Sunday in Ghana

Sunday the 21st

Two days in the village of Vane flew by, and we did not have enough time to describe events. Every new hour brought a new event. Sunday for me began at 5 am, as the day begins at dawn in Ghana. As soon as it begins to get light, people begin to wake up and start moving. From my window I could see the mountains, the highest in West Africa, and on one of the hills is the Catholic Church. Already at 7 AM, you can hear the worship service and songs. It is melodic, and many hymns from our hymnbook are sung. Life isn't in a hurry. The service lasted for several hours, and during this time, we were getting ready to go to the house service at the missionaries' home. We prayed, I shared the Word of God, we sang a few songs of worship to the Lord, and then we transitioned to discussing details of the program. Then Alex and I interviewed Alexander and Elena Vinokourov, asking about their ministry, their family, and the translation of the Bible into the language of the Avatime. After lunch we went to the village Amejofa, 6 km from the village of Vane. This is the highest located village in the mountains in this area. In the central square, nobles and village elders were already waiting for us, along with the pastors of the churches in this village, which is home to about two thousand people. There were about 300 people at the program. The main objective of the program was to show the value of the Gospel in people's lives when they read it in their native language. And only the Gospel of Mark has been printed there. One of the former teachers read two verses from the 16th chapter. The pastors prayed over a copy of the Gospel and invited the churches and people to get a copy of the Word of God. We presented our group, sang, shared a realistic picture of the world, especially the places where they still don't have the Word of God. We showed a skit about the importance of the ability to use Scripture, which can help, encourage, protect, etc. At the end of the program we gave a matryoshka doll to the village chief through his representatives, as he was unable to be at this program. We were shown real African honor: as a sign of peace, our right hands were painted with white paint and special handmade bracelets were placed on our wrists. We were also given two full baskets of bananas. In the evening at the missionaries' home, we reflected on the day. Nick helped with the printer and other equipment we had given them, Alex worked online, Anya got ready for school lessons, and Elena and I resolved all the financial and program issues.

Pastor Pavel