We Worked Hard for the Next 3 Days! :)

What a wonderful looking crew in Africa at 7am excited to do school outreaches and spread the gospel! (We are just the Skateboarding ministry, there are over 70 amazing people partnering with the outreaches here with us!)

Hey everyone!

This is Delena writing and I wanted to let you all know about the last 3 days.

Jan 24-
Today we spent the day preparing drama skits and stuff to present to the schools. We spent time driving back and forth to different schools all around Accra to simply get permission to visit them later in the week. We didn't get to visit any schools today, so we were a little bummed, but God used the day to prepare us more spiritually. We also got to hand out GhanaFest flyers and witness to people in a scary,busy, and crazy market. And later in the day we were able to learn the skills of negotiation and bartering in a different market where we were able to shop with the money we brought to spend.

(Derek sharing his testimony in front of hundreds of students at a school - it was VERY hot out this day!)

Jan 25-
We started out the day very early loading on the bus to go to to visit a school during their morning chapel time. I was able to share my testimony in the first classroom and I had mentioned the foster children my family had taken in and how I didn't go down the same path that some of them had been on. To my surprise when the teacher recapped my testimony, she mentioned that I had been saved from prostitution. Well it made a good testimony even if it wasn't the exact truth. Brittni and I then went onto the next classroom where a preacher was giving the morning devotion. In that classroom, we shared the Gospel and many accepted Christ. We were both able to pray over those students. The other people in our group spread out to other classrooms and have their stories as well. We then went back to the market and had a little skate demo there and the people loved it. We helped them learn to stand on the skateboard and we even had eight people accept Jesus right there in the market. The next school we went to Dominic Balli did some songs and they loved it. The Gospel was preached then Brittni and I did our own little skate demo. I was able to give a board away to a boy named Clifford. The other team went to a different school and did a demo there. At the very end of the night, many of us tried to learn how to salsa dance. It was interesting and we all tried, but we didn't look at natural as the locals.

(Karen & Brittni spend some time with the some of the kids at a school outreach! Looks like the little girl in the middle wants to take Karens glasses!)

Jan 26-
We started the day off going to a school in the morning. We got called into the headmistress's offices and questioned about why we were there. They did let us speak afterwards though. Brittni spoke in a large classroom, I spoke in two classrooms, and Simeon got to speak in a classroom. It was amazing and God moved. They both the message and our skateboard demonstrations. Next we went to the Metro TV station. We had to wait a little while so we went out on the streets and passed out flyers and talked to people about Jesus. When we came back to the station D-Shatt was interviewed and Brittni, Simeon, John (the BMX guy), and I did tricks for the camera on live TV. It was broadcasted nationwide and we do not even know what impact we made with sharing the Gospel on TV. In the afternoon, we went a high school. The Gospel was shared again and more skating/BMX happened. The kids loved it and many accepted Christ. Dave, Andy, D-Shatt, Dave and others helped move the skate ramps over to Independence Square for the festival tomorrow. Dave, Dave, and Andy spent most of the week building them at Francis's house. We are very thankful for all the hard work that they put it doing that.

(Dave Brouse got to minister to these men as we were walking on the streets handing out GhanaFest flyers -  he ended up giving them flyers, bibles, and T-shirts! Also, notice the police officer with the gun!)

(Here we all wait inside and out of the heat, getting ready to be interviewed for Metro TV - to share Jesus and skateboarding with the entire country of Ghana!)


God bless all of you that are reading this and praying for us. We really appreciate it. Continue to pray that souls will come to know Jesus through Ghanafest this weekend.

First Full day in Accra Ghana!

First and foremost, I want to apologize if this blog is not updated every day as we would like it to be. Although we have Internet in our hotel – the Internet is VERY limited, and VERY slow. But, we will update it as often as we can, and throughout the week we will have different members of our team share some of their experiences.

It was a God sized dream and challenge for us to be apart of this amazing event – and it is AMAZING to see how God has prepared us for this trip, and how He has provide us with everything we need to get here!

Today was our first full day in Accra Ghana!  It's been an amazing pleasure to meet everyone who has come to be apart of this event with Come Alive, Compassion International, the Reid Sauders Association, and Creation Festival. There are about 70 of us from different states! The crew split up into different outreach ministries for the day. Karen and Dave S. had the privilege of traveling with the Medical team to serve and pray with the patients in the clinics. Dave B. spent the day in the marketplace with a few nationals to help him buy the plywood and other supplies we need to build our skateboard ramps for the festival at the end of the week.  The rest of our team, Brittni, Delena, Simeon, D-Shat, and Andy spent the day at one of the local schools ministering to the kids there!

Because I (Brittni) had the privilege of being at the school today – I will tell you what we got to experience! There were 20 of us who packed all our equipment into the van and journeyed off to the first school. The travel there was an experience in itself, but it was incredible! There are NO traffic laws in Ghana, and cars have the right of way. The street venders don't just stand on the side of the road, but they run up to your car windows, or sometimes they even chase your car to try and sell you something.  The traffic here, according to us, was bad. It was busy, bumpy, and rough. But according to someone who lives in Accra, the traffic was good today. We passed over a river on our way there, but in our eyes this would never look like a river we’d ever see in the United States. It was FLOODED with trash, to the point this ‘flowing’ river, looked like a giant sewage or swamp. It breaks my heart to even look at this. 

We pulled into the school and were swarmed with over 1,500 students roughly from the age of 5 to 15. These kids were EXCITED to see us! They were jumping up and down, waving, smiling, dancing, and just overly filled with joy that we were at their school! When we first got off the van a few students ran over to introduce themselves and shake our hands, but before we knew it, we were SWARMED with hundreds of kids surrounding us just to touch us, shake our hands, hug us, and talk to us. After introducing ourselves to as many kids as we could at one time, we preformed two skits. It was touch performing the skits, merely because the kids were still very rowdy and talkative, and our sound system was not big enough to project enough sound to reach the amount of kids we had. You could tell though, that they were still looking, and focused on what you were doing, especially when one of our members got to speak and share her testimony and another member share the gospel.

(Here are just a few kids who wanted to give me (Brittni) a warm welcome To Ghana!)

Myself, along with D-Shat and Simeon put on a "small" skateboard performance. There wasn't much to skate on because most of the ground was dirt, but we did do a few tricks on a small slab of pavement near the classrooms. To these kids, landing any trick - you are like a celebrity to them! They are screaming, and jumping up and down, and wanting to get involved in any way they can! The moment we stepped off the platform they just about tackled us.

(Simeon and D-Shat (Derek) bust out some sweet skate moves to show the kids!)

I LOVE that I am able to speak my own language here. Just speaking with the kids and seeing their smiles, it melted my heart in a way it's never been melted before. They are so happy, even though they have so little. Leaving the school was hard. It was hard for the kids too. They ran after our van, some of the boys were even holding onto the back of the van as we drove away, and they were pounding on our windows and waving until the very last second that we pulled out and the gate was shut.

(All the Kids wanted to see D-Shats hat!)

I am more than excited to see what God is going to Continue to do throughout the rest of this week!

Please pray that God continues to not only prepare our hearts, but to prepare the hearts of those we are to reach with the gospel and those we are about to serve. Pray against sickness, fear, doubt, and exhaustion. For God is with us, and the devil has absolutely no hold against us!

For God said,
"Never will I leave you; Never will I forsake you."

So we say with confidence,
"The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.
What can mere mortals do to me?"
(Hebrews 13:5-6)

Airport excitement and waiting!

The Underground Skatepark team is off! We are finally beginning our journey to the wonderful and beautiful country of Ghana Africa! It's amazing to think about how God has prepared our hearts and minds this past two months for the journey of a life time! We are putting on the full armor of God as we are gathered in prayer here in Dulles as we wait to board our flight - our flight has had a delay now for the past 2 hours - so we've been at Dulles now waiting for a good 5 hours. But we are still excited to be boarding the plane, our 10 hour journey, because we know that God is going to continue to do miraculous things! We are standing firm on Ephesians 6:10-18 and trusting God!