Adjusting to Life in the Village/VBS has started!

Greetings from Helekpe! Today was our third day of VBS, and it was awesome. On Wednesday, we had about 100 kids; Thursday and today we had over 200 show up! Word is quickly spreading in the village that the yevu (white people) are holding a bible camp. It will be interesting to see what kind of prizes and crafts we can come up with if we have 400 kids come tomorrow!

For our first day of VBS, the children were split into three groups and rotated through games, crafts, and lesson time. All of the leaders and youth had different duties. Hannah Mathews told us afterwards that this was the most organized VBS that she has seen in Ghana. The kids didn’t seem to want to leave afterwards, as many of them hung around to watch us, play with some of our youth, and follow us home.

We went back to the house for dinner, and returned to church at 7pm for the prayer service. It is about a five minute walk to the church, along dirt paths that get quite narrow and brushy, for lack of a better word. I must admit that walking the path in the dark is a bit unsettling for a non-nature girl like me (Nina), but all the others did just fine. Barba took me back to the house by the main road and a much wider path, much to my relief.

Walking through the village is an eye-opener. The “houses” are simple structures, most with mud walls and roofs made out of either metal or palm fronds. The people spend all their time outside; their house is simply a place for them to sleep. Most do not have electricity, and certainly no running water. They go to fetch water either at the wells or a small pond.

On Thursday, we met the chief of the neighboring village, Avanyaviwofe. This is the village where the HASU Baptist Church is located. It was an interesting experience, since the chief will not directly address you. Instead, he speaks to his tsame (linguist), who then asks “Did you hear him?” He heard we were visiting and wanted to know why we were there. It is really just a formality. The chief welcomed us and asked us to return to the villages, and not to make this a one time visit.

We also visited the schools to observe the lessons. We split up into groups so that we could visit the primary school, the JSS and the SS. I can only speak for the class that we visited – we observed an economics class at the high school. While their resources and facilities were certainly not what we are accustomed to, it was very comparable to an economics curriculum in the U.S. The teacher was knowledgeable and engaging, and the students responded well. Nearly all of the teaching was conducted in English.

Thursday’s VBS was really exciting. There were about 20 small children hanging around outside the Mathews’s house; as soon as we left the house, they immediately crowded around us and followed us to church. We arrived about 20 minutes prior to the start of the VBS, and there were already about 100 kids there, waiting to start. They had started singing some songs, and it was just really neat to see how excited they were to be there.

After dinner, we had a team devotion and then a planning meeting for camp. Mike also spent quite a bit of time planning a soccer tournament with Kurt and Pastor George. They met with the teachers at the school to get their approval to run the tournament.

Today, we split into two groups. The girls headed to Ho for market day and the guys ran the soccer tournament. The teachers selected the teams. There were four teams and each team got to play each other in a mini world cup tournament. They played two games, then had a gospel presentation before playing the third game. There were about 50 to 100 people in attendance (adults and children). They left 5 new soccer balls and 30+ soccer jerseys for the school. For the school, this was an huge gift and very well received.

The girls traveled in the Mathews’ truck to Ho. The ride was very interesting – bumpy, to say the least. We first went to the Stadium Market, which is a small grocery store, where Barb picked up some food for camp. Then we went to the market – an open air market that is pretty hard to describe. It is an open-air market with many, many vendors and tiny little paths that weave between the different “stores.” They sell just about anything you can imagine there, but the big thing we were looking for was fabric. We were very successful in our shopping!

Today’s VBS also had over 200 kids in attendance. The teens took the lead in teaching the lessons today. Mikey taught the pre-primaries, Daniel had the primaries, and Jonnie taught the middler/junior group. Christopher has done a great job with the games; today he had the fun task or organizing a tug-of-war with 80+ kids. It was so cute to see them all lined up and pulling as hard as they could on the rope!

A huge storm rolled in at the end of VBS, so we had to hold some of the kids until the rain died down. The walk back to the house was quite muddy. It is still raining now, which is good, because water was low in the barrels. Now, we don’t have to go fetch water! Barb made pizza for dinner tonight – it was delicious, and the kids pretty much demolished it.

The Mathews have been so accommodating and thoughtful. They have been tremendous hosts, and we just hope that we can continue to serve them and be a blessing to their ministry.

Continue to pray for us and for the people here. Pray for wisdom and strength as we build relationships with the Ghanaian people. We are praising the Lord for the work that He is doing here. More to come soon…