New Year's Service

New Year's is always a big time here in Ghana. Many people come to church that would never come to church any other time. It is a great time to invite people to church. Also it is a good time for people to see the difference between religion and faith. Each year there are many new visitor. Here are a few pictures from our activities.

Patty and I before service

Relay races

Giving instructions during games. This is Richard one of our converts and a man that helps at our services.

Broom Ball Relay

Up and Down- a team game

Preaching service, the rechargeable light went out early, but thanks to Veronica we had a small light to finish with.

The nursery

Camp fire and testimony and decision time.

New Tent

The people that attend our weekly Bible Study in Ahensan have taken another step. The Bible Study has been meeting underneath a tree for about a year and half. Since the rains have started, and the old shop that we used to use is now occupied, we were in need of place to go when it rains. The people were able to raise the money (about 100 dollars). The decision was made to buy a tent. It is a large 20 foot by 30 foot tent. It will help to keep the rains off, and when this Bible Study has a more permanent location it will be able to be moved.

The canopy has been used for three weeks now. The Lord was kind in allowing the rains to hold off until the tent was finished. That is another story in and of its self. It took about a month to finish, but it is here and everyone is happy.

Here are a few photos-

Bringing in the New Year

2009 was a good year. During its 365 days there where some lows and highs. Though these lows where difficult they also where helpful and life changing. It is amazing how the Lord uses the lows to prepare for the high times. Overall He seems to follow the verses in Isaiah 40:4-5 "Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it".

God uses our weakness to keep us from getting proud about our strengths and uses our strengthens to overcome our weaknesses. Though this year started out with times of weakness it has been able to end in ways that bring great glory to God. It seems that that is His goal Hgains glory.

The year started off with our new friends arriving from America. They started out the year totally dependant, and the Lord has used that do build their dependance on Him. Our own family started the year with dealing with our own spiritual weaknesses, but where allowed by God to brake through these areas and move to higher plains.

All these ups and downs have led us out of 2009 and into 2010. Here in Ghana, it is a modern cultural practice for most people to attend church on the New Year. Even people that do not go to church at all during the year attend.

Since seeing the important that people place on this new years time, the Bible Study tries to use it as an opportunity to reach people for the Lord. This year was no different. The annual service started at 8:00 pm. It was kicked off with our normal song service and then Pastor Andrew preached. The people listened well, and by about 9:00 pm most of the people had arrived.

From about 9:00 pm until 11:00 pm we had activities and games. One thing that Christians here do not see is that a Christian can be serious about God, and still have fun. Most people think that the fun is in the world and that the Christian just prays and speaks in tongues (what almost all the 'christian' in Ghana do). Many of them live two lives: the 'spiritual' one of church and the 'fun' one of the world. On these nights were the services are so long, games are added to the schedule so that people can see that it is enjoyable to be a Christian.


The people really enjoyed the game time, and it greatly helped the younger people to stay awake until the later hours. It started off with Bible Drills. Then we split everyone into teams. Each team has an appointed captain. This allows our faithful men to develop leadership skills in a casual way. Then a shoe realy game was played. Each person has to take off their shoes and then they have to put them back on when their number is called. After the shoe game was played the games "Candy Catch" was next. Each time selects two people to throw candy into someones mouth. The pair with the most candy caught wins.

The next game that we played was "Orange Pass". (No, the men are no necking!) All the men in each group where lined up then they where given an orange for each team. The rules where such that they had to pass the orange from person to person only using their necks to hold the orange. This was a great game, everyone was laughing and almost rolling on the floor.
After passing the oranges around, each team picked one person to play the next game. The next game consisted of drink all the liquid out of an unripened lemon. (For those that have never seen a African lemon, they are very big, and very sore). It was hilarious to watch the guys as they tried to drink the juice from their lemons.

The final game that was played was broom hockey. Now do not think that when the term broom is used that it refers to the classic American style broom. This word refers to something totally different here. The local brooms of Ghana, are hard, dry grass stems. They are about two feet in length and are tied at one end with a string. These local broom are used every where and are very cheap. They make excellent paying sticks for our game. Also the girls are better at using them then the boys, so this gives them an advantage that they do not normally have when playing active games.
After about 1 hour of hard fought play, there was a winner, and everyone was ready to sit down for a while. After the games we sang a few songs and then had are second time of preaching. I preached using the flannel graph pictures that the Bible study has. The passage was found in Acts. I preached about the time when Paul had preached the gospel to the people of Corinth. After their conversion, many of them burned idols and items in their homes that did not please the Lord. I encourage them to remove things in their life that would not please God. Though many of them where saved, they would not truly experience freedom in Christ until these items, influences, and idols where removed.

One older custom in the Akan culture was able to be used during our Watch Night service, that went along very well with our preaching. In the older days around the Akan new year the people would clean out their homes. During this time they would remove all old clothes, broken things, and anything that would make the people of the home dirty. These items would be taken outside and burned. Even today, on the 31st night a person can see many people burning tires and house items. On the 31st I used this idea to help with the preaching. Each person was given a piece of paper (since some of our people cannot write, we did not ask them to write on it). They where told to think of physical things and spiritual things in their lives that did not please God, and told to tell God that they would remove them. Like the people of Corinth, they where to burn them (the paper was given to represent these things that offend). It was excite to watch as the people seriously thought and one by one placed their papers in the fire.

After most everyone burned their papers, the adults where allowed to give testimony. It was so encouraging to hear some many tell about their new faith in Christ. Even one woman, gave testimony about the great change she has seen in her husband (He is a security guard and could not attend, and she is not yet converted). After each adult gave testimony, each person prayed in the new year.

The light of that fire was so warm and inviting (it was kind of cold that night, in African terms). It was such a blessing to experience that close family spirit that only comes with a group of true believers. Though the year had its low times, we each know that it has been preparation for this wonderful high time that ended 2009.

Our 3rd Baptism Service

Today we had our third baptismal service. We had two men that where baptized. The service before hand went very well. The spirit in the singing time was wonderful, and we had many people in attendance. It was nice to have most of our believers together this morning.

Here are a few family pictures from before church.

This is the vehicle that we used to go to baptisms.

The first man that was baptized was Robert. He was invited by his 'wife', who is friend of Martha, a women that we have written about before. After attending for months now, and after finishing our salvation Bible study, he decided to get baptized.

Please pray for Robert, he attends faithfully on Sunday morning, but has a job as a night security man, and cannot attend the evening meetings. Pray for his 'wife'. He has been able to pay the bride price and the money for his nine month old son. He had been separated from his 'wife' for months, while he was trying to get the money to pay her father. While in the Northern part of Ghana, Alice, his wife, became very sick. Please pray for her and the baby to regain strength, and to come to a saving understanding of Jesus Christ.

Robert's Baptism Pictures

The second man that was baptized, was named Isaac. Isaac is a young community college study. We meet him through Kofi Nkurmah, a young Baptist university student, that used to help me translate. After meeting him, and having him attend a service, Andrew started a salvation Bible study with him. Andrew had the great privilege of leading him to Christ. Since then he has attending very faithfully on the Sunday services. Also he has been able to hep will visitation, and translation in some of the church activities. Continue to pray for him, and for some of his friends that he has been able to bring to services.

Isaac's Baptism Pictures

Our Visitor at Church

Well, we have experienced another first as missionaries. Sunday morning, we had a great time at the Bible studies. Almost all our people attending, and there was a great spirit in the meetings. We also had the blessing one of our taxi drivers attending. He drivers for us each Monday when we go to town. Mr. Owusu-Bempa is a retired forestry officers, that has bought a car to use for money for retirement. He has become good friends with our family, and it was a great blessing to see him come to the studies.

But, in the midst of all this blessing, we where able to notch another experience off on our missionary belt. Right in the middle of our first hour Bible study a dog watch in the school room. At first it just sat under a desk, but then after about 2 minutes it started to bark. When one of our young men tried to shoo the dog out, it reed back, started barking, and acting very strange for a dog here. Everything stopped, and everyone started running away form the dog, because they understand that it had 'poison', that is the local way they call rabies here.

I figured it would be better for me to get bite as apposed to others in the Bible study. A couple men, keep trying to pull its tail to get it to go out, and I was afraid they would get bite. Most would wait to go to the doctor if they had been bitten, and have little money to pay for doctor's bills. So we got one of the really big rocks that we use to keep the school doors open, and chucked it at the dog. That did the trick! Being crazy, he did not know where it was coming from, and ran away.

Patty told me that it tried to get into their Sunday school room, but she locked the doors. Finally the other 'church' that meets on our school block had the joy of it visiting them also. The pastor had to chase it off with a stick. So in the middle of our really good Sunday, we had a lot of excitement.

As my uncle Mark Sommer jokingly reminded me, if we had remembered Philippians 3:2 "Beware of dogs..." maybe we would have been more prepared. So if the future I might need to remind our prayer partners to remember pray that we have no rabid dogs visit our Bible Studies in the future.