Ghana 2013 - the long trip home...

Day 11/2 A belated blog entry… as it was a long trip home.

We headed off on Saturday down to Accra via the Akosombo dam.  The dam was a little sight-seeing tour and it's this dam that produces 60% of Ghana’s electricity.  Being educated as a civil engineer for me, at least, it was fascinating although our tour guide was very sensitive about taking photos or getting anywhere close to the edge of the dam in case we fell in.

After a spot of lunch overlooking the dam we headed off for a quick visit to Tema market.  We were going to originally vista the medina market in Accra but time didn’t really permit as we then had to head off to the Airport.   At this point the team started to split up as Jill and Will were staying behind for a few more days at the children's home.

The rest of the team spent a few hours in the airport before getting on a plane heading to Istanbul… via the Ivory coast!  Yes we would have 3 take offs and landings in 3 different counties during a 24 hour period (although at one point Katherine was arguing with me we would only have 2 landings for some reason... not sure she thought we’d make it home!).

Trying to sleep for me on the plane is always tough, although I think I may have actually got some as I felt sort of refreshed when we got to Istanbul.  We had about 5 hours wait there before the connecting flight back to London although again at this point the team split as Reninca was getting a flight to Gatwick.  So another team member down but then a quick trip to Heathrow and we actually landed about 30 minutes early which was a first!   The team then parted ways and headed home.

At the end of another distribution I am left with similar feelings to previous trips - On one hand glad to be home but with mixed feelings about what I experienced:

As mentioned, the team was fantastic.  Again I’ll mention Will our leader who’s just got a great heart, Graham who seems to have women falling at his feet most of the time, Katherine, Jill and Helen being excellent OT’s and Kathy who has to try so hard keeping up with the OT’s since she’s only a physio (joking of course) and of course Reninca who’s observation over the week was great... i.e. she watched everything and did nothing (again I am joking of course).  And finally Pam for her spiritual leadership and helping many people find Jesus whilst we were there.  Thanks also to our hosts, Ellen, Catherine and Eric as we couldn't have done it without them.

For those we gave out chairs and mobility aids to I pray that God will bless them and for those who we couldn’t I pray that equally God will bless them too.

I finish thinking about the children again and a twinge of sadness as in the western world we really have it easy most of the time.  Many children in the UK have so much and yet take it for granted, they often want more.  Disabled people in the UK do have good access to wheelchairs etc (as far as I can tel) but in Ghana that just doesn’t happen.

So my final request for prayer is for those children who we saw and that God will transform their lives and they will learn to know Jesus and perhaps God would perform a few miracles in their lives as I remember not to limit God!

For me I have a lot of photos and videos to edit now and I am hoping to be able to share those soon.  Thanks for all the support and prayers we got from you whilst we were in Ghana and it's been a privilege to write the blog - I hope it helped give you some idea of what went on.

Till next time... for now I’ll say goodbye and God bless.