Steve left the house about 9:00 this morning to teach at the monthly evangelist / church leaders’ class. They continued last month’s topic about Church independence. Autonomy is a difficult concept for them to grasp because they live in such a communal way. Everyone is dependent upon the others in their village. They have been trained from infancy to wait for the chief and the elders to tell them what to do next. Take farming for instance, no one is supposed to eat new yams even if they harvested them from their own fields unless the chief has eaten new yams. Everyone wants to do the same thing at the same time. Most Ghanaians in our area are afraid of being different. Once we brought a couple of long handled garden hoes for Nazo and Mr. Iddrisu. Ghanaian hoes have a short 2 foot handle and the person using it is constantly in a stooped over position. When they saw them they laughed but when they tried them they had to agree that they were much easier to use. Both men rejected the hoes; they said that if they used them everyone would laugh at them and say they were lazy farmers. This attitude bleeds over into the church. The members look at the denominations and their headquarters and “big men” and think that the only way for the Church of Christ to be “big” is to have a central organization. The Catholics were among the first missionaries to come to Ghana and they brought with them their priests, nuns, cardinals, and such a hierarchy of organization.
This month 25 men attended the class; 16 people were baptized and 2 restored. The men seemed to be happy that we went back to having Rita cook for them. They were beyond upset last month when we gave them money instead of cooking for them. Lunch was delayed a little today because around 10:00 we got a heavy rain. Class halted until the worst of the storm passed because no one could hear. Rita does all of her cooking outside as most of the women do. If it rains all day it is difficult to fix something to eat and when the rain stops it is difficult to get a fire started because everything is wet.
Francis, one of the church leaders that attended the school of preaching in Tamale needed new tires for his motorcycle. He is not on payroll so Steve helps him when he can. Steve gave him the money for 2 new tires. Francis stopped by the mission house this afternoon and picked up the wheel chair for the crippled church member at Duuni.
I washed clothes today but had to pull them off the line before they were dry. There are clothes covering all the furniture in the living room and dining room. The ceiling fans are running but it is taking them a long time to dry.
Take care and enjoy your day.
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
