West Africa Ministry 2009 Trip

Day 6 - Kumasi, Ghana

Dear Family and Friends of Crio: Aug. 7, 2009

Day six of our West Africa visit had the final five pastors finally arriving as they had been held up at the border in Accra. Three were from Nigeria and two from Cameroon. Five of them I had only known through the internet. So it was exciting to finally put faces with names.

I began the days conference with teaching on practical leadership issues which covered the five leadership styles and then time management/organizational skills. Punctuality is not one of my traits but here I look good, ha. However, meeting schedules are more predictable here. I also emphasized effective communication techniques since Crio depends so much on email. There are clouds and rain continues to hold off, but it is still very hot.

After the conference at 2PM Pastor Harrison took me to a hospital that his aunt operates. She just received the international award for outstanding mid-wife clinic, going to Australia to receive it. She is the wife of Gabriel who is in Chicago and recently received his PhD in counseling. He is still going to be there one more year as he has a job as a chaplain in a hospital for one more year. They have not seen each other for three years now during his education. The Africans have to sacrifice so much for education but they value opportunities to come to the U.S. very highly. It was Pastor Nathan at my home church Hosanna who connected me to Gabriel via the internet from contact with a friend of his while pasturing in Indianapolis. Dr. Gabriel then gave me his nephew’s name here in Ghana when he found out our ministry involves planting churches who is our host, Pastor Harrison. So the pipeline for us to even have ever connected is one of those God things you can only appreciate but not fathom.

The next few hours we spent finding a van to charter back to Ouagadougou as the bus trip was supposed to be 10 hrs. and it took 14. So we would miss our plane if that occurs on Mon. We found a nice 10-passenger van that will leave early enough with shorter stops and gratefully no African movies!

When we returned to the hotel, Janice said she had been having distress with an intestinal virus and did not feel up to going to her ladies meeting at 4PM. It would be with mostly the host church ladies, so we just postponed the meeting to Sun.

In the evening I had interviews with the Cameroon pastors and then the Nigerian pastors to get acquainted with them and hear their visions for their nations. Since they had missed the session the previous day on the "servant’s heart" I spent the first hour repeating that teaching. Then we laid out what the next steps would be to develop their nations for Crio.

One of the Cameroon pastors has a two-year Bible College with 18 students already and wants to bring it under the Crio umbrella. The other needs assistance with planting a new church in the capital, Douala.

Our three pastors from Nigeria decided to formalize the Bible College training more and then begin to evangelize in the rural areas after they have leaders trained. I discovered Pastor Chris who I have known through being a classmate of Bekky at CFNI has an attendance of over 600 at his home church, making his the largest (that I know about) in Crio. He has 14 other churches as well. Our pastor in Port Harcourt is still looking for a plot to move to as they only rent where they are.

They left at 10PM making for a 13 hr. day so after finishing reviewing my notes for the next day’s graduation service address, I was too tired to type the email and went on to bed.

Janice was much better in the evening, so we had a restful night.

In His grace, Ron and Janice