Glimpses of our Life in Ghana

 The past weeks, my life has revolved around two things. Dirt and clutter! Brent has been such a good helper this week! He emptied a tote (one that will go with us to Africa) in order to use it to get to the coffee pot.    If you want true motivation to clean and organize, sell your house! Knowing strangers are going to walk through my house examining every corner, closet, and cupboard was intimidating to me. I wanted to leave them with an excellent impression. And so we house cleaned, we cleaned out, reorganized, and tidied every closet, drawer, and shelf. We eliminated things to make rooms appear larger and brighter. The weeks leading up to open house felt like a repeat of the one before. We moved from room to room, closet to closet. And did the same process with each item we laid our hands on. Store? Sell? Take to Africa? At the first open house I felt like we made it! But just barely. There was a closet or two I hoped people wouldn't feel the urge to look in. Th...

Just a few snapshots from the past several weeks. We are slowly but surely getting things done! And we better be! In less then a month we fly for Ghana! Austin and I sorted nails and screws.  Brent sorted lots of things, lots of ways! The pile for the sale just starting to grow. My mother-in-law washed the shop windows. A huge load off my mind! A friend and children helped clean the garage. Austin helped with everything! The truck left! A bittersweet day for the whole family. It's really happening! (Excuse the fact that Brent is in his nightie in the middle of the day!) What would I do without this man! He has done so much house work and lightened my load. Boys in bathrooms is not a good idea! One less roll of toilet paper.

  I had a plaque made like this for Kenny for Christmas last year. Never dreaming what the year ahead would hold. This is our little golden valley, on a beautiful fall morning.   Many hands make light work. Most of us have likely heard the saying since we were little children. I don't know that I have ever experienced it as I have the past weeks. What a blessing family, friends and church family have been.    Life has been crazy, we decided (the end of November) to have public auction on January 4. We will sell some house hold items, a bunch of shop stuff, miscellaneous bigger items (from the swing set to the John Deeres) and then the property. It was a hard decision but we do feel at peace about it. We both know we will miss this place. We love our little peaceful valley. My dream kitchen, Kenny's big shop, the deer that I have a love-hate relationship with (I love seeing them in the early morning or golden twilight but hate when they eat my strawberry p...

Thanksgiving.  All my life there are two things that that day meant. Turkey and Grandma's house.    The turkey wasn't just about eating. It was about the week before the holiday. The catching, butchering, and selling. As a child it involved butchering all day Monday, bagging Tuesday morning, and selling till late Wednesday. The business has grown and now it involves four days of butchering and bagging, and two full days of selling. It's an intense week. Long hours on our feet. Tedious pulling of pin feathers. Hot water in the scalder. Freezing water in the chill tubs. Blood, feathers, and I will refrain from naming the rest. It's a week of give and take. Working together. Joking. Laughing ourselves sick after being up way too long. Making priceless memories. The family is all involved and then we hire extra help for the actual butchering. Many of them come back every year to help, mainly because we are so entertaining!  We do an average of 800 turkeys, some for...

                              Trust. Its such an elusive thing. Every time I think I know what it means I realize it goes deeper then I thought. Life has been teaching me to trust but right now I am being faced with a decision that is asking me to trust farther then I have before. Last night I read the devotional in Beside the Still Waters and was blown away to realize that it was talking about the very thing I was struggling with. Here is my paraphrase to what it said.     Peter and James were fishing all night. They let their nets down in faith and drew them up empty. As they were washing out their nets in the morning a man asked them to push out from the land a bit with him in their boat so he could teach the people on the shore. When he was done speaking, he said to them, cast your nets in the water. They weren’t too sure about this man. They were the fishermen. Who did He think He was te...

   I opened our back door and was greeted with cool, refreshing night air. I stepped out to shake the table cloth free of crumbs from supper and drew a deep breath. Drying leaves scented the fall air and I wanted somehow to bottle it. To soak it in! To hold on to it and pull it out next year when we are living in Ghana and I am homesick. A quiet evening fishing.    I find myself doing that many times these days. Trying to soak up my surroundings like a sponge. So I can squeeze them out and look them over some day in the future; when I am far away from everything familiar. We had revival meetings this past week and we soaked up the teaching and came away revived. But as I sat in the midst of our church family, part of me wanted to weep because I know I will be leaving it soon. And I know just how far Africa is from Pennsylvania.    There is one thing that comforts me though. Even though we will be far from friends and family, God will be just as c...

Africa! I had dreamed of it since I was a teenager. Like all teens, I knew what I wanted in life. About the time I turned 18 I decided I would wait till I was 21, go to nursing school and then do mission work in Africa. There is something romantic about Africa. Poor, sick children. Hot desert sun. Exotic animals. Wild colors. Yes, it was what I wanted! To help people in that culture would be an adventure! But...  Life happened, just before my 19th birthday I started dating and Africa got set on the back burner. Fast forward about ten years. We were attending a church where several of the members were involved in a new mission. Palm Ministries. In Ghana, Africa. Of course it caught my attention. But life was busy, we had a lot going on. But we couldn't deny the tug every time they announced the need for someone to serve. Through a series of events and conversations, we were asked to move to Ghana. Kenny would teach mechanics at New Hope School. We couldn't help being excited!...