Wednesday afternoon, June 8, 2005

Rudy and I were met at the airport in Accra, Ghana by David Eussman, the director of Swedru International Bible Institute, an associate school in the Sunset International family of ministry training schools.

Accra is a very large city with bumper-to-bumper traffic pretty much all the time. Just as the traveler finally nears the edge of the city he encounters a very large market area that further snarls traffic. Swedru is probably not much over an hour from Accra not counting traffic. With traffic, it is anybody’s guess.

Our first stop was at the Village of Hope to pick up the rest of our luggage. I was in hopes we might stay there long enough to get a shower with actual warm water, but David was anxious to get home. Besides, they have running water in Swedru ------sometimes. It seems that their population has completely outgrown their water delivery system so they always run out of water every afternoon and the supply catches up and becomes available again sometime the following morning. It is not that there is a shortage of water, only that they can’t deliver it fast enough.

David, a native of Ghana, is also a graduate of the Sunset International Bible Institute in Lubbock. While in America he learned our style of cooking. Not only is he a good cook, but Dorothy, his wife, blends African and American styles into a marvelous meal.

Wow, a western bed in a house with screened windows and with ceiling fans in every room, what a luxury. Not even our neighbor’s loud radio, the robust Muslim call to prayer, or the frenzied Pentecostal service that extended well into the night could rob me of the best sleep I have enjoyed in days.

Thursday was a very leisurely day. We visited the facility that houses the Swedru International Bible Institute and saw a great deal of the rather large city of Swedru.

Friday we spent the entire day teaching the students and some of the graduates who returned for our visit. David uses VHS tapes of the Sunset International curriculum being taught by the Lubbock faculty to do most of the teaching in his school. The students were eager to learn and they had lots of questions about the Lubbock faculty they only knew by way of video classes. They talked about the teachers who talked funny, or talked too fast, or who were too hard, but it was apparent that they loved all of them.

Saturday David took us about 2 hours inland to the city of Kibi to visit with Franklin and Cecilia Boafo. Franklin is a preacher who has planted several congregations around the Kibi area and who wants to establish an extension school using the VHS tapes that David uses. To be able to do this, he needs to have someone provide a television set and a VHS player. He has located a building that can be rented very reasonably that can be used for classrooms and for student housing.

Cecilia helps support the family with a home-based bread baking business.
Since transportation is so expensive in Africa, most people resort to walking most of the time. David plans to plant 4 churches in Swedru, one in each corner of the city, to make them more accessible. Two of the congregations are well established, one just started the week before we arrived and one is still in the planning stages.

We attended the second congregation Sunday morning. Like many of the religious organizations in Africa, the churches meet in school facilities. The place we met was filled to capacity and people were standing outside looking in through the large window openings. I taught a Bible class and Rudy presented the sermon.

The school building where we met is made up of 4 rooms, all with large open windows on two sides for maximum ventilation. We used the first two rooms then there was one vacant room. The forth room was used by a Pentecostal preacher and a total of 5 members. Unfortunately, he set up 4 large speakers in the window and cranked up a PA system as loud as it would go as he proceeded to rant and rave, chomp and chant, and stomp and shout. He had been asked several times to respect our services and the services of another religious group that was meeting in a school building about 100 yards on the other side of him, but he chooses to exercise his right to be obnoxious week after week.

Our brethren have purchased land to build their own building but without some outside help it will be years before they will be able to accomplish it.

Following a nice meal at Swedru’s premier hotel, we loaded up David’s car with our luggage and began the 30 hour trip home. Well, it would have been 30 hours if I had not spent an extra 4 hours in Amsterdam, first waiting for our plane to be repaired then waiting for a replacement plane to be brought in. Of course, it is always better to wait on the ground for a plane repair than to be in the air and need a repair.