Unwelcome Visit

It’s always nice to have an unexpected pleasant surprise or a visit from a friend but this visit was from neither of those.  It was a visit from winter…remember him?  We’ve been so incredibly spoiled this year really.  I remember a few years ago we had brutal cold as well as snow and a below average temperature almost all summer long.  This year looks to follow the trend of last year that was very warm and oh so dry but I’ve been wrong about such prediction before.  This storm brought change quickly and left us still quite cool.  Better than the tornadoes of Michigan…I can’t complain…yet I still kind of am aren’t I? 

Again I find myself going through the archives remembering days gone by…Africa…a place where I have never been cold nor given the cold shoulder.  My trips to Ghana were life changing experiences.  I was forced to see cultures far different then my own.  It forced me to reach out to a people unlike any I’d ever seen before.  Meeting some of the greatest men of God I’d ever met in my life was an exquisite privilege .  Walking on foreign shores forever changed how I see the world in which we live.  Seeing people here be so devoted to God was an inspiration to me.  Visiting this Portuguese castle where slaves were shipped out all over the world shook me to the core yet the hope of my pigmented brother (though he insists I’m the pigmented one) to this day blows me away.  The blossoms of Ghanaian plants are nothing to the bloom of inspiration this nation still brings to me.  Dear pastor Harry whom God brought into our lives made such a difference to us all.  Now these roads have been well traveled…I’m not even sure if the houses I saw then are still there…some of those I knew then are now gone.  Those that protected our lives with their ownare now gone…I don’t know where.  Remembering the smoldering flames of slash and burn farmingI think the structure of faith built is still under construction much like these buildingsbut as these children…it will grown each dayand Ghana had a huge part in who I am today.  I can’t forget…each memory is a stone to the house God is building in me.  Each place adding some mortar to this house.  I can never repay what I owe Ghana.  But I will do my best to take what I’ve learned to make this world a better place wherever I can.  This last photo still makes me smile.  I’d never seen a man play a saw before until I went to Ghana…how strange is that?  Here is a man doing just that while my dear Bros Joseph looks on while drinking a Coke.  Yeah, I’m smiling!