A Day with Joseph

My dear African brother Joseph (a.k.a. the Black Eagle) is a very busy man.  He is a man of vision and one of the most powerful men I’ve ever met.  Yet he has always been very gracious to me.  This grace has now extended to my family and that has been a very wonderful thing to witness.  I didn’t have an easy time getting pictures of things as I’d like on this trip.  We are extremely busy when we are there and often when we have time off I just feel like it takes a lot of energy to start running around and taking pictures.  People are also not always friendly to the idea of having their picture taken so you have to be careful when and where you take photos.  One day my brother decided to take just Lovely, I and the kids out to the beach and to lunch.  This was a rare and exquisite treat!  The beaches usually have a wonderful breeze that cools the otherwise sweltering day however as you can see from the mist here the humidity remains high.  This day on the beach I witness a couple of Africans swimming in the water…there’s something about this scene that just feels right to me.  There are many houses and shacks along the beachso we kept our eyes open for fishermen who might sell their catch to us.  It was days like this that I envied my children’s half Asian blood the most…I have to be careful in the sun while they just tan beautifully.  Both my daughter Danielle and my son Mike enjoyed the water that day so muchand looking at this beach can you blame them?  I saw only one lone boat lying on the beach with some scattered refusein fact outside of a lone beach combing dog there was pretty much nobody else around.  I looked down the beach and wondered if the distant structure was the castle I had visited so many years beforebut later found out it was a place where the president of Ghana goes on occasion.  Joseph is always so good to the kids, and he really loves GabbyHe never fails to bring them something when he came to visit us in the house were were staying.  He’s really good to Danielle as well.  You may be wondering why I don’t have another picture of Mike…well, someone had to get very wet and had and sand in places we don’t want to mention so he was cleaning himself up LOL!  Here’s a shot of Joseph and I.  Finally we found a fisherman selling sea snails (which Lovely in particular really loves) but Gabby just felt they were “cute”.  I don’t think that the fisherman would have let us take his picture unless we were buying his wares…we bought them all.  Sadly our cooking experiment didn’t work out very well and they tasted mostly of sand even though we did all we could to clean them…better luck next time.  Later on we had the best lunch ever with some classic Ghanaian foods present.  Joseph was so much fun to hang out with.  They had some Karaoke playing old songs and Joseph danced with the kids…I’ll share video later…you’d have to see it to believe it!  Some say ministry can only happen behind the pulpit or in the church.  I say the world is a congregation and our lives are the pulpit.  Times between meetings felt very rich and a part of all that we did in various churches.  It didn’t matter if we were preaching, teaching, laying hands on people or chasing lizards on the compound during our day off…it was all ministry, all unforgettable and all a blessing!