Day One of GHAFES Sessions

After several days of preparation, today we were excited to have our first consulting sessions with the Ghana Fellowship of Evangelical Students (GHAFES) organization. Rev. Emmanuel Alijah, General Secretary for GHAFES, picked us up this morning and drove us to the GHAFES office in downtown Accra. When we arrived at the office, all of the staff were having a morning devotional session, so we joined them for the last few minutes. There is something really comforting about having daily prayer and Bible Study before work each day!

Rev. Alijah asked us to advise GHAFES staff on communications, fundraising and tracking alumni. The sessions we facilitated today focused on helping GHAFES staff analyze their stakeholder groups and develop positioning statements for each group. As a group we brainstormed the stakeholder groups’ needs by adopting their perspectives, rather than the perspective of GHAFES staff. We then discussed how GHAFES might expand its ministry to meet some relatively unmet needs of their key stakeholders. It was the first time the majority of participants had done this type of analysis, so it was a new experience for them. The sessions were very interactive and we shared a lot of new thoughts and ideas. By the end of the day, we had drafts of positioning statements for three key stakeholder groups: students, young alumni (under 40), and older alumni (40+).

It was a highly successful day and we are eager to build on these stakeholder positioning statements tomorrow when we talk about strategies for communications, fundraising, and tracking of alumni.

Rev. Alijah (end of table) addressing the staff

Sam facilitating a session

Trip to Cape Coast

First, thank you to everyone that sent us notes of concern. We are okay! We apologize for not updating the blog for the past seven days. We have been in Cape Coast without Internet access. Here is an update on our recent activities.

On Friday we traveled to Cape Coast with Femi, Dave and Isaac. Femi was very kind to take us on the 3-hours journey! Isaac, Training Secretary for the Ghana Fellowship of Evangelical Students (GHAFES), graduated from the University of Ghana, Cape Coast (UCC) and was a wonderful guide for the weekend! Isaac has been very involved in GHAFES for the past six years, so we were able to learn a lot more about the organization which will inform our projects.

On our way to Cape Coast the five of us stopped at Kakum National Park, where we hiked the canopy walk and saw some monkeys. Despite his acrophobia, Sam was able to handle the 40 meter high rope bridges without incident! Once we arrived in Cape Coast we met with a group of GHAFES alumni at the home of a retired UCC professor and long-time time friend of Dave. These alumni have one of the few active groups in Ghana, so this was a terrific opportunity to pick their brains about what they feel are some secrets to success and best practices that could be replicated across other campus groups. Not to mention that Auntie Agnes prepared a delicious dinner!

(Monkey in Kakum National Park)

(Sam on canopy walk)

On Friday evening we bid adieu to our mission advisor, Dave Ivaska. He had to return to the US on Saturday to attend an InterVarsity conference. We are so grateful to Dave for all his work in helping lay the foundation for this trip and for accompanying us for the first week! We appreciate Dave making introductions for us and preparing our daily devotional, which we continue to follow each morning. And, as anyone who knows Dave will tell you, he’s quite a joker! We’ll miss his [sometimes corny] jokes. And yes, Dave, we’re compiling a quote board!

Saturday was amazing! Isaac took us to see the Elmina and Cape Coast slave castles. (President Obama visited the Cape Coast castle during his visit.) The Elmina castle is the oldest European building in Africa (built in 1482) and the largest of the slave castles in Ghana. Visiting the castles was difficult, but an important cultural experience. We were appalled to learn that slavery was practiced for more than 400 years and that an estimated 25 million Africans were captured into slavery. Of those 25 million, half died between marching from their village to the slave castles to then getting on the slave boats en route to the US, Brazil, the Caribbean or Europe. Walking through the “Door of No Return” was very powerful.

(At the Cape Coast Castle)

("Door of No Return" at the Elmina Castle)

Another thing that shocked us was that the Europeans built churches on top of slave dungeons in both castles. In fact, the Cape Coast castle has a trap door outside the church to view the slave dungeons. How can someone feel justified in worshiping God and then turn around and commit such crimes against humanity? It was really a difficult pill to swallow.

Saturday was also Sam’s BIG 3-0 birthday!! We concluded the day with a nice, quiet dinner overlooking the Atlantic coast. (It’s strange to view the Atlantic and know you’re facing South, not East or West!)

On Sunday we attended worship services at the University Interdenominational Church with Isaac on the UCC campus. What an experience! The service lasted from 8:00 am to noon, during which time we had worship and communion, saw the presentation of a couple that got married the day before, transitioned student leadership of the campus ministry program, and did fundraising for a new Christian magazine. Wow! It was definitely a powerful, joyful experience and a real blessing. One thing that we realized is that their weekly church service is more like a congregational meeting. It includes the traditional worship aspects, but also includes a lot of church business. After the service we met with the pastor, who was interested in learning more about why we’re here. (Interestingly, our Ghanaian friends are just as intrigued by our calling to come to Africa as our American friends!)

(Wedding Party)

Yesterday we traveled back to Accra by bus with Isaac. We were a little nervous about traveling by bus because the schedule was not fixed and traffic can be really crazy, but thankfully it went very smoothly. Once we returned to Accra, we met with Reverend Emmanuel Alijiah in his office to share our experiences over the weekend and discuss our progress on our projects for GHAFES. He had some good feedback and builds on our project, which we’re excited to unveil this week!

Last night Isaac took us to meet with a fellowship of pre-med students at the University of Ghana. They are in the midst of final exams and were holding a prayer meeting. It was definitely a new experience, with about 30 students praying out loud at once in several different languages. Hearing so many simultaneous prayers really drives home God’s omnipresence. The student leaders asked us to give brief testimonials about why we’re here. Seeing their reactions reminds us that just the fact that we came all this way to be with them is powerful to them. I hope our presence and appreciation for their culture encourages them. They’ve encouraged us!

We spent today working on our projects and will take tomorrow to put the finishing touches on our lesson plan for Thursday and Friday. This Thursday and Friday we are facilitating five 90-minute interactive sessions with 12 GHAFES staff members. Within the over-arching goal of “Building Sustainable Support,” GHAFES’ General Secretary asked us to help them develop a communications plan and methods to better track alumni. So we are building five sessions: three sessions around segmentation (targeting and positioning GHAFES for students, recent alumni and older alumni), a session on principles of effective communication, a session on fundraising principles, and a session on tracking alumni. Through these exercises, we hope to align GHAFES staff around an annual communications plan with specific tactics to follow-up on.

This is a pilot project. If it is successful, there is a possibility that we could create a more extensive training guide for IFES to conduct with other national movements. (And perhaps we could even be involved on an annual basis.) Femi and the GHAFES staff seemed to be really excited about this so far, so we pray that the sessions are a hit!

Getting Down to Work and Touring Accra

Yesterday was our first day meeting with Femi Adeleye, IFES General Secretary for Partnership and Collaboration and our host in Ghana. His office is conveniently located in the guest house where we are staying, so it was very easy to wake up, eat breakfast, and meet in his office. (Considering how insane Accra traffic is, this proximity is a huge blessing.)
The focus of our meeting was to discuss Femi’s position, which is new to IFES, and how we can be of the greatest assistance during the next three weeks. Through our conversation with him, we honed in on two key projects:

1. Provide recommendations on best practices in building sustainable support through examining other organizations as well as national movements within IFES.
   




2. 
   
   Provide recommendations on how IFES can develop an internal web page for sharing best-practices, templates, and other documents to support external outreach and partnership-building.

It was a highly productive meeting and we are excited to have set expectations and deliverables!

In addition, we are going to work with Affy, Femi’s wife, on a project she is doing with HIV/AIDS education in Ghana. We had lunch with Affy and Bernice, the HIV/AIDS educator with GHAFES (Ghana Fellowship of Evangelical Students) and learned that it is difficult to do HIV/AIDS education in Ghana because the government refuses to acknowledge that there is a problem. Of the African countries, Ghana has one of the lowest percentages of people with HIV/AIDS, but in order to maintain this track, more education needs to be done.

We had dinner in the home of T.B. Dankwa, one of the first IFES Regional Directors in Africa, and met the current General Secretary for GHAFES. It was a pleasant evening with a traditional Ghanaian dinner of jollof rice, baked chicken, beef in a spicy tomato sauce, fried plantains, and salad (which we couldn’t eat since it consisted of uncooked vegetables . . . how we long for salad!) We talked about the challenges and opportunities that GHAFES and IFES have faced during the years as well as the changes they are currently experiencing. One key difficulty is that when GHAFES first started at the University of Ghana there were only a handful of Christian organizations on campus and 10-20K students. Now there are 40 Christian organizations and 40,000 students. There is a lot of competition for the involvement and financial commitment of students. GHAFES has seen a plateau in the number of student members and local contributors – despite the growth in the student population. This is something they are trying to figure out.

(Back: T.B., Femi, Sam, Emmanuel, and Virginia (T.B.'s wife)

Front: Kemi, Affy, Dave, Loralynne)

Today we met with the nine GHAFES team members located in Accra. We started with a nice devotional service led by Dave Ivaska, our mission mentor and member of the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship staff in Chicago (He has been instrumental in helping plan our trip and came to Ghana with us for the first week to make introductions). They asked us to share our testimonial about our faith and what we are planning to do in Ghana. It was really moving to tell them about our experiences and see how interested they are in why we have decided to make this trip to Ghana.

After the devotional, Emmanuel, the GHAFES General Secretary, gave us a tour around Accra. Our first stop was a fabric/clothing store so we could get Ghanaian attire. Loralynne found a traditional dress in an orange material, Sam found a shirt with the map of Ghana and the words “Yes We Can”, and we bought black/white materials to have a dress and shirt made so we can attend a funeral. (Funerals are huge public celebrations/all day parties in Ghana and we would like to attend one before we leave to have this cultural experience.) We then went shopping along the street and were quickly surrounded by persistent salesmen selling everything from African masks to limes. We ultimately had to buy a bracelet with the Ghana flag and Sam’s name because the salesman wouldn’t let us close the door to the car without buying it.

We ate lunch at a traditional Ghana restaurant. Sam had fufu (paste made from ground plantain and cassava) with chicken in a peanut soup, and Loralynne had waayke (black bean and rice mixture) with chicken. It was really good!

We then experienced the traffic of downtown Accra. Thankfully, Emmanuel was driving, because it took serious guts to cut into traffic and at times drive on the shoulder of the roads in order to get around the city. We will never complain about Chicago streets and traffic again! Most of the roads aren’t wide enough for two cars to pass, so drivers essentially play “chicken” all the time. There are very few traffic lights, so you have to yield to the bigger vehicle. Oh, and we were stopped by a herd of cattle casually crossing the road! (Not renting a car = good idea.)

We drove by the Parliament and Supreme Court buildings, visited Independence Square where all of the big national events are held, saw the red sand beach, and toured the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park. Kwame Nkrumah led Ghana to independence from England in 1957 and was elected the first president of the country. He was ultimately overthrown by the military and kicked out of the country, but then brought back posthumously to be buried in his home country. The memorial (see picture below) is designed to look like a tree trunk that was cut off (like his presidency and dream for a united Africa). The statue shows Nkrumah pointing forward to encourage progress. The statues in the fountain are of trumpeters used by tribes to announce when a great leader is coming as well as his death, and they are kneeling to show respect.

Independence Square

Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park

Trumpeters

In honor of Obama's visit to Accra, there are billboards everywhere with pictures of President Obamas and President John Atta Mills, President of Ghana, and the word "Akwaaba" which means "Welcome" in Twi. There are more pictures of Obama in Accra than we saw in Chicago during his Presidential campaign!

It was a very insightful day and we greatly appreciate that Emmanuel took the time to show us around Accra and share his culture with us!

**One special note: if you’re following this, we’d love to hear your thoughts and questions. Please feel free to type a comment on the blog. We hope this can become more of a dialog than a monologue!

Making Connections

(NOTE: We were hoping to post this last night, but we had problems with the Internet.)

Our first day in Ghana was terrific! Everyone is so friendly and we are learning so much already. Fortunately it was a Sunday, so we were able to spend the day connecting with our hosts, Femi and Affy Adeleye, through worship and fellowship. We began the day with an "English breakfast," consisting of oatmeal, eggs, toast, beans in tomato sauce, fruit and cold sausages. Dave taught us our first lesson in cross-cultural mission: don't expect anything to work! He got his hopes up about having toast, only to find that the toaster was not working. Sam helped complete the circuit until the manager was able to fix it. :)

(Sam trying to fix the toaster)

At 9:00 am Affy led a Bible study, during which we discussed the life of Joseph. We focused on how Joseph's father, Jacob, reacts when Joseph's brothers take Joseph's coat and dipped it in blood to fake his death. Rather than trusting in God's grace, Jacob mourns his son, suggesting that God has destroyed all his dreams. Affy used this as a springboard to discuss the importance of perseverance. This was a very interesting conversation, since a couple women in the group are without child. (In Ghana, having children is so integral to society that those who do not bear children are somewhat cast out.) Hearing their testimonies of perseverance through faith really made an impression on us.

At 10:00 am about 30 kids and 30 adults gathered for an interdenominational worship service. Everyone was wearing their Sunday best. It was inspiring to see so many people whose circumstances are quite different from our own express such joy and faith. We were both quite moved. An Australian missionary gave the sermon, which we found to be quite appropriate. It focused on how we can be active members of a church community rather than mere appendages (“seat warmers”). Later, we reflected on what this message means for us and how we can use our spiritual gifts to help others.

After church we enjoyed lunch at the home of Femi and Affy Adeleye. They live in a nice house about 30 minutes from the guest house. (Interestingly, Bob Marley's wife has a home and studio on the way! Rasta!) With the help of their children, Kemi and Emmanuel, Affy prepared a delicious lunch of chicken, a spicy beef soup, banku, and plantains. It was great to chat with the Adeleyes to learn more about their family and history. Both are from Nigeria but have lived all over the world doing ministry. Kemi is almost 16 and Emmanuel is 12 and both attend boarding school in Kenya. They also have two older sons in the US. Remi just graduated from Eastern University in Philadelphia and is looking for a job in marketing/advertising. Phillip is at Illinois Wesleyan University studying accounting and will be doing an internship with Deloitte in Chicago. We look forward to connecting with both when we return.

(Sam, Loralynne, Affy, Femi, and Dave)

We concluded our first day with a quiet dinner at the guest house with Dave. It was so nice to have a quiet evening devoid of all the distractions we normally embrace – mainly television. This trip is a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with each other and focus on strengthening our marriage. Of course we are excited to begin working with Femi tomorrow and pray for good communication to identify projects that will deliver value to him over the next three weeks.

We arrived!

We arrived safely in Accra, Ghana last night!

We had a layover in Amsterdam on our way here. So, we took the train to downtown Amsterdam, walked around, saw several beautiful churches, and went to the Anne Frank museum. We would love to go back to Amsterdam again to see the Van Gogh and Rembrant museums.

The guest house where we are staying is located an hour north of Accra. Femi, our host, met us at the airport with his son, Emmanuel, and drove us to the guest house. It is a very nice guest house with individual bathrooms, air conditioning, and WiFi.

We need to go to church now. Will write more later!

17 hours...

We are in the final hours of preparation for our mission trip to Ghana!

Loralynne's last day of work was yesterday. We spent today running errands, spraying insect repellent on our clothes, and praying that everything would fit in two medium-sized suitcases. Miraculously, thanks to the help of "Space Maker" bags, we were able to fit everything we will need and our bags are officially packed!

We had a very nice dinner with Robert and Malissa Albright tonight. We are sad that they are not going with us, but we are very happy that things have worked out with his job and they are moving to Boston. We are going to do a Bible devotional study on "partnership in ministry" from Paul's letter to the Philippians together while we are in Africa and share our thoughts via email. It will be a very nice way for us to stay connected despite the distance!

Despite the months of planning, it still hasn't completely sunk in that we are going to Africa - in fact we'll be there on Saturday! We're sure that as soon as we get on the plane that reality will hit us.

Our flight leaves at 4:15 pm Central tomorrow. We fly direct from Chicago to Amsterdam overnight. Then we have a 6 hour layover in Amsterdam (we hope to go into the city for lunch). We ultimately arrive in Accra, Ghana at 6:50 pm GMT. Femi is going to meet us at the airport and drive us to Hephzibah Guest House where we'll be staying.

We will let you know when we arrive in Ghana. Please pray that we have safe travels and may God guide us with what we will be doing.

Dinner at Auntie Grace's

(Nas, Susan, Vasi, Sam, Loralynne, Dipo)

On Friday night we had the pleasure of dining at a Ghanaian restaurant in Chicago with rising second year Kellogg students Nas (a Ghanaian and President of the Africa Business Club at Kellogg), Vasi (a Liberian), Dipo (a Nigerian and VP of Finance for the Africa Business Club), and Susan (a Chicagoan and President of the Black Management Association at Kellogg). We enjoyed getting to know Nas, Vasi, Dipo and Susan and understanding their perspectives on Africa.

Now this was not our first fore into Ghanaian cuisine. While our friend Nana’s wakye is far superior to Auntie Grace’s, we tried some other traditional Ghanaian dishes that were quite good. In particular, Sam was excited about a dish consisting of chicken in a spicy peanut butter soup and Loralynne enjoyed the Fufu. The only dish we were not wild about was a mashed okra dish, mostly due to the slimy texture. (It was like eating Slimer from Ghostbusters.)


The food was delicious and the company was a lot of fun. But eating with only our hands – and only our right hands at that – will certainly take some getting used to!

Skype Call with Femi

With graduation behind us, our attention is focused squarely on our mission trip. It’s hard to believe that we will be departing for Accra in 16 days!

On Sunday we had the pleasure of having a Skype call with Femi Adeleye, IFES Associate General Secretary and our host for this mission trip. It was wonderful to interact directly with Femi. We feel blessed to work with someone so dedicated to making this a successful trip and, from what Dave and Sally Ivaska tell us, such a generous host. Femi has already put a lot of thought into our trip, with regard to projects, contacts and accommodations...and even recommendations of places to visit during our free time. (We hope to see the castles in Elmina and Cape Coast, two of the largest slave-holding sites in the world during the colonial era. While visiting these places will be hard, we feel it is very important.)

Our call was also helpful in building a better mutual understanding of how we can interact with Femi and his IFES colleagues, and how we can provide value. Based on our conversation, there seem to be several major projects where we can have an impact, such as understanding how national Christian movements in Africa can track and engage university graduates for community, fundraising and evangelism. We also look forward to helping Femi’s wife, Affy, with her HIV/AIDS work. And we hope to uncover ways in which Kellogg students can work with IFES in the future, through mission trips around the world and/or through independent study and pro bono consulting projects during the school year. Sam is meeting with Kellogg faculty before our trip to understand the school’s requirements for student projects. We pray that the impact of this trip is much bigger than the two of us.

Our call on Sunday drove home the importance of us being flexible and thinking creatively about ways we can add value. We need to practice humility, listen carefully and plug in where we can. This could prove difficult for two over-achieving, “Type A+” Americans, but it is absolutely critical...and will be a great life lesson for us.

Of course, Loralynne has developed a very elaborate packing list for us. (No, it’s not color-coded yet, but I’m sure it will be soon!) Dave and Sally have been very helpful with recommendations and generous. They let us borrow some very cool African dresses and shirts as well as two medium-sized suitcases we know will serve us well.