We took two vehicles out to Kulkpeni this morning to pick up the church members that were going to attend the mini seminar that was being held at Jagrido. Jagrido is only about 12 miles from Yendi. It took us longer to load the people than it did to get to the village. Please! We even had to wait on some of them to finish dressing before we could leave. Everything runs on Ghanaian time so no one gets in a hurry to do anything. Even after we arrived late at Jagrido we still had plenty of time to go and visit the chief. Then we sat in the hot, hot church building for an hour waiting on the people to come from the neighboring villages. There were lots of children sitting there looking at us so Steve decided to teach them a short Bible lesson while we were waiting for the others to arrive. He taught them the story of Ehud and Eglon the fat king who was disemboweled. The adults were just as interested in the story as the children.
There are 5 congregations in that area but only 4 were able to attend the mini seminar. There were a total of 220 people at the seminar; this number also includes children. When Steve started teaching the seminar he dismissed the children so they could go and play. They were happy to get out of the hot church building. I felt like going outside with them.
The organizers of the seminar requested a lesson on church finances and how to get the people to give more. After Steve’s lesson he did the same thing that he did at the seminar last month; he divided them into 4 groups and gave them paper and pens so they could brain storm about how to help the church grow financially. While we were waiting on the groups to finish their paper work we noticed a storm forming. Timothy said that we only had about 20 or 30 minutes before the storm got to us. Sure enough the rain came and it came heavily. Everyone was so happy to see the rain that they did not care that it was difficult to hear because of the rain on the tin roof. The church building has no ceiling.
We even got lots of rain in Yendi! We are happy that the reservoir is ½ full again. The farmers are happy because the rain situation was getting serious.
The ladies fed everyone that attended a nice lunch of rice with tomato oil and a couple small pieces of fish. Lunch was packed in plastic bags. Most of the people that rode back to Yendi with us carried part of their lunch home with them.
When we came to Jagrido some of the people were riding in the back of the pickup but on the way back we crammed everyone inside the vehicles because it was still sprinkling and no one wanted to get wet.
Thank you for all you do for us and for the work.
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
