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Report from The Village of Yamfo, Ghana
June 21 2008 / ShareHim in Ghana A, May. 23 - Jun. 7 '08 #300by Marvin Krause
Campaign Site Narrative from Yamfo, Sunyani in Ghana A. The speaker assigned to this site was Marvin Krause.
Our trip did not get off to a running start as there was no one to meet us at the airport. After waiting for an hour and a half, we decided to take a cab into town and find a hotel for the night, placing ourselves at the mercy of the over eager cab drivers. This cost $135.00! None of the numbers listed on the ShareHim site would reach Valley View University. The following day we went online to the Adventist Directory and were able to contact the Ghana Union office over the internet via a Skype phone. It worked out that we were within four blocks of the Union office and they took us to Valley View U.
From this point on, things worked very well once we became accustomed to the ‘schedule’ the Ghanans keep. Pastor Luis Leonor was a great person to work with and made certain that everything was well organized and worked with precision.
This was the rainy season in Ghana and we did get wet a few times when nature put on a full display of electrical storms accompanied by torrential rain. One evening, rain put a stop on us halfway through the sermon and another after only five minutes into the sermon when people ran for cover.
Overall, there was a great response to the program in Yamfo, approximately five hundred people attended each evening with half of these being children. At the conclusion of the meetings, 108 people were baptized and perhaps forty more are studying in preparation for baptism. The overall report for Ghana A was 636 baptisms and approximately 400 yet studying.
We had very little communication with our interpreter; several times we tried to arrange a meeting with the lay people to visit with them and learn of their efforts but it was to no avail. We did have one man come forward near the end of the series and state publically that he was impressed that we did not charge for the health lectures and that he would be able to live a much better life as a result of our teachings.
Several people with personal problems came forward and requested special prayer, including the family of a woman in her mid-thirties. It seems that a husband was into spiritualism and from that time on, she was not able to speak. For three years, she has not uttered a word. We have asked Pastor Joseph Boateng to try to locate the stories of several of these persons and let us know what the outcome has been.
We just received a note from Pastor Boateng stating that he had visited the village of Yamfo two days ago and learned that a lady who usually worked in a store each day of the week asked for the Sabbath off. The store keeper refused her request, so she did go in to work on the first Sabbath after her baptism. Then something interesting happened, not one person came into the store while she was at work that day! The shopkeeper sent her home and told her not to come to work anymore on Sabbath as God wanted her to spend that time with Him.
The Mid-Ghana conference had a projector but no computer to drive it. We did leave a new computer with them. After visiting a village that was near the ‘end of the earth,’ people just lived in stick and mud huts with no electricity within miles, we purchased a Honda generator to take to villages like this for evangelism with the Truth for Today series. A 19-year-old aspiring pastor was trained on how to use the program and we were promised that this equipment would be used in this village as well as many others. Prior to our departure, several local pastors met to make plans to use the new equipment for further evangelism and promised to send reports of their activities.
The village of Aadae that we visited had approximately 600 residents, of these 50 belonged to the humble SDA church that consisted of only a thatched roof held up by pillars. I can envision the entire village turning out when the generator and projector are taken to that village as there is nothing to do after dark. (An interesting side note, while visiting this village we came upon a man ‘butchering’ a large rat preparing to cook it on a fire next to him. The villages are very poor and simply subsisting seems to be the order of the day.)
Overall it was another great experience sharing the ‘Good News’ and we were richly blessed!
From this point on, things worked very well once we became accustomed to the ‘schedule’ the Ghanans keep. Pastor Luis Leonor was a great person to work with and made certain that everything was well organized and worked with precision.
This was the rainy season in Ghana and we did get wet a few times when nature put on a full display of electrical storms accompanied by torrential rain. One evening, rain put a stop on us halfway through the sermon and another after only five minutes into the sermon when people ran for cover.
Overall, there was a great response to the program in Yamfo, approximately five hundred people attended each evening with half of these being children. At the conclusion of the meetings, 108 people were baptized and perhaps forty more are studying in preparation for baptism. The overall report for Ghana A was 636 baptisms and approximately 400 yet studying.
We had very little communication with our interpreter; several times we tried to arrange a meeting with the lay people to visit with them and learn of their efforts but it was to no avail. We did have one man come forward near the end of the series and state publically that he was impressed that we did not charge for the health lectures and that he would be able to live a much better life as a result of our teachings.
Several people with personal problems came forward and requested special prayer, including the family of a woman in her mid-thirties. It seems that a husband was into spiritualism and from that time on, she was not able to speak. For three years, she has not uttered a word. We have asked Pastor Joseph Boateng to try to locate the stories of several of these persons and let us know what the outcome has been.
We just received a note from Pastor Boateng stating that he had visited the village of Yamfo two days ago and learned that a lady who usually worked in a store each day of the week asked for the Sabbath off. The store keeper refused her request, so she did go in to work on the first Sabbath after her baptism. Then something interesting happened, not one person came into the store while she was at work that day! The shopkeeper sent her home and told her not to come to work anymore on Sabbath as God wanted her to spend that time with Him.
The Mid-Ghana conference had a projector but no computer to drive it. We did leave a new computer with them. After visiting a village that was near the ‘end of the earth,’ people just lived in stick and mud huts with no electricity within miles, we purchased a Honda generator to take to villages like this for evangelism with the Truth for Today series. A 19-year-old aspiring pastor was trained on how to use the program and we were promised that this equipment would be used in this village as well as many others. Prior to our departure, several local pastors met to make plans to use the new equipment for further evangelism and promised to send reports of their activities.
The village of Aadae that we visited had approximately 600 residents, of these 50 belonged to the humble SDA church that consisted of only a thatched roof held up by pillars. I can envision the entire village turning out when the generator and projector are taken to that village as there is nothing to do after dark. (An interesting side note, while visiting this village we came upon a man ‘butchering’ a large rat preparing to cook it on a fire next to him. The villages are very poor and simply subsisting seems to be the order of the day.)
Overall it was another great experience sharing the ‘Good News’ and we were richly blessed!