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!
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