"Go to School"

The week began with another interesting route to get to church. With roads like these, we 're glad it hasn't been raining lately.

We found a parking spot, 

and observed the neighborhood goats, since we were an hour early.

We observed a class with an incredible teacher who was part of the original pilot, wish she could be cloned!  Her former students have moved on to the regular Sunday school class but one came back to tell us how grateful she is for the literacy class and that she can read and write. Happiness!  We love to hear these stories. This is a new group of learners. 

We sometimes get requests from various places asking about what literacy classes we can offer. The humanitarian missionaries visited a village called Ekumfi Ekrawfo at the the village queen's request. She is a 2 year member of the church and is putting together a 6 week vocational seminar for unmarried young mothers in villages near where she lives. She is interested in doing some literacy lessons as part of the seminar.  We felt that Engage Now Africa would be better suited for this so during the week we went over to their headquarters to ask if this is something they could help with. They said they would be happy to help, so we came away with enrollment forms and information for the missionaries to pass along to the queen.

Thursday was "Ghana Day" and we all came decked out in our Ghanaian clothing. These are the folks who work in our same building.

We had quite a different mix of students at the library on Thursday because school was out. There were half a dozen children there who usually come after school for help with reading.  They all tried to join with us at the table but the library personnel shooed all of them away to play except one little girl named Emma who they let sit next to me to learn along with Lucy, the adult that I was working with. I learned that Emma, age 7 doesn't go to school and the library is her only real opportunity to learn. She was very excited and worked so hard. 

Since I haven't worked with Lucy, 37 before, I was asking about her interests. She speaks good English, but is learning to read and write.  Easter came into the conversation and she said she loves to sing in church. I asked if she likes to sing The Messiah, she said, "yes, Jesus." Not sure if she recognized the question as meaning Handel's Messiah, I began to sing a bit of the Hallelujah chorus and she broke out into a smile and began to sing along. When I stopped at the end of the line, she kept going. What a tender shared experience as we smiled into each others faces and sang, "For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth, hallelujah, hallelujah!!"

                             She knew the words just fine. 

On Friday which was a holiday here, the Lartebiokorshie Stake, (say that one fast 3 times), arranged to have a devotional to get their members, who would be involved in supporting literacy excited and inspired. They asked us and the Wakilds to talk. But we don't think being excited is a problem with this group.  They have already called not one, but two Stake Literacy Specialists and each of their 8 wards and branches have called two teachers for their classes. I think we were the ones who came away inspired. We will be coming back to do their training on the 14th.

We will have to make our way back through the traffic and markets to get there though.

On the way home, we had our windows down because the air conditioner is broken :-) 
For the second time since we arrived, we experienced little children touching my hair when we pulled up to a stop and 3 little girls about 8-10 years old came to the window trying to sell packets of q-tips and touching their lips to beg. I asked if they go to school, but couldn't really understand their reply.  We gave them some bottles of water and told them "go to school, go to school."  We smiled at each other, then they reached in the window to touch my hair and giggled. We gave high 5's, and continued to hold hands. We blew kisses and a big piece of my heart stayed with them as we pulled away.