I am here!

Hey Friends!,
Just wanted to let you know that I am here and will be hitting you with deep thoughts again soon. The last couple of weeks have been full for my family.

We took a brief vacation to Chicago with our little guys. Lots of family fun was had by all and I am pretty sure we completed everything my oldest son wanted to do. Including a boat ride.

 

Then my 5 year old started kindergarten! I know... that is crazy but it happened. I miss him but he is loving every moment of life right now. He adores his teachers and I adore them too. They are very dedicated to making sure that their students are taught to their own abilities and strengths.

Showing off his muscles on the first day of school. 

I have also been dealing with some health stuff but I seem to finally be recovering from that a bit. But that means more doctors appointments and less time to blog. But the good news is that I have some awesome doctors and they are taking good care of me!

Also, I received like... 4 more boxes of stuff for the school in Ghana. Not that I know quite yet how to reasonably ship it over there but its exciting stuff none the less. If you have any ideas on the shipping let me know. I am following pretty much every path I know and running into a lot of brick walls. Or if you know a company who would want to sponsor... let me know on that too. Other than that... we are getting the last details ready for the trip and gathering all the things we need. I go in a couple of weeks for my Yellow Fever vaccine and we will be sending off for our visas before we know it!

Thanks!

These books, puzzles. curricula and school supplies are just a tiny little sliver of the donations I have received to send to Ghana! I just ordered about 40 classic novels and science books from betterworldbooks.com and have several items to pick up from church. We might even be able to buy more depending on how shipping works out! And word on the street is that I have a few more items coming my way from my sweet neighbor who is a teacher. All of these resources are going to go to The Village of Life to help increase literacy and increase their access to knowledge. It is a fun and beautiful thing watching it unfold. Thank you Temple Baptist Church and friends and family for helping to gather so many special resources for our kids in Ghana. I very much look forward to sharing with you about how these resources will be used at The Village of Life.

More on Education

What can I say... it's been on my mind lately. I have a 5 year old who is about to start Kindergarten. Five is about the age that children are bought from their families and taken to work on Lake Volta in Ghana. They aren't gearing up for their last summer adventure to see their first cubs game like my 5 year old is. They aren't buying nice shiny shoes, or pink and purple shirts (my son has pretty epic style), they don't get to have a bag to carry all their school supplies to school in. They are not guaranteed 1-2 hot, nutritious meals a day like my son will have at his school. There will be no tutors to help them learn to read or learn English (Ghana's national language). No one to make sure they have the resources they need to learn and grow into healthy men. 7,000-10,000 little boys on Lake Volta with no hope of a future. No education, no food, no clothes, no rest, no shelter, no family. 16 hr work days and maybe one meager meal a day. Boat oar beatings if they don't listen or get out of line. Little boys as young as my son, drowning in a lake after being forced to dive down 25 feet into the lake and untangle fishing nets from the trees below the water. These are the boys and there are thousands of girls with the same plight but different jobs. Beautiful little people forced into domestic servitude at young ages and on down the road into sexual servitude. Hope broken and lost and deprived of everything their lake brothers are deprived of. Utterly heartbreaking.

I often times think about what God wants for children... because I have a heart for children. I have known since I was 12 that I would work with children. Not only that I would work with children but that I would work with children that many people seem to note as "difficult". My aspirations have been to be a special education teacher, a child advocate, a child life specialist. I have always wanted to work with special needs children or children in the system or children who are ill or just children who didn't seem to get a fair shake at life. I was that child and I dearly love those children. So God puts it on my heart constantly... what does God want for children?

I can assure you that it isn't this:

photo from the touch of life foundation

or this:

It looks more like this:

Yes... this is the same boy as above after being rescued from Lake Volta and being taken to The Village of Hope (a sister orphanage of The Village of Life)- photo credit TOL foundation

and this:

Photo Credit TOL foundation

I want all of the children in Ghana to look like my son on his first day of school. Happy and excited and full of hope for his future. Please join us in making that a reality for the children on Lake Volta. Help advocate for the trafficked child. Help us raise the funds to build the new school for The Village of life and help us get to Ghana so that we can be God's hands and feet to show these children the love that God has for them.

Education

Girl in school_Ghana, a photo by Join Up! on Flickr.

When I think about meeting the needs of the children in Ghana the most important and influential immediate (physical and tangible...) need I can think of is Education! Sure all children need food and water and shelter and love. I absolutely think those things are primal needs for healthy lives. But what I am concerned with is changing a system that locks kids away from their childhoods. A system of work that enslaves children. If we can fight THAT system that is embedded in poverty then we will likely have well loved and well fed children. And the key to fighting a system that is intertwined with poverty is education. It is universal. That is how you fight it here in the US and how you fight it in Africa. 

When we go to Ghana in November, we will be working hard on bringing education to children. The idea is that these children are going to be the future business men and women of their nation. The future doctors and nurses and leaders. That is why building another school building at The Village of Life is of great importance! This will allow more children to be rescued off of the lake and given a formal education. An education that will allow them to employ moral business practices and to advocate for children as they turn into young men and women. 

We are also going to continue to work on educating the slave masters that own the sweet children on Lake Volta. Praying that peaceful attempts at educating these men and Gods movement in their lives will start to change the hearts and minds of the people who buy and use children in their fishing businesses. 

Please be a part of this! It is how we will help this region in Ghana change. It isn't a hand out at all... it is educating them and providing them with the skills necessary to go on to be honest and  moral business men and leaders in the future. Now that is a powerful goal! Please donate to the school if you can. Every single dollar will help. $30,000 is what it takes to  build this new school. That is nothing when you look at the school buildings our children go to in the US. NOTHING. We can do this. We can raise $30,000 to give beautiful children a family and education. We can raise that money to have a place for FORMER slave owners to take business classes or learn new skills so they can run an honest business that violates no ones rights. Get the word out. Donate whatever you can. If all of my friends donated just $10 we would be WELL on our way to building a new school in Kete-Krachi for rescued children. We would be WELL on our way to helping to transform a huge region of a country through empowering them and educating them. It is quite amazing when you think about it all. I truly believe that we can all take part of being the hands and feet of God in this. God has a heart for children and wants us to fight for their rights. I hope you can take part in this journey with us.

Books, books, books

oxfam-ghana-18, a photo by tobyadamson.co.uk on Flickr.

Education is freedom...

In addition to raising money to build a new school building at The Village of Life campus, we are collecting supplies for the kids/teachers who use this school. They can always use new resources! One of the bigger needs for the school and the children and staff are books. Curriculum that isn't outdated is a big need. Particularly curriculum and books about health and fitness. But all curricula would be appreciated. Math, science, art, literature, English, handwriting, music, geography. Also the kids really love books and are in need of story books and work books and just any learning material out there. They are hungry for knowledge.We need to feed that hunger! These are the kids who are going to transform their country. These are the kids who have a very good chance of putting child trafficking out of existence in Ghana and these are the kids we need to be investing fully in if our goal is to end human rights violations. So if you have children's books, chapter books, or curricula to donate, we would very much appreciate adding it to the pile we have started. I have a feeling I am going to be shipping several boxes of books and curricula ahead of us but if that is how it works out... FABULOUS!

soccer ball drive

soccer, a photo by belovedshoshanna on Flickr.

What reminds you of childhood? For me... it is undoubtedly the hours upon hours upon hours that I spent on the road beside our corner lot house playing basketball. Shooting hoops with the neighbors, my step-dad and brothers, my mom and grandma even played with us once... shooting hoops when I was happy, when I was sad, when I was frustrated. Practicing and practicing so I could make the high school basketball team. Shooting away the anxiety, shooting through the excitement as I waited for teenage life changes, shooting to raise money... I always had a basketball in my arms. I would work on shooting 3's for hours at a time. Then dribbling drills and layups and playing horse and whipping everyone in the neighborhood :P. Basketball was an absolute joy of my childhood. 


Most of us have those things from our childhood that really just remind us of being children. For many Ghanaian children, soccer/football, is that link to childhood. That thing they want to be awesome at and practice hard to learn. In so many of the videos and first hand accounts of child trafficking... I have heard child after child say "and when we can sneak it in, we play football". It is a passion, it is a connection to an otherwise childhoodless life. A soccer ball is an extremely coveted possession for these children. AND it is something that we can get for next to nothing and give to children in Ghana. 


So for the next month... until my oldest son starts kindergarten... I will be collected soccer balls to take with us to Ghana to give to children we meet there. You can donate money to my personal fund and denote that you are "sponsoring a soccer ball (or several)" or you can get with me and get my address and ship them right to me. The more we get, the more we can give. So with that being said, I am not opposed to deflating 50 or 100 soccer balls to ship ahead of us to Kete-Krachi so that we can inflate them all and distribute them to amazing, beautiful children. 

Slaves of the Lake

If you have some time, please watch this documentary. This is not the organization we will be working with but they do very similar things as George and PACODEP. This documentary tells the story of 2 boys who were sold into slavery by their families and who were rescued by a local organization. It is eye opening and tugs at my heart to see children suffer in this way. My prayer is that we bring awareness to the world about child trafficking and that people will be moved to act. If you are looking for ways to help, please let me know. JD, Tia and I have plenty of ways you can get involved with this trip!