And the Winners Are...

If you've been a consistent reader of our blog over the past 2+ weeks, you have noticed that there have been a number of consistent comment-ers on our blog! We appreciate everyone's faithfulness to reading and keeping us in your prayers (we're not done with the blog yet!!) but before we leave Ghana we wanted to present one final award.

It was a tough decision, but after all the votes were tallied, the winners of the MOST VALUABLE COMMENT-ER AWARDS go to....

Jaclyn's Dad with his amazing words of wisdom!

and

Jake's Aunt Chris, with her consistent ending of 'love you Jake'!!

Again, we're not done with the blog...so keep checking back for more updates as we leave Ghana and enter the U.S. YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS IT!!!

WE LOST OUR PASSPORTS!!!

To preface today's post:
Several off us were really disappointed, yesterday, when we heard that we are only going to spend an hour in the Grace and Faith Elementary Academy.

We were woke up an hour earlier than we had all expected this morning because Mel-shine worked some magic, and found out that we could go hang out with the kids as quick as we could get ready. Woot Woot, I was pumped. We were able to get ready rather quickly, and we were off. Several of us got to teach the students, but it was extremely dificult, because it wasn't exactly what we had expected. It was the childrens first day of school, so it was wild and chaotic anyways. We also got to hand out several gifts that we brought for the kids, so we got to hang out and play with the kids after they ate lunch.

This afternoon, most of us slept, but a several girls got their hair braided and corn-rowed.

This evening we had a dinner "Program" with Pasor Daniel. He expressed his thanks to us many many many times. It was a very special and memorible time spent with "Mamme and Papa" aka Pastor Daniel and his wife. He gave us a few things to rememeber Ghana by, as if any of us will soon forget this trip. Everytime there is a gift given, there is a program that goes with it, only to show appreciation of the gift.

Moms and Dads that flipped out when you read the title; No worries, we still have them. We are all sad that tonight is our last night in Ghana, so if we were to lose our passports for a week, we wouldn't hate it. Its been an amazing trip thus far. Our team has become a family. We have each grown in ways we couldn't even imagine. The people here have blessed us in so many ways. Our prayer now, that a seed has been planted in many hearts, is that they continue to grow in thier faith, and make Jesus Christ thier personal Lord and Savior.

I hope you all have enjoyed the blog, as much as we have enjoyed putting it together.

The Hasselhoff

Cheyney is telling me that 'today was neat'. Not really any explanation there, but it's 1:30 am, so there's not really a need for one.

Today was the last day of street evangelism. We traveled to a location outside the main city that we've never been to before. My impression of the location was that it appeared more impoverished than most of the places we've seen. I think that the attitude of the people was more hopeless as well, probably as a result. We divided into our 5 teams and set out for a couple of hours of reaching out in the community. Our team talked to several guys, two of which were probably around 12 (MAYBE 13!) who decided to give their lives to Christ!! These two boys admitted to being bullies around the community; stealing, lying, even beating up other children for no other reason but to be mean. So please pray that their decision would be sincere and that godly men would be raised up to lead them in that community!

We also enjoyed a 'tour' of Takoradi this evening which was great, because we were able to see more of the city than we've seen on our crazy drives to the churches! We drove down to the harbor, around the town, and attempted to get into a large soccer stadium right outside Takoradi. It was a good diversion from the knowledge that we will be leaving Ghana soon.

Today at lunch we tried Fu-Fu. Interesting. That's the best I can say. It's like a partially cooked loaf of bread which you pour soup over top of it. Then you dig your hand in the steaming hot soup and grab a piece of the dough. The dough is relatively tasteless, but the soup we had on ours provided the spice and kick we've grown to love from Ghanaian food!

I think the feeling among the team is that, while we're excited to come back home, we each will leave a large part of our hearts with the pastors and the people that we've met here in Ghana.

Finally, we wanted to leave you with a video from our beach day...our version of the Baywatch run. Enjoy!

-Marty

Survival Pics...

ghanaian barber shops with Beverly...does that rhyme with Kimberly?!?

*Disclaimer*
Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers who are following the blog!!! Thanks for being great! =)

So today was the day that Nate finally shaved his head...along with Matt, Seth and I. But that was by far the highlight of our Mother's Day Sunday. Our group was assigned to 6 Churches in the area. 6 does not divide equally into 10 so some of us had to go to churches on our own. Christina and Marty were a team, Jac and Nate, Emily and Matt, Kim and Mel...leaving Seth and I to go and preach alone. This was told to us the night before so we were all well prepared. At lunch, we all reflected on how our mornings went. Everyone seemed to have a great morning and we all received gifts from our churches for our service and dedication to them. The gifts received were all different but had the same, amazing intetions of giving from the heart! Tonight we went headquarters, Grace and Faith Church, to meet with some youth and have a fun, free time. We told jokes, played charades, and just simply fellowshipped with one another. It was a very relaxing night for all of us. Only a few more days left here in Ghana then we fly out for home. God has done and is doing an amazing work here in Ghana. Speaking on behalf of the team, we are extremely thankful that He chose us to come and preach the Good News to these people. Our time is not over so keep checking the blog for more updates!

Jake

Ants, Ants Everywhere

So yesterday (Saturday) was our 'free day', so we went to the beach. We've been near the coast line the whole trip, but Ghana doesn't have a whole lot of nice, swimming beaches. So the fact that we're supposedly a 10 minute walk from the beach at the lodge, does not in-fact mean that there is anything worth seeing or doing at the beach. So we've never gone there.

But yesterday we piled all ten of us, 4 pastors, Francis, and 2 kids into our sweet ride (the van) and headed an hour to the 'nicest beach in Ghana'. It was a pretty nice beach, and had it not been for the high waves, there probably would have been other people swimming too. However, apparently only American's visiting Ghana and wanting to say they swam in the Atlantic Ocean off of Africa are crazy enough to go swimming in those waves. (Don't worry, they weren't THAT big...) But they did make for some pretty good wave-riding and we spent several hours there, then returned back to Mercy Lodge.

If you've been keeping up with the 'Shaving Nate's Head Story', you know that we have surpassed 15 affirmative votes. Last count, including 10 from Team Sahara, we had 27. So last night after a dinner of dry chicken (which we've begun to affectionately refer to as 'turkey jerky') and rice we set out to cut hair with the clippers I brought with me. However, in our excitement and joy of the adventure, we failed to look and make sure the clippers would ACTUALLY work on 220-240 V....they didn't. So no shaved heads and burnt up hair clippers saddened the mood.

But today we're headed to a barber to get it done right! We were told they could do all 4 of the guys who are shaving their heads for about $2 a head!!! That's amazingly cheap. I guess it helps when there's a barber (or two) on every corner! (See, I learned something from Economics!)

But I'll let Jake write more about the barber stories later when he writes up today's post!! (remember, this is YESTERDAY'S post!) Until then, enjoy!

God Bless,
Marty

No Lifeguard on Duty

After receiving a ridiculous amount of harassment from my team on the length of my last post (immediately below), I decided to write a summary for those of you who don't have time to read all the details:

1) we sang on tv
2) we slept
3) we told people about Jesus
4) we experienced the 23 minute worship dance line
5) we looked like fools in front of a large group of people
6) people laughed
7) we celebrated the reaching of 15 in favor of nate's shaving his head. it doesn't have to stop there. keep posting! the shaving will happen later today. thanks for making it happen
8) we are leaving for the beach

Love,
Mel