We are officially "yovos"!

It is hard to believe that I am sitting here in a little hospital compound in the middle of a tropical forest in Africa, but I am. We arrived in Kpele Tsiko, Togo this afternoon… and I have to say, we have absolutely no horror stories from our 2 days of traveling. We made all our flights by a long shot (including our bags!) and everything worked the way it was supposed to. A few interesting things from our travels so far…

1.) At our gate at BWI they kept paging a “Mr. Harry Merican”. If you don’t find that funny, you are no good at Mad Gab… we have been cracking up about it ever since. Of course, we are nerds and therefore easily amused ;-)

2.) When we were waiting at Heathrow, Stephen took out his Bible to read. A couple of Indian men came over and asked if he was a pastor. It turns out they were pastors themselves, one from PA and one from India. The one from India spoke very little English, but from what we could gather he had suffered greatly for Christ. He kept asking me to pray for him and his ministry, and gave me his business card. If you think of it, pray for Bishop Majji – I don’t know many details, but God does. And besides, I promised I would tell my friends to pray for him too!

3.) Stephen was able to share the gospel with a man on our flight from London to Ghana (the man had nowhere to run!). He was from Ghana – very friendly, and loved to talk. But he had very firm opinions that the Bible was in no way literal and therefore “religion” was of no real use – unless of course you happened to like it, then it was ok for you. You can pray for him too – his name is Barry. And we seem to be good at collecting business cards… he wanted to give us one too!

So after absolutely no hardship, a few fun adventures, and a lot of bored sleepless hours (well, for me! Stephen drugged himself with Benadryl and slept like a baby), we arrived in Accra, Ghana last night. A missionary couple (the Gayles) met us at the airport and took us to a missionary guest house where we spent the night. This morning we headed out in a rickety old van with no shocks, over roads that were mostly not paved, among cars and people who followed no rules. I actually loved it! Once we left the city we drove through some coastal plains and then eventually tropical forests, passing through many little villages. It is beautiful here, but the part I really loved was watching the people – especially the children. I wish I could relay to you the many mental pictures I have from today – the colorful women with gigantic baskets on their heads and cute little babies tied to their backs, the shanty houses and grass huts, and the children with huge smiles. When some people saw our van with “Hopital Baptiste Biblique” emblazoned on the side and us nosy white people peering out, they responded in one of two ways. They either stared stony-faced with an expression I could not read, or (more often) their faces lit up with a huge smile (especially the kids!) and they shouted “Yovo!” and “Bonjour!”. Yovo means white person, and it is so strange to stick out so utterly and completely, and to be at such a loss for a way to communicate. It kind of makes a strange impression on you, and makes you feel rather small. But smiles work in all languages, and I especially loved smiling and waving at the children.

After about 6 hours and several stops later (at a hotel, a French restaurant with excellent food, and the market in Kpalime), we finally made it to the hospital. We are staying with the Gayles for our first week, until there is room for us in the Guest House. Don’t feel sorry for us – we are not roughing it at all! All the buildings are quite nice, made out of stone and plaster with many of the conveniences of home. We settled in a little bit and then got a quick tour of the compound before heading over to the hospital… which I am going to have to save for another post. Our introduction to the hospital made quite an impression, but this post is already too long and we have not fully processed or absorbed all that we saw there this afternoon.

Tomorrow morning we will go with the Gayles to their church in a little village a few miles away – which we are super excited about! Please pray for us as we settle in here and learn to serve. There is so much to process and learn, so many attitudes and impressions to form – and we want them to be God-honoring ones! Thank you brothers and sisters for your prayers. We will try to keep you updated as much as possible, and maybe post some pictures too… as soon as we have the chance to take them! ;-)