Ghana Mission 2025

Today our early morning coffee table laughter gave way to somber faces as we looked to the day ahead. Half of our traveling family is leaving us to return to the US.  We have one last church service together - a joyous celebration in Kpando - and then, after lunch, Willie, Grady, Jill, Dick, and Glenn board the van to Accra to prepare for their long flights home.  When we arrive in Ghana we receive a wonderful welcome.  We are made to feel as if we are home.  Those words don't do it justice. It is impossible to write descriptively enough to help you understand how much the EP Church and the Kekeli Hotel community are our home. As Willie says, "Unless you see, smell it, taste it, feel it we cannot explain it well enough for you to understand it."   If you see us together, anyone who has ever been part of this traveling family, we fall in to the rhythm of peace and homecoming when we talk about Ghana. We don't mean for it to be an exclusive club, but there is...

  To begin our visit in Santrokofi Gbodome, Rev Elisha Emmanuel Attu took us to his family lands to view the site of his planned home and senior park. The lands belonged to his father, which he divided among his children. On Rev. Elisha's portion of the land, he is building a home where he and his wife will settle after finishing his work.  Our little caravan wound down a rutted path to a clearing where a foundation and courses of cement block are beginning to take the shape of a home.  Rev. Elisha proudly showed off the palm, mango, and orange trees he had planted and shared his vision with us.  The home is slowly being built as time and funds allow.  The home is modest, with enough rooms for he and his wife Christine and the children he is raising.  The view from the upper rooms will be beautiful as it looks over a valley.  As he described his plans, you could see benches and tables set under sprawling mango branches where elders from his village pla...

 We made a visit to the Tafi Atome Monkey Sanctuary this morning on our way to Santrakofi Gbodome. The monkeys did not disappoint! Our guide, Sylvester, provided a wonderful description of the True Mona Monkeys and the village that is their sanctuary. True Mona monkeys are a species that only lives in this part of Ghana. They are identified as "true" by two white patches of fur at the base of their tails. Other Mona monkeys live in northern Ghana and Cameroon.  The villagers of Tafi Atome have migrated from the north and they strongly believe that the monkeys are messengers for their ancestral gods in their homeland. They protect the monkeys and do not kill them or abuse them in any way.  The monkeys are free-roaming.  They do not live in cages and are welcomed into homes and throughout the village as signs of the presence of their ancestral gods. The Sanctuary is developed as a tourist attraction and charges a nominal fee for visitors. The fee supports the villages ...

  This writer found a pleasant surprise at the EP Church Vocational Center, known to us as the Women's Resources Center.  It is known locally as the Hoffmann Vocational Institute. Granted, the spelling is not the same as mine, but it is pretty cool to see your last name on a building whose mission is so close to my own.  Some of you may know that I am an educator who has been focusing on career development and vocational skills in my career.   We visited the Vocational Center for less than 30 minutes at the end of a very long drive back from Kpando. It was an unexpected addition to the day's schedule.  Our original plan was to visit the center on Monday, but they were on a school break and didn't resume classes until Tuesday. To accommodate our schedule, the young women stayed in classes past their 3pm dismissal time.  They sang their alma mater song for us and we offered a donation of baby kits and feminine products. Our delegation was delighted with ...

  The Kpando EP Church School visit is a primary focus for our trip.  Mill Creek Church of the Brethren built the first primary school block on the site and on this trip we are dedicating the renovations and rehabilitation of the school block that Mill Creek Church sponsored over the past four years.  Also on the site is the Elzie & Carrie Morris Memorial Library and a computer lab installed for the junior high school.  Everyone on this trip has a stake in the school at Kpando and we were very happy with our visit today. We planned to spend the day in Kpando and arrived to find the school in session and teeming with children in green shirts and dresses.  It was such a wonderful sight!  There was a miscommunication of when we were arriving and the teachers weren’t expecting us until Sunday, but we found them to be fully and wonderfully accommodating.  We must have arrived during a recess period and the children welcomed us into their midst by posing...

  Anyone who travels can tell tales of the traffic in the places they are visiting. It is always interesting because it is different from our normal commutes. Travel in Ghana bears striking similarities and some stark differences to driving in the US.  First, we drive on the right side of the road in Ghana, just like the US. There are Toyotas and Land Rovers, Nissans and Subarus. There are even some F-150s and GMC trucks. (I personally haven't seen a Chevy - and I'm sure some of our readers have something to say about that!) We see a lot of 3-wheeled moped carts, motorcycles, and bicycles.  The roads are often divided by a single white line to mark the lanes. Sometimes it is dotted to indicate a passing zone, but really it is all a passing zone. Each lane can hold an average of 1 1/2 to 3 vehicles at a time. Traffic circles are highly prevalent, and it can feel like that scene in National Lampoon's European Vacation where Chevy Chase gets caught driving in the circle all...