West Africa Ministry 2009 Trip

Day 5 - Kumasi, Ghana - Arrival

Dear Family and Friends of Crio: Aug. 5, 2009

We have just arrived at 12:30 AM to a very nice hotel in Kumasi, Ghana, which is a welcome sight after a 14hour bus ride. Janice’s prayers were answered as we had a new bus (our last cross country trip in Kenya on a bus stunk badly and was very old), so we were both relieved. It was even air conditioned and had video. We found out later the video was a modern convenience we wished it didn’t have. They started out playing music videos of Michael/Janet Jackson imitators, which was not too bad, but then they started to show two movies. The first movie was a take off of Cinderella with two sisters and a step-mother literally beating up the step sister multiple times. The second movie was a combination of a soap opera and the Jerry Springer show, with occasional scenes of corrupt pastors and witch doctors. All this with a speaker just above our heads turned up very loud, making it so we could not even sleep from all the constant screaming, crying and yelling.

The roads were better here than Kenya and even in some areas they had center stripes with guardrails in some, but right before we got to Kumasi we spent over an hour on a road under construction that made the bus vibrate a lot. Once we got to the station we caught a taxi and Bro. Alassane accompanied us to the hotel. Soon after we arrived we met up with our host, Pastor Harrison, who came to the hotel at 1AM. He said all is well for the meetings to start at 9AM tomorrow, and he expects pastors from five nations.

Two administrative issues that could have been worse were cause for some stress during the trip. We were told we didn’t need to get a visa ahead of time, but could get one at the border of Ghana. Well they had changed that so when we went through customs they asked for our visa and when we said we had none they said we would have to go back to Ouagadougou (2 ½ hrs. back) to the Ghana embassy and get one. We explained we had no time for that and then they asked if we had an address of the conference we were going to or Pastor Harrison’s phone number as we needed an invitation letter too. Of course we had neither. I showed them my Crio ministry license and dentist credentials and they said they believed us so we go could go on through after 30 minutes of holding up the whole bus. Actually it took one hour to process out of Burkina Faso and then one hour to process into Ghana, making the trip very long.

Then when arrived at the hotel they did not have our reservations even though we showed them an internet confirmation letter from Orbitz. They are having two large conferences here, but they gave us a room higher than our reservations until a room like ours level becomes available. So the Lord worked that out for us as well.

Keep us in your prayers as we start our second conference for hearts to be open to our message.

In His grace, Ron and Janice