Early Friday morning it was off to the airport before sunrise to fly back to Indiana. This is Accra, the largest city and capital of Ghana, as we climb out. -Bittersweet to be leaving with such fond memories of all the people we worked with.

Thursday was a travel day to get from the Central Kumasi to the very Southern Accra for our Friday flight home. We departed at 5:30am to allow enough time for a short side trip to Cape Coast, the epicenter of the slave trading. Along the way we stopped at the Kakum National Park for a walk in the treetops. This is a series of rope bridges stretched between the tallest of the trees in the rain forest. (yes, it rained on us...) What a view!

Here is a clip of the Crusade at DKC (the abbreviation for a very long name) on Saturday night. We just had to play with a little video! I'm giving the message of salvation and Isaac is translating. If you have a fast connection, give it a try. -Glenn

Here we are with the team of guys doing most of the construction.

The purlins up, we're almost ready for the metal roof. Two more days and we'll be done!

Midday Wednesday on the construction project, we surpassed the point where we were when the storm took down our work. Now we are moving forward again!

Here Sue is talking with Julia, the librarian at the Reading Town Library in the large main reading room.

The inside of the library...

Next we visited the Reading Town Library in Ankaase that Anne has championed over the years. What a beautiful facility!

Doctors seeing patients in the "out patient" part of the hospital. Of significant note here is the young doctor on the left behind the desk. He and Joseph recognized each other. They met during an evangelistic event about ten years ago when Joseph was presenting to a group of GAMSU (Ghana Association of Methodist Student Union) which is like our Wesley Foundation. It's good to see God is still at work in his life!

Tuesday we took time off from construction to drive out to Ankassi to see the work that Cam and Anne Gongwer have been doing. This is a shot in the childrens ward of the Ankassi Methodist teaching hospital. We met the administrator and some of the staff. The "waiting area" was jammed, which we understand is normal every day.

Monday we were back out working with the children while the men were rebuilding the roof. They love the color pages and are doing better at sharing crayons. They enjoy us coloring with them.

Tony, Tony! (more on this later!)

Repaired trusses going up (again!) The masonary repairs will follow...

Friday we had an enormous storm. Much of the work that had been done to raise the trusses on the new roof was blown down. Here you can see they also took the masonry gable top on the East end with them. We are praising God, because we know that the forces of darkness are attempting to prevent what is happening here, or to bring discouragement. Well, everyone is just picking up and moving forward. We had raised a little extra money, so we just sent additional materials to the work site and they are making repairs and continuing on. You can see here the progress has been set back a number of days. PRAISE GOD there was not further damage!

Praying during the Crusade at Bornwire. Well over a thousand came and joined in a great circle around the screen. Pastors from each church participated and Joseph presented the message.

Sunday night, we added a third Crusade venue to our schedule. Joseph and our team went out to Bornwire for an all-church event in the middle of town. They have wanted to have something for some time. Here you can see the movie we were running and all the children that moved up to sit right in front of the screen.

Tony and Karen presented a bicycle and bibles to the caretaker pastor Isaac at the church during the service.

Tony preaching the message at Adomquame. Isaac is translating. Until the roof is finished, they meet in the nearby Methodist school.

This is the closing prayer at the first service of the newly planted church at DKC on Sunday morning.

Here is Glenn giving a word of encouragement to the new Church members at DKC Methodist Church. They have a very good beginning, and strong leaders in place. -Sue

These are the kids in the first ever Sunday School class at the new DKC Methodists Church along with their teacher. -Sue

After a showing of a portion of the film, "The Passion of the Christ", I gave a summary about God's gift of grace, and an invitation. -Glenn

The man in orange is Eddie, our friend and sometimes our driver. He is praying with the new adult converts at DKC. -Glenn

In this photo, you can see some of the progress that the church at Mim has made on their church building. They added a locking room for storing their chairs and musical instruments They built a chancel, and have about 1/3 of the room in concrete. We know that they plan to put an office for the pastor across from the store room, and they have a lot of concrete blocks made and sitting in the yard. They clearly have big plans for their church! (There I am, preaching) - Sue

Most of the members of the church at Mim fit into this photo. There were about 36 adults at worship. The pastor with whom we worked to construct the Pavilion last year has passed away, and a young man from the congregation, Osay (spelling?) has been named the new Caretaker. The church is pressing on. -Sue

The keyboard that Karen used all week with the children was given to the congregation at Mim Methodist Church. Previously, they owned a broken keyboard and their praise band consisted of drums. The music team was very eager to try it out. -Glenn

This is me, preaching at the church at Mim. Joseph is translating. Note the nice cool breeze! - Sue

The medical clinic at DKC saw 518 people at last count. There may have been more. - Glenn

Coloring space is limited, but enthusiasm is not lacking. - Karen

Color contrast of God's creation. Skin color makes no difference in the kingdom of God. - Karen

The children loved the color pages and are so proud of them. - Karen

My new friend, Dominic sharing the story about "Let the little children come unto me". - Karen

We are enjoying the babies! - Karen

The medical clinic we set up in the village for two days treated 510 villagers for everything from high blood pressure, head lice and worms to malaria. We were able to serve everyone who came!

This is doing music with the children, and Esther, Pastor Joseph's daughter, is interpreting for me. She is such a blessing! Songs like Jesus Loves Me, This Little Light of Mine. etc. Tony and Karen

We are doing color pages, and the children really enjoy the crayons - many colors....Notice the baby on her sister's back. This is the way the babies are carried. Imagine 130 children in this room and trying to pass out all the materials!! Karen and Tony

In this picture, we are playing with the children with the soccer ball and frisbees! They are an energetic group!! Karen and Tony

Each night of the Crusades, there were just so many children! They mobbed us wherever we went, watched the movie with great interest and just wanted to hold our hands, touch and be touched. We have so many great pictures that we will need to share once we return.

I (Glenn) presented a short message the second night and a longer message with a summary of the Jesus film and a short personal witness on the final night of this first Crusade. We'll get the final numbers later but our rough count was over 50 saved! -and about two hundred children on fire! We have a lot of new friends here!

The first night of the Crusade, I gave a simple Gospel witness. Here I am with Isaac, our evangelist/translator. I told my story wrapped around the Gospel, and 26 people answered the altar call. Praise God! - Sue

Construction has been going well on the new church building. Trusses are going up and soon they will have the roof complete!

WOW! What a crazy busy past few days! The Lord is in this place! Amazing things are happening with the people of the village, the children and the souls being saved! We all feel so blessed to just be here with these people.

We haven't had much time to post here the past few days but it should be much better going forward. We are so thankful that we figured out how to get some of these pictures uploaded so you can see what is going on. The first Crusade is finished with over 50 new names added to the Book of Life! Hundreds attended each night, especially when we ran the Jesus film on a big sheet in the middle of the village!

Greetings from Kumasi, Ghana!

MaChee! (good morning) Well, if there is one thing we have learned about missions work - be flexible! We have already been hard at work building scaffolding and constructing the roof on the Amadum-Adankwame church building. Upon arriving here we found that we needed to rearrange out schedule to better accommodate the needs of the church over here. The days for our activities have been move around a bit so if you are praying for specific things, please use this schedule:

Tuesday (yesterday) Construction, The first Crusade begins - Sue preaching.
Wednesday - Construction, Medical Clinic start, Children's Ministry, second night of the first Crusade with the movie, The Passion of Christ" with commentary and preaching.
Thursday - Construction, Medical Clinics, etc. continue throughout the day. Last night of the first Crusade - Glenn bringing the message.
Friday we go to the second village and repeat the process (rather than starting the second one next Monday. The schedule change was because they needed the church to be fully planted by Sunday for dedication.
Saturday - Second day of Medical Clinics, Children's Ministry and the second night of this Crusade.
Sunday - Worship at Mim with the congregation that we worked with last year. Rest and then the last night of Crusades.
Monday through Wednesday - We continue the building construction - hopefully to completion!
Thursday will be our day off and travel down to the coast to be ready for our early Friday morning Flight.

So for yesterday:
We meet the pastor and many parishioners in Amadum-Adankwame Methodist church who came out to meet us and thank us for blessing them and answering their prayers. Making friends with lots of village children. They wore Karen and Sue out! They are also helping us to learn Twi so we can talk with them in their language. Building construction during the day for Tony and I. Hot sun but very productive! We are building trusses up on the roof (too large to construct on the ground and lift up two stories). That meant we had to build a scaffold work area and a way to move the trusses out into position as part of the process. Very primitive technique but effective. Yabua (my carpenter friend from last year is most excellent). We hope to upload some current pictures in the next day or two of what we are up to.

The Crusade was in "town square" last night. Much singing and dancing as we got started. Joseph and the District Superintendent introduced us and I introduced the team. Prayer and them Sue's message. Issac, a new Evangelist friend of Joseph was the translator and did a great job! Many came forward to be saved Praise God! All the children want to join in of course! We'll have numbers for the harvest each day sometime a little later as we gather all the details from the pastor and the praise team. More music and prayer and then back to the mission house for rest!

We stopped in at an internet cafe' this morning on the way to the site to leave this update. Thank to all of you that got the word late yesterday about the changes and prayed during the Crusade. Many were added to the book of life yesterday!

More later,
Glenn & the team

Dear Friends,

You might remember that about a year ago Glenn and I traveled to Ghana, West Africa to plant churches with Ghanaian Evangelist Joseph Otsin, and American Evangelist Cecil Williamson. We both gave personal testimonies as a part of the evangelistic crusades and then worked to build a pavilion, providing another village a place to worship. The trip was a wonderful and fulfilling experience! Working along side native people groups on the front lines of God’s work is an amazing and humbling experience. We also learned a great deal about how our congregation can help keep the church planting ministry going by partnering with Joseph in the years to come.

Let me give you some detail about how the trip turned out. There are now 11 new Methodist congregations in the Brong-Ahafo region of Ghana. Well over 2,000 men, women and children received salvation during the Crusades. The churches are being served by the Local Pastors that Joseph trained as a part of this ministry. The pastors each received Bibles, discipleship training materials, and a new bicycle with which to serve their congregation. These pastors’ salaries will be paid for three years to give the new congregations time to get established. The people of the rural villages, who generally lack medical attention, received medical care each day of the crusade from the nurses who accompanied our team. Additionally, a new church pavilion now stands in the village of Mim, the start of a new church building.

You may also recall that we asked for your prayer support during the trip. I believe that the prayers that you offered for Glenn and I and for the church planting effort made a huge difference in the success of the trip, as well as for our personal health and safety. Glenn and I never became ill or suffered in any way from food or water issues, even after the villagers in Mim insisted that we eat the strange food that they had prepared as a sign of good will and community! We slept restfully, even on the nights with the worst “bed” you’ve ever seen. We did not battle malaria, even though I personally had at least a dozen mosquito bites. We did not sunburn or suffer heat exhaustion even though we were very close to the equator and IT WAS HOT! I know that I should have burned. Glenn worked in the hot sun with the church members of Mim for several days when building the pavilion. He did not suffer heat exhaustion and did not even so much as tan. While you prayed about the success of the crusades, I also know that some of you were offering specific prayers about our health, our ability to rest, and about the heat and sun. For that we deeply thank you.

So this year, we return to continue the work we have begun. We are again asking for your prayer support. This time Glenn and I are not going with Cecil’s group but with another couple from Dayton United Methodist. We are planning to leave on April 26 to the Ashanti region of Ghana where we will be going through the same process of crusades and church planting that we learned last year. This trip we are going with Tony and Karen Gascho, Joseph and our Ghanaian nurses. We will hold crusades in 2 villages, continue the medical clinics and help build a roof for a previously started church, all with the blessing of the Methodist Church of Ghana. Glenn and I will need to be the evangelists this year. It will be up to us to present the Gospel to the villagers. Please pray like crazy that the Holy Spirit will help us prepare and will get behind the words that come out of our mouths so that many of the villagers receive salvation. Oh, and please pray for our protection. Here is our schedule to make it easy to pray more specifically:

Sunday and Monday (April 26 & 27)– Fly from Indy to Accra then on to Kumasi

Tuesday – Recover from jet lag and acclimate to Kumasi

Wednesday through Friday – Medical missions and roof construction during the day Evangelistic Crusades in the evenings, (from about 2:00 - 5:00 PM Lafayette time)

Saturday – Construction Sunday – Worship with our new 2008 friends at the church in Mim, and then rest

Monday through Wednesday – Medical missions and construction Evangelistic Crusades in the evenings, (from about 2:00 - 5:00 PM Lafayette time)

Thursday – construction Friday (May 8) – travel home (from 3:00 am until about 12:00 midnight Lafayette time)

We will try to update this blog each day but maybe only every other day. Computer access is difficult in the area we will be. We’d love to hear back from you that you will be praying for us.

Thanks so much and may God bless you!

Love in Christ, Sue, Glenn, Tony & Karen