Praying Expectantly, Praising Intentionally

This is a story that has been a little while in the making, so some of you have probably already heard bits and pieces of it, but I wanted to put it all together into one post, so here goes.

As most of you know, in the weeks leading up to leaving for this internship I was spending a majority of my time camped out in the UW hospital nuero ICU with my family because my older cousin Brooks had a major brain aneurysm on May 8th. During that time my family spent a ton of time just hanging out and wasting time. We played games, did puzzles, decorated Brooks' room with pictures from coloring books and Bible verses and ate a lot of food from friends who love us, but in and among those moments of just chillin, we also did a lot of praying. Every time the doctors brought in a new update or Brooks levels began to move for the good or bad, we entered God's presence in prayer. A great thing happened to me during that time, the beginning of this story, in those moments of prayer I found myself expecting to see results from the big prayers we were praying. I found myself overjoyed, but not super surprised when Brooks' recovery moved forward in leaps and bounds, when his body defied the odds and we saw miracles happening. God was answering big prayers and it was sweet!

One thing I realized as a result of that time though,was that I hadn't really been praying that way for a long time. I started looking back a little bit on journal entries and thinking about how I had been treating prayer, and I saw that even though I believed God heard and answered prayers, I wasn't living like I expected Him to answer my prayers. I would spend time in in prayer, lift up my cares to the Lord, then move on with my day at the status quo, forgetting what I had laid before God. I wasn't living and looking for answers, I wasn't even opening my mind to the possibility that the things happening in my everyday life were a result of the prayers I had been praying. So, as I left for my internship I decided that I was going to pursue praying expectantly, paying attention to what I was taking to God and looking for results in my life every day.

If the first big step in this story was when I started praying with my family for Brooks, the next big step happened in Ghana on the second Wednesday night while I was praying with Becca. That day had been kinda rough for our team and when it came time to settle down in our room for the night Becca and I felt a huge burden for our team. We could see some things happening with project stuff and in relationships that could ruin our team. We knew that these things would be hard to combat with conversations, but knew that God could move hearts way better than we could try to woo them. So, we prayed for our team. Prayed for our team leaders, for details, for whatever God brought to us and the next day prayer was answered in a way we never would have imagined. If I could have hand-picked an answer it probably would have consisted of some well placed conversations, a couple apologies, and smooth sailing for details the rest of our trip, instead God broke the hearts of our team with the state of the children's home through a crazy (read "likely possessed man") wandering dangerously close to the children's home while our team was there. Our team came back to the hotel from the home and was overwhelmed by the reality of the threats Satan holds on the home. We prayed powerfully in the most Spirit led prayer I've ever experienced. We prayed the strongholds of Satan on our project would be broken, and from those moments on, there was a visible difference in the unity of our team. That night when Becca and I got ready for bed again both of us came to the other with the same thought, we had seen God's answer to our pleading for unity in His call to prayer. There was nothing left to do but praise the Lord for His faithfulness and swift answer to prayer.

As I thought about this experience in view of the burden I felt to pray expectantly, I began to see that just as important to me should be praising intentionally. I began to see that when I start praying expecting to see prayer answered and praise God when I see answers, big or small, God becomes so much bigger. His attention to detail and ability to work pieces of life that overwhelm me starts to astound me as I take notice of the things He is working in my life. And then, this BIG HUGE God also becomes personal.

Over the course of this summer there have been many ways God has been refining these thoughts and this idea of praying expectantly and praising intentionally, definitely too many to put in one blog. But hopefully in just sharing the big picture here, more conversations an opportunities to share more happen later.

Photo Bomb

So I realized while I was writing my most recent update letter (which will hopefully be published tomorrow morning) that I didn't really post too many pictures from Ghana. So, I wanted to take a post and devote it entirely to some Ghana pictures, hope you enjoy!

Children's Home

This is the existing Good Shepherd Happy Children's Home.

Nick, Becca, and me reading the Jesus Storybook Bible with the kids

Becca teaching how to read clocks at the children's home

Momma Tammy helping with teaching clocks

Baby Time

The children's home is currently taking care of 3 infants along with the older children.  While we were there, they barely had time to lay down, everyone fought for their baby time :)

Moses

Agogo

 

Princess

Life at the Hotel Liberte

Jonathan crunching numbers and Josh in the background , he's been working way too long....

John and me working on the survey

The team working on the model the night before the ground breaking celebration

A little 7-up action at the end of the night is always a good idea

 The New Site Celebration

Godsway was probably my favorite little guy at the home! so cute right?! 

Our whole team :)

The Canopy Walk

Nick was really excited to be walking high above the jungle.

Amazing right?!

The Moral of the Story

Although posts for the rest of the summer, and even beyond hopefully, will definitely be influenced by my time in Ghana, I wanted to put together one post that really sums up a couple of the big lessons I learned/God-moments I saw while we were on our trip.  That being said, I feel like this post is going to be inevitably unorganized.  I'm gonna ask you to bear with me and be understanding.  Hopefully any foggy areas will be cleared up in later posts, I've got a couple more specific ones already brewing and I don't want them to be too redundant so I'll probably leave some questions.  For now, I just want to scratch the surface of the "big things" from my time in Africa.  As always, feel free to comment with questions or whatever.  I really do check comments and if you post looking for a response, I'll definitely try to respond well :)


Before we left for Ghana, my prayer was that God would continue to reveal to me and challenge me to step out in faith in the area of trusting Him to do big things.  In the weeks leading up to our trip God revealed to me that there have been a lot of times recently, really in the past year and a halfish (AKA since Haiti), that I have simply been hesitant to believe in the magnitude of God.  This isn't to say that for the last year and a half God hasn't done some great stuff in my life and brought about a lot of growth since Haiti , but if there is one struggle that has reoccurred in my life, it is this tension with trusting in God to be faithful and to do big things past the status quo.

There are so many ways that God answered m prayer to see His "Bigness" throughout the trip.  Honestly, I feel like everything that God revealed to me throughout the trip tied back to this prayer, that in itself is a revelation of God's faithfulness and bigness to me!

--Answered Prayer-I've got a more specific post in the works about this but big picture lesson I guess is that as we saw Gad answer prayers over the course of our trip I began to pray more and more expectantly.  In Ghana, we saw God breaking down barriers, moving hearts, and just working stuff out in ways that we could never imagine, and I'm excited to share more about this next post.

--Heart Change-Although God did move a lot in my heart in Ghana, the heart change that happened in George's life was one of the most beautiful things I've ever witnessed.  If you remember from one of my last posts, George is the electrical engineer from Ghana who worked with our team.  This was the second EMI trip he had done, but the first one that he had actually done in Ghana.  He is from Accra originally, and even though Aflao is only a couple hours away, he had never really spent time in or near Aflao.  Over the course of the trip George made it clear that before this trip he really had no idea that conditions like those in Aflao existed so close to his house.  Seeing the way George was moved with compassion during the week was so sweet, but I had no idea about how much God was really moving in his heart until he shared his testimony with us the last night we were in Accra.

When it came time for George to share how God had moved in his life during the trip, he told us that before he came to Aflao not only was he unaware of the conditions there, but that to him Aflao was the bad the part of the country.  Before he thought of a place that needed to see the love of Christ, he thought of unemployed people who practiced vodoo and gave Ghana a bad name.  When he shared with us, he told us that it had never crossed his mind that he would find kids like his own and men and women who loved the Lord when he got to Aflao.  Honestly I feel like I'm butchering this story I know I can't do it justice, but when George told us how God had moved his heart to love the children at the orphanage and see the people of Aflao as brothers and sisters, I've never seen someone so changed by the Gospel!

--Confirmation-When I was preparing to intern with EMI this summer one thing that I had to do was fill out my top three choices for the project trip I wanted to go on.  I looked through the different trip options, I knew I wanted to go to Africa and there just happened to be three tips to Africa.  As I looked through the needs of the trips and learned about the ministries that EMI was partnering with, I was drawn to the trips in Gabon and Uganda and to be honest, the trip in Ghana was my last choice.  I sat and waited for an email for a couple weeks, then I was honestly a little disappointed when I was assigned to Ghana.  The disappointment didn't last long, I really didn't have a ton to base my preferences on, but you know I got my last pick, I have to say I was bummed.

At some point during our trip, I was sitting in our hotel hanging out with everybody, working or playing seven up, pr maybe doing a little of both, I realized that if I had gotten any other trip assignment I wouldn't have been right there at that moment.  From surveying the new land, to spending time with the kid's at the orphanage, to seeing the work that God has done in Chris and Tammy's lives, to the relationships that God blessed me with on the team, God confirmed over and over again that I was on exactly the right trip.  I never would have chosen the trip I was on, but God did and I praise Him for it!

So yeah here are some sweet things God did in my life in Ghana, can't wait to share more with you as God puts them on my heart!

Hanging Out on the Coast

So after the rest of our team left, Becca, Nick, and I tagged along with John as he met with future ministry partners in the Accra area and did a little chillin too.  On Monday during the day we spent some time with George and his family.  I can't remember if I've mentioned George or not, but he was the electrical engineer on our team.  He's from Ghana and it was so cool to have him on our team, serving in his own country.

Quick side note about George: When I had heard that we were going to have a Ghanaian on our team, I really didn't know what to expect.  A big focus of our orientation week was how to prepare for cultural differences on our project trip.  We talked about how different and difficult it might be to work with nationals, so as I prepared to work with George I tried to be ready for anything.  When we met George and started working with him I was so pleasantly surprised.  First off, he's just a really great guy!  He and his wife Joyce were both great, so fun and a real picture of Ghanaian hospitality, so good to us the whole time we were there!  Also though, during the project it was great to have George's insight and expertise on the trip.  He was able to foresee problems we never would have thought of and was able to work with local officials comfortably in a way we never would have been able to as foreigners.  Also, I've got a pretty sweet story about George's experience with heart change on our team over the week, look for that in the next post!

Anyway, during the day Monday our group split up for a little while-Nick and John went to see the construction of George's new house and test his water there while Becca and I hung out at a school that George's mother-in-law headmasters.  After we hung out with Joyce's mom and enjoyed some fried plantain and peanuts (so good!) we visited a class of kids for a little while and sang with them.  Becca was in her element as I tagged along and was honestly a little overwhelmed by so many kids, but she handled it like a champ.  After we met back up with the guys we headed back into Accra for the evening for an info session for area engineers and architects to hear more about how they could get involved with EMI.  George had set this up for us before we got to Ghana and we had announced in on the radio the first day we were in Ghana and again Monday morning.  The session went so well!  We were a little nervous about how much interest there was going to be, but by the end of the night we realized there was no reason to be nervous.  The room that was reserved for the event was full and while we mingled with everyone after John gave a quick overview of EMI and answered all the questions people had, everyone we talked to seemed really excited about the potential to volunteer on upcoming projects like George did with us! (Up to date update: John has gotten so many call and emails from people who were at this meeting since we've gotten back!  He said he will definitely have a couple of them on his next team this fall and many more in future projects.)

Tuesday morning we went with John to some meetings for his next project.  A couple of the meetings were just outside Accra and then the other one was a while up the coast at a children's home.  The home was very similar to what we designed for the Jesse Brooks Foundation, except on a much larger scale.  It was really encouraging to see a children's home like the one Chris and Tammy envisioned for their own ministry done well, I hope that next time they come back to Ghana they can visit it.

After we walked around that children's home site, our work was officially done!  Because the children's home that we had driven to was already pretty far up the coast, we decided not to go back to Accra for the night, but instead we drove a little longer to spend the evening in Cape Coast to relax for our last night in Ghana. 

The next day (Wednesday) we planned to just sight see a little near Cape Coast and then head back to Accra to fly out that night.  To start the day off we went to Elmina, just a couple minutes from Cape Coast, to visit St. George's Castle.  The castle was built in 1482 and is the oldest European structure in Sub-Saharan Africa-sweet.  The castle was also built as a trading post and used for most of its life as one of Africa's primary slave trading posts, not sweet, actually pretty heavy.  I'm honestly a little unsure of what to say about this, it really was an amazing experience, but amazing in so many ways, very few of them being fun.  The way the slaves were treated, the quarters they were forced into, and the conditions of torture and rape they dealt with daily were unimaginable.  The whole time that Nick, Becca, and I were being led on a tour of the castle with a guide who worked there, I just kept thinking, "how does this guy give this tour every day?" Seriously, could you imagine being a Ghanaian, knowing that years ago if you lived in the same place you would be living in fear of foreign invaders who threaten every day to capture you and hold you as a prisoner in the worst conditions possible, before they ship you off on a crowded ship around the world, to a destination you may or may not live to see, to be traded like an animal as a slave to someone who is superior to you simply because of where they were born?  But, really, the hardest part of this experience for me was the fact that the Christian church had so readily married itself to the practice.  The Portuguese Church sat right in the middle of the castle's courtyard and doubled as the slave presentation/bargaining area, while the Dutch church was nestled conveniently above the female slaves' dungeons, and the missionaries' quarters were spread all over the second floor.  I know the Church exists in a fallen world and as humans we mess up a lot, but how did fathers get this so wrong?  I really am thankful for this experience, as challenging as it was, I know that in some small way it shaped me and I'm going to continue to process and learn from it.

Happily, our second destination of the day was a little less intense and a lot more fun.  We went to a canopy walk at Kakum National Park.  The canopy walk is a series of 7 rope bridges suspended between 8 trees, overlooking sweet jungle reserve!  As you walk almost a quarter of a mile you are at times 40 meters (about 130 ft) above the ground.  You can see tops over huge trees and walk between amazing Baobab trees!  Sometimes you can see moneys (sadly we didn't), but it was soo cool anyway!

Becca, Nick and me chillin on one of the stops between bridges!

Becca having fun on one of the bridges :)

After we finished the canopy walk we made our way back to Accra where George and Joyce saw us off at the airport.  We made our way back to the States pretty uneventfully and worked on getting caught up on sleep and re-entering America without hitting too hard of a wall.  Overall a great few weeks in Ghana with some awesome people!  Be looking out for on more Ghana post with some deeper thoughts and lessons, then hopefully one Colorado catch-up post and then I'll be blogging real time again-YAY!  Please feel free to post questions or comments!  I love hearing from people who are reading :)

Also, because I can, while we were in the Atlanta airport waiting for our flight to Denver, I met Richard Blais!  I know that means nothing to probably 90% of people reading, but he is my favorite, and realisitcally the best, chef to ever be on Top Chef (my favorite show!) and he won last season's "Top Chef: All-Stars" it was fun and I got a picture with him (huge shout-out to Miss Becca Agee for indulging me and taking this pic), so I'm sharing shamelessly :)