Just wanted to share some processing from after the trip about overall lessons God taught me through this amazing experience. :-)
One thing God definitely taught me through this trip is that He is BIG and will always exceed my expectations! It was so neat to have the opportunity to see how He has worked through the lives of all of the Ghanaian pastors that we met as well as the orphans at the Home. Through this, God really impressed on my heart how great He really is to be able to be so intricately involved in my own life as well as in these Ghanaians' lives all the way around the globe! I have always known that God is omnipotent and omnipresent, but it was so powerful to really be able to experience proof of these qualities for myself.
God also showed our team obvious proof of His power and work through the lives of Chris and Tammy Brooks, the founders of the Jesse Brooks Foundation (the ministry we partnered with at the Children's Home). Chris and Tammy were just an ordinary American couple living ordinary lives until their daughter, Jesse, died in a car accident nine years ago when she was just ten years old. Jesse had always had a desire to be a missionary to orphans in Africa, and after her death Chris and Tammy started the foundation to oversee Children's Homes in Africa. It was so amazing to see how God is showing His power through using this death to bring about so much life to orphaned children in Africa! God's work truly does exceed our expectations and limitations.
Another way that God revealed His greatness to me on this trip was through really experiencing the power of prayer. One night, my teammate Randi and I really felt led to pray together for more team unity. The next day, God obviously answered our prayer through bringing our whole team together in unified prayer for the children and against spiritual warfare. That moment brought us together as a team as nothing else could have!
As far as what we actually did while in Ghana, our team surveyed the new land that the Jesse Brooks Foundation recently purchased and created a master plan for the site as the new location for the Children's Home. Since I went along on this eMi trip as a volunteer and not an engineer, I had a little bit of difficultly figuring out my role the first couple days in Aflao. It was definitely a very humbling experience to not really feel like I had a part to play. However, God used this shaky beginning to shape me and use me even more the during the rest of our time. Because I started out the trip feeling “unnecessary” in a way, I was so much more willing to humbly submit whatever God had for me throughout the course of the trip...and He definitely had a lot! I ended up getting to go to the Children's Home just about every day, sometimes twice a day, singing songs with the kids and sharing the gospel through reading stories from the Jesus Storybook Bible which I brought along with me. Although these kids knew most of the stories already, it was a great hook to start up deeper conversations and really get them talking about who Jesus is to them. I also had the opportunity to teach how to tell time in a couple different schools in Aflao using handmade clocks.
One thing that was pretty difficult for me was to see the lack of resources over there, particularly in teachers themselves. I actually got several job offers while I was in Ghana, and began to feel guilty about coming back to Colorado where I am still currently unemployed and planning on substitute teaching the upcoming year. I questioned why God would show me this problem if I am not to be the solution. This is still something I am wrestling with a bit, but one thing God is teaching me through all of this is that He wants me to be faithful where He has placed me, and humble when it is not exactly where I think is best. I am realizing that being “needed” is not what matters, but what matters is that I am faithful to God's calling on my life-to glorify Him in everything that I do. I need to glorify Him with my every action, whether that be subbing in Greeley, CO or singing with orphans in Ghana. I am so thankful that God used this trip to remind me of this constant calling in my life.
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