You Shall Be A Blessing

It is good to be here, and today's sermon will be a little bit different because I want to follow up with you on my travels that I just returned from in Ghana. Well, first I want to say thank you to everybody here because for me to leave it takes your support and it takes your encouragement and it takes knowing that, you know, things are in order here on the home front and can function well so that I can step away because a brethren in Africa do need served and it's been some time since they've been visited, but I need to go knowing that everything is in order here. And so again, I just want to thank you for that and I appreciate your prayers, I appreciate your support as well in my travels. It is truly a blessing.

It's been 15 months since my last trip to Ghana, the last time that we literally, Ben Light and I, traveled together. We went to Nigeria, then Ghana, and as we flew out last March, literally the day, we flew out Saturday night and Sunday morning, Ghana went into lockdown and everything closed, the window of opportunity closed behind us. And it's been 15 months now, basically, waiting for that to open up and travel did resume to both countries by air. Land borders are still closed, but by air in recent times. And that has been a blessing. I'd ask you to pray for Nigeria, though. I didn't include it on this trip because it still is holding to a seven-day quarantine upon arrival before you receive a COVID test. And you have to wait one to two days for results and before you can move about with a negative result. So at minimum, it's an eight to nine-day quarantine to get into Nigeria, whereas Ghana has a rapid test at the airport and you're on your way. It's my hope to spend the feast in Nigeria this year as well as Ghana, but having eight to nine days quarantine in advance of that really complicates the issue. So if you would pray for that, please, I'd appreciate it. The opening up of the opportunity to visit is an important thing for them, and it's important for all of us as well. See if this pointer works for me today.

A title of my message is, You Shall Be a Blessing. And it's a concept that Darla reminded me of as I was preparing to travel this time around. I had all the items spread out in the living room, in the bedroom, across the bed, everything that I was packing up to take. And to be honest with you, I was slightly grumbling. As I looked around at everything I had to pack up, and I thought with my luggage allotment, I don't even have room for clothes, you know. And I started to grumble a little bit because I'm taking this, I'm taking that, we have this. And when I travel personally, I generally try to travel light. But when I go to Africa, I travel over very heavy, and then I come back light because I'm hauling camp gear, I'm hauling things that the church needs. Sometimes I'm hauling multiple laptops, I'm hauling other things. And I've got them addicted to jerky from Costco and ginger from Trader Joe's. So, you know, I've got piles of all this stuff, and I'm looking at trying to pack all this up. And I've also become the Amazon delivery man for West Africa. So I was grumbling, to be honest with you, a little bit about all this packing. And Darla reminded me, she said, remember, you shall be a blessing. And honestly, that's a concept that kept coming to my mind as I was traveling, as I was looking around at all the needs that were there. Because, frankly, everywhere you turn, there is a need. And there's a request for help. And it can almost be easy to sort of harden your heart against those things and say, well, you can figure it out without us. You've been here without us for centuries. The fact is, though, an important principle is not to withhold blessings when it's within your power to do so.

And so she was reminding me of that. Genesis chapter 12, we have this concept surrounding blessings and the blessing that God gave to Abraham. And so I'd like to start there before I launch into the pictures I want to share with you today. Genesis chapter 12 and verse 1, the context is God's pure doh brahm. And he said, get going. You know, leave behind that which you perceived as security, your father's household, the country which you have been successful. I'm going to take you somewhere. And in Genesis chapter 12 verse 1, God, the Lord said to Abraham, to get out of your country from your family, from your father's house, to a land that I will show you. He says, and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I'll make your name great.

And he said, and you shall be a blessing. And those are interesting words, and they're important words to remember as well. We'll come back to them. But God said, I will bless those who bless you. Verse 3, I will curse him who curses you. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken to him. You know, he got up and he went.

So what we find here in these verses is many great and enduring promises made to Abraham by God, if he would respond in faith. If he would, again, walk away from what was perceived security in his life and follow where God would take him. If he would look to God as the sermonette was talking about, you know, it's not about things that ground us in security. It's looking to God, is that relationship. And God, in a sense, set a test before Abraham, and the blessings then would follow as he responded. We see there's promises of both national greatness as a nation, as well as blessings on the world through Abraham's descendants. We understand that the ultimate fulfillment of that was the blessing that came on the world through the Messiah, Jesus Christ, who came from the line of Abraham. But it's not exclusive to that only. A blessing to the world through Abraham is not exclusive to that only, although salvation through Jesus Christ is the ultimate and primary fulfillment of that. But I want to go back to verse 2 again in Genesis 12, and just look at the promise of national blessings. Because here God said, I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great. And he said, you shall be a blessing.

The Amplified Bible says this about that portion of verse 2. It says, and you shall be a blessing, a source of great good to others. And when you look at Abraham's life, that is what he was, where he went. There's multiple occasions in the Bible where you can find Abraham was a blessing.

One that comes to mind is when Lot and others were hauled out of Sodom and possessions. All these things were hauled out with him, and Abraham rounded up his troop of servants, and they went after them. And he brought back the people, he brought back the spoil, and he didn't keep that for himself. He restored that which was taken, and he was a blessing to those people. But God told him, Abraham, there is a responsibility attached to these blessings that I give to you. It's a responsibility to share it with others, it's a responsibility to benefit others, and to be a blessing in the likeness of the blessing that God has extended to you. And it was to be to Abraham and his descendants. It's an incredible calling by God to go out and do good. He says, And you shall be a blessing because of what I have given unto you. And we find the blessing as you travel through the Scriptures. We're not going to spend a lot of time on this today, but you find that that blessing and the promise went then to Isaac. And from Isaac, it went then to Jacob. And from Jacob, we see also that the blessing descended out through Joseph's sons Ephraim and Matmanassah, as well as the other tribes. And it comes down to our day today, a part that we have to play as, for us, the United States of America, as a portion of the descendants of Abraham to extend out to others' blessings to the world. And honestly, in many ways, that's what our country has been. We've not always done things well, okay? We have black marks on our history of how we have done things, but, you know, I look at just this week in the news, our president pledged a half a billion jabs of the COVID vaccine to the poorer countries of the world. And it's not my point to get into a vaccine debate. My point is we share our resource. We have the ability to do so. We help. And, you know, following World War II, you rebuilt Germany, you rebuilt Japan after you just bombed them into submission. That's something that's built into the Israelite descendants of Abraham that they would take of the resource of their blessing and share it with the world.

Genesis 28, 12 through 14, I won't read it there, but again, it shows the blessings going down through the descendants of Abraham. And God told Jacob that his descendants would inherit not only the land of Canaan, but they would spread out all around the world to the north to the south, to the east and the west, and they would take that blessing wherever they went.

So that's the spiritual lesson that Darla reminded me of. It's what I want to tie into the pictures that I show you today on my travels because so much of what is done over there in support of helping the people of God and the church, as well as even the community around them, we need to recognize is it's a blessing to be able to share what it is that God has provided for us. And he said, you shall be a blessing.

Opportunity of blessing came right off the start, like I said, packing all these things up to get going. Delta emailed me a couple days before my departure, and they bumped me to first class out of Spokane. And you know, you might think, great, more leg room and free drinks. And that is a blessing of first class, but it also means additional luggage. My international allotment went from two 50-pound suitcases to three 70-pound suitcases out the gate. And if you're first class out the gate, it checks through all the way to the end. So it allowed me to actually take additional things that were set aside. Nona Hammond, down in the Kennewick congregation, has made a point of collecting glasses to go to Africa for years, reading glasses. And over the last year, because of the shutdown, a lot of the places that had other charitable organizations collecting glasses were left uncollected. And so they began calling her. And I'd go to Kennewick, and she'd have me come over to the house, and she loaded me up with boxes and boxes of reading glasses. And taken out of their case, rolled up in a piece of paper towel so they don't scratch, but the cases are heavy. But literally, that black suitcase made a one-way trip. It stayed there, but it's full. Full glasses, the silver one, about three-quarters full. Probably took over a thousand pairs of reading glasses over to Ghana on this trip. And the brethren were waiting, and they said, when you come, can you please bring them? And they go to all the congregations and around the village, and they go through there. And it's sort of an unscientific way, but you just try it on. If you can read better than you could read before, that's an upgrade. And so they go through those, and they benefit the brethren in the church, and when they're done with them, they go out to the community as well. And that's not a big deal to us. Those are our cast-offs in one sense. But to them, it's a blessing. When I came in through the airport, customs was trying to figure out how to tax me on those. And I said, there's no need for tax. This is from the church to the church, and there were a couple people there dealing with me, and the lady said, well, I need to take this up the line. And she took a pair of glasses and went back to the office, and the other guy said, get out of here. So I zipped up the suitcase and on my way. But this is God's blessing, and in a way, it's our, it's of our abundance, but it's what we're able to do that is a help.

Just a quick reminder, I took this picture off the seatback map on the airplane of West Africa, down where you see the the icon of the plane and the ACC, that's across Ghana, in West Africa there. And then, I also have a picture of the other Nigeria, which I also visit is three countries to the east of that. And in Ghana, we have a number of congregations. I have seven here listed. I could actually remove one Obasi with, have five people there at the moment. It was a few families in a Ghana, but this is the layout of our congregations there, approximately 265 members in Ghana. And this trip, I was able to see not all the members themselves, except where I was on the Sabbath days, but I was able to visit with all the leadership, with all those that are essential to running and serving the brethren in those congregations. In Accra, this is our leadership there. I've introduced you to them before. Next to me is Pastor David Masalabi. David is our only pastor in Ghana, and he's a volunteer. David's retired from his career, and he serves in this way, has for quite a while, and I've tried to pick him up on payroll because he does a lot. And he says, this is my service to God's people. And he's the regional pastor for the country. He oversees the congregations there. His wife, Betty, next to him is a schoolteacher, and she assists him as well in so many things. And then in the yellow there is Henry Aikens. He's our office manager. He coordinates our youth camps, visa tabernacles, and so many other logistical things that take place in Ghana, and his wife by him. So on arriving, I came in on a Tuesday afternoon. Wednesday morning was basically full with meetings. I got together with Henry and David, and we discussed just matters pertaining to the churches in Ghana, needs that were there, and things that I needed to address as I traveled.

There were a number of things. He said, you remember when Paul, some of his writings, the Apostle Paul, he gave instructions, and then he said, the rest I will set in order when I come. So David was telling people, Paul, Moody, we'll set this in order when he comes. So we had a number of meetings on a number of things before I headed out and visited the other congregations. And I also had a meeting this day, the three of us did, with the head pastor and another minister of another Church of God group. So if I give you a little history in Ghana, back at the beginning of the United Church of God, we had a meeting with the head pastor, a core group of people who had a worldwide Church of God foundation and had been in the Church for decades. In 2002, the Council approved the merging of the Remnant Church of God in Ghana with the United Church of God. So you basically had 1200 people in multiple congregations that came in en masse, became a part of the United Church of God, pastors became pastors, the United Church of God. And I'll just say there were over the years challenges related to that because not necessarily doctrinally, but I would say culturally, and how we function, how we operate our services, and those sorts of things. So in 2008, there was a departure of part of this group, about 400 members and seven congregations that decided to carry on as a separate from the United Church of God. And they departed, and there's been no communication, there's been no contact really over those years. And just before this trip, the opportunity opened up through a mutual individual that said, hey, they would like to meet you. And so I reached out, we were both in a cry at the same time, and were able to sit down and have a meeting, and basically just discuss, you know, various things of our history and time since, and a knowledge of fact that we are brethren, we have a common faith, we have a common calling from God. We're separate organizations, but we can exist in brotherhood and have a relationship. So that's, that was, I would call it a productive meeting of just a handshake and getting to know and be reacquainted with one another a little more.

They said that they're incredibly grateful to the United Church of God, because when this group became a part of us, they had the Sabbath and they had Passover. And they learned the Holy Days from the United Church of God, and they have kept to those and the observance of those. And again, they said we are very grateful for things that we've learned and have continued in.

So I said, you know, they're still teaching from our Sabbath, Sunset the Sunset book, our Holy Day book, and I said, and they said it's worn out, you know, our literature is worn out. So we're extending to them a replenishment of literature, put them onto the subscriptions, again, to the Beyond Today magazines, and they're grateful. And it's a way that we can share, again, part of our blessing. It's not just physical, it's spiritual and can maintain a relationship, which I have tried to do as well with the other Church of God senior pastors who traveled to Ghana.

That evening, we went to dinner. This was, picture was taken. I'd like to take David and his wife and Henry and Betty out. And Henry's wife, we go out for dinner at least one time while I'm there. It's just a thank you for all that they do in service to God's Church. Henry is my travel buddy. Again, he's the office manager, but he takes me everywhere that we go. We eat our meals together. We lodge together. We travel together, and Henry's become a very good friend. A lot of windshield time. A lot of time just spent together in various adventures. And this is our sometimes trusty 2004 Pontiac vibe that takes us around Ghana, and we get where we're going most of the time. Most of the time.

So from Accra, we made travels on Thursday. That would be up to Kumasi. Actually, this would be Friday. Up to Kumasi. Kumasi is about four and a half hours northwest of Accra. Met with the leaderships up there. Next to me is Billy, who is a... He was in school in Accra. He grew up around Accra, graduated with a degree and then a master's, and he's up working in Kumasi. And he travels back and forth between Accra and Kumasi and speaks in both places. The man on the front in the dark gray or the black t-shirt is Ophori, and he's our northern manager. He is essentially the lay pastor for our northern two congregations of Kumasi and Yeji. And Ophori came down then to accompany us on the leg up to Yeji because there's challenges along the way there. But everywhere we went, we heard about some of the challenges along the way. This last year and a half has been a challenge here. It has been a great challenge there as well. And although COVID was not actually a serious event in Ghana, they had lockdowns as we did. Many of the church members lost their jobs as a result. Many of the small-scale farmers are having difficulties as well because it's a very cash-strapped economy at this point. And if you're not a big commercial farmer selling to the distributors, which most of our brethren are small-scale farmers, you're growing your crops and you're taking them to market in the town where you live. And you're looking to sell your crops, but so is everybody else. Nobody really has a lot of spare cash. So there's some barter, there's some trade, but we have some members that have just said, I have a whole field of crop that I can't sell. You know, we can eat it, we can maybe trade a little bit, but there's been challenges. Here we have stimulus funds, right? We have extended unemployment, we have government bailouts, and we just print money, apparently.

That doesn't happen there. And honestly, the government locked so many things down that the economy really was faltering. The income then on tax revenue decreased dramatically, and the solution was we're now going to raise taxes and tax multiple things that had no tax before. So we get stimulus, they get what they call COVID tax, and it's made things really a struggle for the brethren there. There's God's people, right? And as we travel, we try to encourage them, and when you're living in that circumstance, it is real. There's a better day coming. It's the kingdom of God. And when you live in, as some people call the promised land as we do, all right, by comparison, maybe it's a little harder to see that. They yearn for the kingdom directly and daily.

And so, you know, the church in the United States is a blessing to many other countries in the world.

Every year, as we're coming up to the GCE and we have to approve a budget, as elders, we receive a breakdown of the finances of the church, and you can see that listed out. There are subsidies that go all over the world from the United States, from the home office, and it's from tides and offerings that are collected here locally in the U.S., but they benefit multiple countries. And FISA Tabernacles are largely paid by that. Youth camps around the world, pastor salaries are paid primarily from the United States, and for them, it's a blessing.

They cover their local congregational expenses, but beyond that, they need help. And again, it's for us an opportunity that we can think of our abundance, and we can be a blessing to them. Most every year, as I go and I travel, I take gifts, and many of you, thank you, have donated over time and said, you know, here's a little bit of something to put it somewhere where there is need. And like I said, there is need everywhere, and there's not enough money in the world to fill the needs, but there are widows, there are people with disabilities, and people in really desperate circumstances.

You can't solve their problems, but a little bump does help. And so again, thank you for that and the opportunity to share in a wonderful way. I will direct you quickly to Proverbs chapter 10 verse 22, and it states, the blessings of the Lord make one rich. And if we consider the blessings we've had from God, we are wealthy.

It's not just finances. It's not just things. It's spiritually wealthy. That's ultimately the most valuable blessing we receive from God. The blessing of the Lord makes one rich, and he adds no sorrow with it. There is no sorrow in following God's lead, in responding to Him, and receiving His blessing in our life. There's no regrets in receiving the choice things that He has to offer, and then sharing those things with others.

It is, in fact, what God has given us to do, and it's a wonderful opportunity. On Friday, we left Kumasi. We traveled to the Yedgii congregation. You can see it here up on the map. Up... where are we here? Up here. My map isn't fully showing on the screen. This is all a lake here, okay? These streams, these rivers, have been dammed up down below here, and this is all a lake.

And Yedgii is situated at the top end of the lake. It's the largest man-made lake in the world by surface area. There's a second by volume, but there's a bigger lake by volume and depth of water. But by surface area, this Lake Volta here is the largest man-made lake in the area, and the congregation exists up at the top. The road from Kumasi to Yedgii has become increasingly dangerous.

That's why Afori came down to Kumasi, because he wanted to travel with us back up to Yedgii. The week prior to my trip, a military officer had been killed in a robbery on that highway, and then the previous week a Muslim cleric was killed in a robbery. And most of the robberies happen on Sunday, when people are bringing their goods to market and into the towns. And so what we found was then about every 30 miles, there were police roadblocks. They'd stop the traffic.

You'd get out, they'd search the car. This particular one, they patted us down, actually for weapons, and got to think, well, since we know each other so well now, how about a picture? And they were a good sport.

They obliged. But this wasn't corruption. Sometimes the police in certain areas are seeking to shake something out of you. They were there helping to secure the area and to make travels go more smoothly. We were grateful to see them. Okay. A lot of times, as we're on the road, I'm just interested in people and what I see and what's going on, because, you know, I wonder about people.

Who are they? You know, what's their life about? What's their circumstances? What are their hopes? What are their dreams? What are their opportunities? You see a lot of people and potential, but not a lot of opportunities at times. And I just look at people and I wonder. And I think, because these are our fellow man, these will be people who are part of the kingdom of God someday, and just to consider what it is that they've lived through in their life today.

So I like to just at times take pictures of what I've seen in the travels. Between Komasi and Yeji is one of the largest food producing areas in Ghana, and it's, other than a few commercial farms, it's primarily small family farms, one after another after another. And so you see people out in these fields just, I mean, handworking the crops. Little short hoes bend over, just weeding between the corn plants.

And again, it's a very hands-on, blood, sweat, and tears, carve-out-your-life type of a society in many of these places where our church members live. Again, just alongside the road, some of the ladies, they're likely traveling between each other's farms. They help and do various work. It's 95 degrees out there at the moment, high humility to you while we're traveling. And you don't see a lot of miniskirts in Ghana. You see people dressed in full clothing, outworking, and living their life. Many things that go on are, it's family business. And it's amazing to me to see how young children are outworking, outworking in the fields, helping their families, and the fact that a lot of times women have their babies strapped on their back, and they're out working either in the fields or in the market.

And it's a very hard life, not just for the men working, but I would say in many cases it's harder even for the women. And their families are large. They have oftentimes six, eight children, and they're providing for everybody, and the whole family's working. Again, here's a lady that's out with a young baby out in the market, and it's just a busy life. I don't know what to say. I'm just, I'm always fascinated about these people because God has a plan, God has a purpose, and we have an opportunity to share blessings not just in the church, but with the people around us as well.

And here's another lady out on the roadside, obviously out collecting firewood for cooking. It's a very labor-intensive life. This is one of my favorite pictures.

Family heading into town. You see a lot of families together on a motorbike, so we got Dad in the front and Mom there, the baby, the baby in the middle, and the dog on the back. And the dog looks happy.

And at first I thought it was a gas can on the back. It is a gas can, but they've cut it open, they've made a pet carrier out of it, and you have the whole family heading into town. This is just a common scene out on the road. Again, I never tire of the road trips.

This is Yeji. This maybe just gives you a little glimpse into the kind of places that some of our brethren live and congregate. You can see the lake out in the distance there, Lake Volta. And here Yeji is supported primarily by farming and fishing, and that's the occupation of the majority of our church members is farming and fishing. As you can imagine, it doesn't necessarily provide a great life, but they get by. You have the markets that line the streets on the weekends, and this is actually where a lot of our brethren will bring the things that they grow and sell.

Lake Volta, you have ferries that run back and forth. There's a commercial ferry that cars can drive on and go across and back, but there's many of these wooden boats that people climb into and make their way across and back, and we actually have church members that live on the far side of Lake Volta, so they have to take these boats across the lake in order to come into church services on the Sabbath. I was ready to climb on board and go for a ride, but Henry had other ideas. He tends to have to rein me in a little bit, but to me, I'd love to be on that. I said, next time, we got to take a ride across the lake, but the brethren, it's effort and it's work, and if you got to just connect to the webcast, you get on the boat and you come across the lake, and you make your way into church services on the Sabbath.

Now, this is the Yedgii congregation. We spent the Sabbath together. Most do not speak English, and as is the case with actually a number of our congregations outside of Accra, they speak the local dialect primarily, and so church services are translated. So when I give a sermon, it's being translated, which means I take my notes and I throw half of them out, and then I whittle those down and throw another half out, and you're just basically sticking two bullet points as you go through translations. But this is probably one of our poorest congregations in Ghana. Again, most of the individuals there are farmers and fishermen, and Ophori was talking to me. He said, you know, something that would be a huge blessing to the congregation, and I said, what's that? He said, a tractor. He said, really? A tractor. He said, well, you know, a lot of these people are farmers, and the whole region is. And he says, a person who has a tractor is a wealthy man, and they go from field to field to field, and they plow the fields up for the people to plant, and a tractor is a little more of a rare thing that people would own. And he says, you know, if the church had a tractor here that they owned, it would benefit the brethren, and we could generate income for the church. And so I just said, we have to look at that, and we'll have to consider that. There's not funds necessarily in the church budget for those things, but they tend to come through private donations. But the fact is, whenever I'm traveling around, we're trying to find things that help people to help themselves. Cash gets spent, and it's gone. But if you can help somebody purchase something, a piece of equipment, start a business, something that helps to generate something ongoing, that could be more of a blessing to them in the long run. I will ask you to pray for the Yedgii congregation specifically. They live in an increasingly dangerous area. Last year, around spring holy day time, I mentioned that we had a young lady in the church in Ghana that was killed. She was from the Yedgii congregation. Her name was Comfort, and she was 16. And it was just a bright light. When she was at camp, we awarded her, basically, it was an award of being the most outgoing, the most well-rounded camper. I mean, she always had a smile on her face, always participated. Comfort was killed just out walking with a friend, and it was a very tragic thing.

The person that killed her was a known criminal in the area and ended up in a police shootout a couple days later, and that person was killed. But, as you can imagine, it was devastating for the congregation. Comfort's mother, her husband, had died a few years ago, so she just had her daughter. And, essentially, when this occurred, her mother was inconsolable, as Henry said, and she left the area. A few other families, as well, after that occurred, picked up and moved out of the area, because it's become increasingly dangerous. Two days after we left, we received a phone call from Afori, and one of the older ladies in the picture here was going out to work her farm. And she has a plot of ground that her and her neighbors work, and they always go out there together. But, on this particular morning, she headed out on her own ahead of her neighbors, and as she was heading on the road to her farm, someone came out of the bushes and grabbed her. The older lady drug her into the bushes, and she's struggling, and she's struggling. They have their hand over her mouth, and she managed to struggle loose of the grip over her mouth, and she started calling out like her husband was with her. She was calling a man's name, and she's like, over here, over here, help, I'm over here, and it startled the person that grabbed her, and he took off running, and as he was running, she was yelling, over there, over there, he's going that way, he's going that way. And about 20 minutes later, the neighbors came upon her. She was collapsed and passed out in the road just from exhaustion of the struggle that had taken place.

So this is where some of our brethren live. This is some of the challenges that they face daily, and so I would just ask for your prayers for them, for God's protection and His blessing.

A number of children in the congregation, and they're such a joy. They're always happy, and despite their circumstances, and as they grow up, they'll be coming to camp. Some of the other that are teens have made it down to the youth camp in Ghana for a couple of years down in Accra, and those kinds of activities are a blessing to them. It's just precious faces.

From Yeji, we made the trip down to Cape Coast and over to the Agona congregation, a village congregation out here to the west. Let's give you a little glimpse of Cape Coast. It's a beautiful region. We've had the Fisa Tabernacles here for a number of years. This year it's going to be over in Winaba, but it's one of my favorite parts of Ghana. The coastal air is blowing in. It's cool. There's very few mosquitoes and just a wonderful place to be. But again, this is a fishing community, wooden boats out there. It's like stepping back in time, just watching how the community and the regions function. The Agona congregation consists of about 45-50 people. Recently, they lost their meeting facility that they had been at. We're looking for a place to meet. A surprise to me, as I showed up there, was this, which they had built. Last year, the Fisa Tabernacles, the offerings that were taken up, the congregations took a portion of the offerings and they sent it to the Agona congregation so that they could build something for a meeting facility. It's essentially a temporary building. It can be deconstructed and set up on another piece of property. There's a church member whose brother allowed them to build this on his property and to be meeting and having church services there. But I love it! Frankly, I was impressed because they did this on their own. They were actually keeping it under wraps until it was pretty much finished. Henry sent me some pictures actually just before my trip, but it's like, surprise! We've constructed a hall here. It's a blessing for them.

We have the interiors. It's mostly bamboo. I left some funds behind so that they can put windows in, kind of seal up some of the open areas. They said if we could put a skim of concrete on the floor even, that would keep the dust from blowing in our face when the wind blows through.

It's not huge. It's like $350 to do those things. I left that with them to be able to continue some upgrades. But they built that themselves for about $1,500. I said, I would love you to come to my house and build one out of my pasture for the next lockdown. We'll just have church out in the field. But what a blessing. I'm not sure what happened here. This is the view from the window. It's the village. Again, our village congregations, this is a little bit of a larger village, but I want you to think more of, in the sense of, a community church than a regional church. Most of the people walk to church services or ride a motorbike, and it gives us the ability, actually, to have a little bit more of an outreach in the community in a community church type setting. Three of those men there were ones who constructed the hall. I got to go on my first motorcycle ride while I was in Ghana, there through the village.

Put a white man on a motorcycle through a village, and it attracts a little attention. And this picture attacked my wife's attention, too, because she said, where's your helmet?

I said, there's only one. I saw thousands of people on motorbikes in Ghana, and like five of them had helmets, and I got my picture with one of them. But we went out to look at a piece of property, actually, that's for sale, that has the potential to perhaps have a more permanent meeting location for them. But, you know, what a lot of fun, just riding through the village on a motorbike. Again, back to Cape Coast. This trip had been, to be honest, meeting after meeting after meeting, and you drive somewhere, and you have two, three meetings that evening, and you just, to a degree, was a bit exhausting. And I loved Cape Coast, and I said to Henry, I said, take me to Mabel's Table. And it's my favorite restaurant there. It's not expensive, but it's a million-dollar view. And I said, I hope our table's open. It's the middle, middle right down there on the water, and you just sit there for an hour and eat, and, you know, the stress just kind of bleeds away, and you hear the waves crashing on the shore, and it's just, it's an incredible spot. If you ever want to go to the feast in Ghana, go to Mabel's Table, go do some of the castle tours that they have on Cape Coast, and the brethren would love to see you. Next.

Kuan Yaco, one of our village congregations. This building is on the church publication, the United Nudes, on the front cover. It was a source of the recent ABC fundraiser, fun show, and combined with LifeNets project. This is the building that I've showed you before, that they're meeting under these high-tension power lines, and the government's condemned basically every building within that right-of-way, and they have to move. And a structure was started a few years ago, about two years ago now, on a piece of property that we purchased. They're on the outskirts of the village, and as I said, this is, finishing this up has been the focus now of the fundraiser that went on. So they've extended the walls up, they're ready to put the roof on, and that'll be on before the Feast of Tapper Knackles. But they're very excited, because this is going to serve not only as a church hall, but a community center for the village as well. There'll be opportunities for outreach and various activities that support the community, even maybe even some business ventures being run out of the location there. Again, as you consider more of a community church rather than a regional church, then the applications are more universal.

By the way, they've done this themselves, the congregation, by hand. If you want to make a block, there's a pile of sand, there's the pile of gravel, okay, and you get to it. You want to mortar it together, it's all by hand, and it's all labor. This is Winneba, our Winneba congregation. If you're coming back towards Accra a little closer, this is Peter Bonsie. He's the leader there. Peter is a contract construction worker, and he's actually been in charge of doing a lot of the construction going on at the Kwan Yaco Hall, as well as upgrades that they're also making to the Winneba Church Hall. This is also being funded through the LifeNets and Charity fundraiser. So you see they've got the gravel there, they've got the sand, they're making block, they're building a perimeter wall around, and they're going to be making some significant upgrades there to the church building where they meet. Right now and forever, they've been meeting without any kind of restroom, washroom facilities at all. There's just basically a little short stub wall that you can go out the door and kind of stand behind, but he's constructing, he's putting in a drain field, and he's constructing actually washrooms with plumbing, which will be a wonderful upgrade for the congregation. Again, this is part of the blessings being shared through the fundraisers that were done here at home.

Just a quick view of Winneba. Winneba means Windy Bay in their local dialect, and the breeze blows in, cool air, mosquitoes are gone, and it's one of my other favorite places. This is where the Feast of Tabernacles will be held here this year in the community of Winneba. Every year as well, when I'm there, I make three or four trips a year, but we try to take one trip to have a leadership workshop. So these are some of the leaders of the Agona-Winneba-Kwanyako congregation that come together for that workshop, and we make it a day event, serve them lunch in the middle, and I open it with just a few comments and solicit their questions. And it's always interesting. It takes on a life of its own. Two to three hours leading up to lunch is filled with just asking and answering questions related to the Bible and, frankly, related to their culture as it relates to the Bible. Because there are things that are black and white, you know, right, wrong, sin, whatever, how you would categorize it from Scripture, but there are also things that are cultural. And now you're trying to balance man's culture against the word of God, and you say, what is cultural? You do give weight to cultural, okay? You don't want to be offensive culturally, but there's also things culturally that you understand that does not trump God's word. So a lot of our conversations really go along that line, and it's fascinating because a lot of questions that I receive really make me think because they're not questions that we ask here at home, to be honest. And it's productive time spent together, and then I also try to present some aspect of Christ-based servant leadership, principles of that, because their society they live in is top-down, heavy-handed, authoritarian leadership, and that's not what we want in the church. We want Christ-based servant leadership, recognizing the strengths in others and bringing others along in development. This is for the kids. I think there's a few kids out there. If you like to eat in a restaurant where the chickens wander through, I actually know a few adults who would like that. The interesting thing is to open the menu and see chicken as the main item, but as soon as you open the menu, they're gone. But, you know, the challenge is, at times, we've had goats come wandering through the door of church, and other, you're in the village and you're open air, and you're eating, you're worshiping, you're doing various things, and the animals are alive, and they're around. And if you ever see fish and chips on the menu, it may not look like fish and chips at home, as I found out. But it was very good.

Back to Accra is where I finished up my travels. Again, it's basically our home office of the church there in Ghana, and we had Sabbath services there, the final Sabbath. I did have about two days to meet with brethren of the congregation there, kind of individually, as different people wanted to have some meetings and getting together, and I also sat down with David and Henry. We recapped, basically, everywhere I've been in the needs and various areas. One thing we're looking at investing in is some sort of bit of technology upgrade. I mean, the congregations are, let me say, very, very low on the technology, and they could actually be benefited by the fact that we can get some laptops in the congregations. We can actually have people that would record sermons via Zoom or some other method on their laptops, put them on flash drive, send them to the other congregations where they can apply them as well. The challenge is the language, and some areas could download home office sermons and play on occasion, but other areas you're confined by the language barrier, and the fact is then you can only receive the diet that your local pasture would give you, and hopefully that's good, but it's good to be able to have outside resource brought in as well. So we're trying to... Internet's not great, so doing webcasts, those sort of things are out the window, but we're trying to figure ways to tie the congregations together a little more with messages that can be shared by various speakers in between them. This is our church hall and place of meeting in Accra. It's a building that's owned by a church member, and God has blessed her in her business, and it's led to a blessing in the church where she has just said, you can meet here in a section of my building for as long as you like.

So this is the Accra congregation, and there should be audio, but I guess...

You notice there's a lot of young adults there, and somebody said, where's the children? We do have a few children and families, but you know it's expensive to live in Accra. If you have a family and you have multiple children, you need a bigger house. It's very expensive, but it's an education center, so we have a lot of young adults that have been there for schooling, and they've gotten degrees in engineering and chemistry and nursing, and they're actually a core group of people that is a great support for the rest of the church. We had a blessing of an ordination while I was there. Billy, Billy Adamu. Actually, Billy is his last name, but he's known as Billy, and just an incredible young man, a servant in the congregation. As I mentioned earlier, he was in the pictures up in Kumasi. He lives and works in Kumasi. He travels once a month down to Accra as well and speaks there, serves at the youth camp, serves at the feast. And I'm looking for a lot of things from Billy in the future, but he is a great servant, and it was a blessing and a pleasure. It's been multiple years since there's been an ordination in Ghana, so ordained Billy as a deacon was very encouraging for everybody else there.

Finally, here's a shot of our congregation in Accra. And again, as we have blessings, as God gives gifts to us physically, spiritually, He's given us responsibility to share those with others. A lot of our young adults here, as I said, they're highly educated, they're servants, and they go out to surrounding congregations, and they speak, and they teach, and they're blessing at the feast. They're essential to the youth camps, and we're grateful for them. Paying it forward is a principle that we find recorded throughout the Bible over and over and over. In whatever way God has blessed us, He gives us the opportunity and responsibility to extend that same blessing out to others as well. We forgive because we have been forgiven by God.

Right? We love one another because we have been loved by God and Jesus Christ. The Bible says we are to comfort one another with the same comfort by which we have received from God. So whatever aspect it is that we have, personally, as a blessing, it may be small in the financial sense, or in the wealth or the materialistic sense, but it may be great in the spiritual sense. God has given to us to share and to be a blessing to others, not to our glory, but to His glory.

So, brethren, I'd like to thank you very much for your care, for your support of God's people in both Nigeria and Ghana. It's greatly appreciated. Whenever I visit there, they ask about you, and they say, please, when you go home, extend our love to the brethren. Extend our thanks to the brethren. They very much feel a part of this body, and they love you as brothers and sisters in the faith.

God told Abraham that he would be a blessing. And as a part of the modern-day descendants of Abraham today, God has given it to us an opportunity to be a blessing, not only to the community, but to the world. And it's not just for the church alone. The light is not to be hidden under a basket. The word of truth is not to be sealed up and shut up and just contained within ourselves. We're to go be a light. We're to share the gospel. We're to be a blessing as God gives us opportunity.