The Master Plan

4 months in and life continues to be a little crazy! In the past month we’ve had to move into (and then back out of) a hotel for a couple days, as our entire compound lost power. In this situation, the generator is SUPPOSED to kick on. Ours, however, just started sparking. Hoping to avoid a repeat of the electrical fire that apparently happened here in May, one month before our arrival, the embassy moved us all to a nearby hotel while they fixed the issue (hopefully for good this time)? This was also the exact time period when all of our stuff was FINALLY delivered from the states, and the poor movers had to haul boxes and boxes up our 3 flights of stairs…with zero AC. I gave them cases of water and tipped them handsomely, but still felt bad for the poor timing of the whole thing! Less than 2 weeks after that, our compound lost water for 2 days in a row, though thankfully only for a few hours each day. BUT, knock on wood, we have had consistent power AND water for the last couple weeks, our stuff is all unpacked, and (after a re-treatment) we are currently ant free, so we’re doing awesome!

Minor crises aside, I thought I’d take some time to share how we have seen God working in this place…because He has been, big time! If you’ve been following our story, you know that we ranked Jerusalem, Israel as our number 1 post, while Ghana was number 3. However, we ALWAYS prayed first and foremost that God’s will be done. We knew that His plan is always the best one, and if we did not get our number 1, He had good reasons for it. Maybe we would understand some day, maybe we would never know. Well, we have already seen that God’s plan was better than ours over and over again in the last 4 months!

First of all, during the time that we were preparing to pack out, the Jerusalem post was still on authorized departure status due to the war in the region. This means that if we HAD gotten our number 1, Don would definitely have had to go there in June, but we as the family may not have been able to go with him. Authorized departure status means that the family does not HAVE to leave that post, but that it is advised due to the instability in the region. Don had said he would not feel comfortable having to constantly worry about the safety of his family while trying to do his job, and would most likely want us to stay back in the US. More separation is the absolute last thing we wanted, so we were incredibly grateful that we did NOT have to face that decision in June!

That situation aside, within mere days of arriving in Ghana, we started to see God’s reasons everywhere. I’ll never forget the day our housekeeper, Selina, asked if she could sit down and have a chat with me just a few days into our arrival. She had been helping take care of the kids, and had noticed Evelyn reading a version of a children’s Bible. “Mama, can I ask you a question?” she asked. (She frequently calls me Mama and I love it). “Are you Christian?” Smiling, I said yes, explaining to her that we are Catholic. Ya’ll, she was OVERJOYED. By this point she had worked for embassy families for many years. None of them had ever been Christian. She will tell you that her Christian faith is the most important thing in her life, so much so that she actually tried to evangelize the family she previously worked for, though it made her extremely nervous to discuss such matters with her employer. She wanted them to know Jesus so badly! Selina told me that day that she had been praying to work for a Christian family for a very long time, and that WE were the answer to her prayers.

One day a couple of months later, I walked in to find her singing a worship song in our kitchen. It brought tears to my eyes, because it was the exact same song I had seen my children singing 3 years ago in their Catholic school in Florida. The teachers had taught the kids hand motions to the song, and I distinctly remember sitting in the cry room in the church with my 2 youngest children, watching my 2 older kids praise God with their voices and their entire bodies. Those 2 images melted into each other in my brain. My children praising God in a little church in Panama City, Florida, and an African woman, barefoot in my kitchen on the opposite side of the entire world, praising Him in the exact same way. We are all so different, and all so very much the same. Because we were all created by Him, and our lives are ALL meant to be a journey back to Him.

Selina is a mother of 4, just like me. But although I THOUGHT I had lived through hard times in my life, they are nothing compared to the struggles she has faced and continues to face. She is raising her 4 kids on her own in a tiny 2 room house (not 2 bedrooms, 2 ROOMS total, plus a screened in patio area), with no AC and most of the time, not even running water. We have helped her out in a myriad of ways, buying her a water tank for her to have at her house, a new phone when her old one broke, a lump sum of money for her to be able to pay rent (the landlords here require that the tenants pay 2 YEARS OF RENT all at one time), and are putting aside savings for her each month so that she can hopefully get her own (better) place someday. I say all this NOT to toot our own horn. I just desperately want the world to see how God SEES you, how he DOES hear the cries of those who need help, and how He has such an incredible master plan that we can only glimpse pieces of. We prayed for Jerusalem, while Selina prayed for a Christian family to open their arms to her. Maybe, sometimes, God says “no” to our hopes and dreams, because he is saying “yes” to someone else’s.

The daily living of our faith has been so different here. For the last 14 years, we have surrounded ourselves with Catholics. For the most part, they have always been our core friend group. Right now in the embassy community, there are none. The kids no longer go to a Catholic school. BUT, we have found a sweet little place to go to Mass, with a wonderful, though small, community. Each Sunday, we go to what is known as the Apostolic Nunciature, or the Embassy of the Holy See. It is actually the residence of the Vatican’s ambassador to Ghana, archbishop Julien Kabore, and he presides over a small, intimate Mass in his backyard every Sunday. The congregation is a mix of about half Ghanaians, and half expats, though few of them are Americans. Although it is not technically a parish, and does not have all the normal programs that a Catholic parish normally has, we are grateful to have begun making friends there!

One of the things that I love most about the Catholic Church is that Mass is the same in all parts of the world. That being said, Mass in the great outdoors of West Africa comes with its own unique flair. On two separate occasions now, a rooster in the backyard next door was crowing LOUDLY throughout the entire Mass. “Let us pray.” COCK A DOODLE DOOOOOO. “Peace be with you. And” COCK A DOODLE DOOOOO. Dominic, our 11 year old, could not help but burst into fits of giggles every. single. time. About a month ago, just after we had arrived and sat down, Evelyn informed me that I had just sat on a baby lizard. Indeed I had. It’s a whole biblical experience, I tell you. You get everything from Noah’s Ark to the Last Supper!

In September, several of the nuns and parents began catechism classes for the children after Mass. One of the nuns even leads the parents in prayer and discussions to deepen our faith while we wait for the children. Thankfully, for the most part the weather has been on the mild side so far. But the heat is starting to ramp up (Ghana’s hottest months are November to March). Between Mass and the catechism classes immediately following, we are there for around 3 hours straight. I know soon our Sundays will become an exercise in “offering it up” as we all drip sweat for 3 hours with the lizards and the roosters, but hey, what a great opportunity to teach our children about the meaning of suffering and unite those sufferings with those of Jesus!

Becoming a part of the Apostolic Nunciature community also offers us and our children unique and rare opportunities. Just this past Sunday, a cardinal from South Africa was visiting Ghana to celebrate the 75th anniversary of one of the archdioceses here. In Catholic hierarchy, cardinals are directly below the Pope (they are the ones who elect a new pope), and although the number varies year to year, at the time of this writing, there are only 246 in the entire world. To be able to attend a Mass celebrated by a cardinal is something many Catholics never experience. To attend a small, intimate Mass in a backyard presided over by a cardinal, with only a couple hundred people in attendance, is truly a RARE opportunity! Cardinal Napier, together with the Apostolic Nuncio, archbishop Julien Kabore, did a special blessing over the life-sized Stations of the Cross that are situated around the perimeter of the backyard after Mass, and our children got to participate in the procession through the Stations. Our family was even able to introduce ourselves to him, shake his hand, and chat with him for a few moments after Mass! We are so grateful for these opportunities that allow us to teach our children about their rich Catholic faith in unique and special ways.

We did attend a local Catholic Church here one Sunday when we first arrived. While that one was mostly inside (they leave the back wall of the building completely open), there is still no air conditioning, as that is considered a luxury here. So, our options for going to Mass for the next 2 years are to sweat inside or sweat outside! Again, while Mass is the same throughout the world, each country does bring its own music, customs, and culture to the Mass, and we loved experiencing Mass the Ghanaian way. Some songs were sung in Twi, and the offertory consisted of the entire congregation dancing/singing/processing up to the front to place their offerings in baskets. Due to extra singing/dancing, and everything operating on Ghanaian time, the service was 2 hours instead of the typical 1, which we knew to expect. To top it all off, they asked everyone who had a birthday near that time to come to the front of the Church after Mass, where the priest said a blessing over them amidst much loud singing and celebrating in Twi and English. Lo and behold, that very day was my ACTUAL birthday. Don tried and tried to coax me to head up to the front, but having only been in Ghana 10 days at that point, I was too chicken to leave our pew in the back and walk up to the front as the only obroni with aalll those Ghanaians! Pretty sure the blessing extends to the back row, right? Maybe next year! 😂

Thank you for the prayers, and please keep ’em coming as we continue to journey on God’s path for us. Also, feel free to comment or contact with me with any prayer requests…praying for you will be a welcome distraction from the heat and wildlife during our sweaty Masses, and I would be happy to do so!