Day 34 Week 5

The last few days have been very relaxing in most regards until today! We made some visitations to surrounding villages, which can be up to three miles away or so. The area is somewhat mountainous and so these journeys can be very wearisome! I am learning that ministry is not just mentally tiring at times, but also physically exhausting as well. When we do these visits I am sometimes out of the loop for they speak in Delu, Twi, or Ewe of which I understand nothing! After the visit I generally ask a little about what was discussed and it varies from small talk to family issues.
Now for today’s journey that has taught me a lot! First, we had to wake up at 6:00 to get ready for our trip, because we were intending on returning back t Obanda by 3:00. Well that did not happen. Today we were going to go to Nkwanta to visit a wildlife reserve, of which no one had been to or knew much about. We ended up not leaving until close to 8:30. Once again the Ghanaian time strikes again. Upon arrival we made a few stops to buy some items we needed and then took off to where we (thought) we needed to go to register for the park. This consisted of a two mile hike to the building that ended up just being a reception building for large groups. After this unfortunate discovery we made our way back to where we started. We found a taxi who did take us to the park. We asked him to stay while we figured out what we were going to do since Pastor Hayford had not been to the park. We went in and basically discovered that were going to see very little and spend a lot over four to six hours on this adventure or which neither of us were prepared for. With this we decided to leave and head back to Obanda, so the trip we made ended up being to get a couple drinks, lunch, and a few items. God was not done with our little adventure either, and I am sure he was just laughing the whole time because that’s all we could do, for as we came out of the park our taxi driver had left! We are now about three kilometers away form town and at the peak of the heat. We made it about half way and someone gave us a lift the rest of the way. Wow! O but wait I am still just getting started! It is about three o’clock in the afternoon by this point so the day has already been long. We get back to town and grabbed some lunch and picked up a part for someone in Obanda. We had the very fortunate time in finding a taxi driver right away who was leaving, typically it can be an hour to two hour wait for one. Well it turned out to be to good to be true. The diver had to make a personal stop to get a back of rice or sugar, so we waited about a half hour or so. Once we got going we were about half way and we made a slight (huge) detour! We headed to another village off the direction we needed to be going. Once we finished dropping off this woman we completed our loop which put us back into the town we needed to be in Brewaniase. Well, we decided to make things a little more interesting and half way on this detour our car ran out of gas! We did stop right in front of a small village so that was at least nice. It took us about an hour before anyone came back with some gas. Well that was the least problem for we had hit some big rocks and one of them had punctured the gas line! So what does one do when you are stranded in the middle of a village and you have a punctured fuel line? You get some soap and there is your plug! Laugh all you want, but it worked. We made it to Brewaniase and now it is around 5:30 going on 6:00. The same man was going to take us the rest of the way to Obanda, when a sudden we ran out of gas again. Upon refueling and a lot of push starts (everyone starts to push the car to gain speed so the driver can put it in gear, which then the car starts) we were on our way. We finished off this day around 8:00 at night having walked about 6 miles give our take and lots of dead ends!
I learned that in ministry you are going to have many dead ends and not to get discouraged. As well, when curve balls are thrown at you just keep your eye on the ball and swing for God will get you through it all! The most important thing I learned today is that one is a representation of Christ at all times and so when one is thoroughly exhausted and more things keep going wrong to keep a level head and keep smiling or laughing. Laughing was what got us through the day!