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)