Walking to church

Each April, the rains begin and continue to increase till they climax sometime in August before diminish and eventually taper out in October or November. In late August and the early part of September seem to be the worst times to maneuver around here. With the ground absolutely saturated it just becomes completely tore up and in some place impassable.

Since March we’ve been running vehicle as “Sunday School Buses” or transportation—running back and forth to pick up around 30 kids and an elderly lady from a near by neighborhood. We meet at the local Mosque and pick them all up then head over to the church. However, last week, for the first time since March we had to make the difficult decision to cancel the transportation and start walking into the property.


The conditions of the roads have so deteriorated that even 4x4 vehicles can’t make it through. There is literally a creek running down one half of the road. But despite the lack of transportation the attendance has stayed steady. It’s been interesting to see all the little kids walking down the roads or up the paths just to get there. There is even one faithful lady that has a wheel chair and with the aid of other church members she crosses the creek and pushes herself through the mud to make it in time for the service. Their faithfulness to the Lord has truly been evident and it’s a joy to be with them each week.

The Pastor's Conference

This month after preparation and prayer Randy had organized and assembled all the pastor that we work with here in Kara. We planned out a week long pastor’s conference in which we would pray together, have some preaching and travel across the country to see the various churches that have been planted and built over the past decade or longer.
The conference started on a Sunday afternoon and we all piled into Jesse’s vehicle and mine. Having five in his and 10 in mine we traveled down south for 9 hours and meet up with Pastor Koffi who showed us his work and we were able to enjoy some good preaching and some prayer time.
Over the course of the next several days we traveled back towards Kara seeing works along the way, and getting stuck once. When in Kara we visited the 5 works in and around the city and prayed for each. Assembling each morning, afternoon and evening we were able to encourage the men and see God work. The last two days of the conference were spent up in Dapaong visiting with Pastor Soapa and Joel at their 7 churches.
It was really eye opening to see how much God is doing. Some of the works are just poles with thatched roofs, other are mud block construction and yet others are fully constructed cement structures with electricity but whither it had thatched roofs or tin roofs, with or without electricity, cement blocks or mud blocks it was fascinating to see how Christ was working in and through each one of them.

Stuck horribly in quicksand

This past Thursday and Friday some pastors and missionaries alike gathered up in Dapaong for a conference. One of our objectives was to drive out to visit Pastor Soapa’s Churches. However, we encountered some “issues” along the way. Apparently, it had rained pretty heavily Wednesday night and again some on Thursday evening. Dapaong has a lot of sandy soil and the ground just tends to absorb it and retain it. In a span of 24 hours my vehicle with 9 of us adults inside got stuck 4 times; of those 4 times, 3 of them were within 90 minutes of each other and of those three 2 of them were within 20 yards of each other. It was quite an interesting day to say the least. We literally were out in the middle of no where in the African bush. There were no near by trees to hook up to, no winches and no Triple A but thankfully, there were some sweet spirited Africans who spent quite a bit of energy and time devoted to helping us dislodge my buried vehicle. Each time, with the aid of Jesse and his 4x4 SUV and about 20 plus Togolese—most of them being pastors, we where able to push or pull my “Robust Bertha” (as I call her) out of the mud. BTW: Robust in French is “sturdy, healthy, sound or strong.” I’m not sure she was quite all those but with the blessings of God on our trip we all made it home safely!