encouraging them to reach out and think outside of themselves. He was able to relate the vision of the twining program, the relationship building partnership The Orchard is doing here with Bole, the area we went. He was able to speak to us Americans in a way we were able to understand Ghanaian thought processes and culture according to different situations. He was able to cast a vision that this partnership isn’t about coming and check marking a project list off and leaving so white people can feel good about themselves and the churches here get ‘stuff.’ The vision is to grow deeper together in a relationship, sharing the love of Christ with each other and to those in the surrounding communities.

I feel like I can say this living here a year, watching and learning the culture, talking with Ghanaians in church leadership and attending church here. We all have to be intentional about loving those outside our walls of the church. We are called to love those who are lonely, hurt and marginalized in society no matter if that’s MS- Tupelo, Benton, Ackerman or in Ghana like Bole, Guniyiri, Tinga… wherever. In some places here, as it is in America, we become focused on the people inside our church instead of remembering those who aren’t.

One of the blessings this week was watching Joel and Jackie talk about why they are here. And how they are branching out to show Christ’s love just building relationships with people. After I interviewed the Bishop for the video I’m making for The Orchard, I realized that them sharing that reason of coming all this way just to love on people really encourages others’ here to do that. I know I’ve thought many times, oh if I come here for a short time and say
‘love others,’ people could say, well look at all the money you have that’s why you can come here and tell us that. But the reality is, people here consider it a great honor that someone would come all that way. Jackie said this this past week and it’s true. Ghanaians bring their best when they meet you. They wear their finest clothes, the cook the best food they have, and truly want to serve you the best way they can. So do we bring our best to them? Do we bring our best clean pure heart of Jesus love to offer? Or do we bring our own motives whatever those might be? We’re not perfect and no one here on earth is, but do we bring the best we can?

I have to say how much it pleased me to see the Hawkins look at this trip in a relationship building way and not something to just check off the list to say “ check…gone to another country to tell people the way to do ‘it’.” I’m excited to see what’s next for The Orchard in this partnership.

For more about the trip visit Joel and Jackie’s blog at www.tingabolemission.blogspot.com.