Going to Ghana...

Welcome to our Ghana mission blog!

Sam is graduating from the Kellogg School of Management in June 2009 and starts work with PepsiCo Chicago in September 2009. With a few months between graduation and work, we have decided to plan a multi-week mission trip. God has truly blessed our lives and we would like to share His blessings with others. Following several conversations with our church missions director and Kellogg Intervarsity director about how and where we could contribute the most, we were invited by the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) to work with them in Ghana. At first we were a little apprehensive about going to Ghana, but after doing some research, we are now really excited!!

We are working to finalize our projects, which may include:

• developing a training program on HIV to help Christian students lead a campus education effort,


• designing a partner-building program for IFES to increase fundraising and support for evangelism across Africa, and


• building a strategy for a self-sustainable microfinance operation in Ghana.

Our friends Robert and Malissa, another couple at Kellogg, have been planning to do a mission trip after graduation as well, so we approached them about going to Ghana with us. They jumped at the opportunity to join us and we are so excited to work with them!

A few weeks ago we had dinner with Daniel Bourdanne, IFES General Secretary, and Deborah Lake, Head of IFES Advancement, during their visit from headquarters in Oxford to Chicago. It was wonderful meeting them and learning more about IFES's global initiatives.

We are in the full swing of planning for the trip. We have reserved our flight to Accra, are reading several books about Ghana, and have scheduled monthly meetings with our mission mentors. This week we have appointments to get blood tests to find out our blood types and confirm whether we need Hep A/B booster shots. And we have to get malaria pills?!

It is all a little overwhelming, but also exciting! Stay tuned . . .

Sam, Loralynne, Daniel Bourdanne (General Secretary of IFES),
Malissa Albright, Deborah Lake (Director of Development for IFES), and Robert Albright