We're going to Poland!

Clancy and I are headed to Cieszyn, Poland July 20th. We are leading a team of 9 people and cannot be more excited about it.

Please read our latest letter to get an update on our lives and find out what we will be doing in Poland. Also please consider praying for us and helping us get there.

  2014 Support Letter

Engaged, Settled, and Searching

It has already been more than 40 days since I returned from Ghana and I cannot believe how much has happened since then.  Literally two days after I walked off the plane in NYC, I was kneeling in front of Clancy in Columbia, asking for her hand in marriage.  And she said yes! (Thankfully.)  You can read our engagement story as told by Clancy here and view some of the pictures from our photographer here.  It truly was the best day of my life to date.  If this is the first time you are hearing of this news, I apologize for not telling you sooner!  Please comment below so we can plan to catch up more personally.

Well that was fast...

I'm sitting here in Accra in a lazy boy, watching the women's badminton semifinal, eating Frosted Flakes, wondering where the last six weeks went.  It has truly been an amazing experience here in Ghana.  Unfortunately, I have not posted much in the last two weeks and I apologize.  We got super busy with building a grain dryer, engaging the community, and planting a garden.  Below are pictures from my last days on the farm.  Enjoy and let me know if you have questions! I'll see those at home in two days!

Portfolio

Video, Awards, and More

First, congratulations needs to be had for my dad and Deanna Sheng.  They won this past week's  "What is this?"  Although they technically got none of them right, they were the only two to guess and were equally close!  For the first picture from the last post they were mostly right.  Her name is Awusi and she is carrying a metallic bowl on her head, containing heavy pieces of wood.  This 22-year-old girl easily carries 50lbs on her head.  Using your head to transport things is definitely the preferred vehicle.  I've seen everything from water to wood to candy to a slingshot carried on the head.  Below is a lady in the village carrying the most interesting piece on her head that I think I've seen.  The next picture below her is an attempt at showing the most common place people are seen carrying things.  Along any busy road, people are carrying goods around trying to sell them to people in cars.  I could easily buy toilet paper, a DVD, phone credit, and lunch while waiting in the dense traffic.  The last picture was Hamza and my attempts at joining our Ghanaian friends.  We could only last a couple minutes (and with no added weight).

The next picture in the last post was a close up of the side of a mud hut.  To the right is a pan-backed view of this typical form of housing for rural Ghanaians.  I have not lived or slept in one of these huts yet, but I plan to do so before I leave.  My new American friends who spent the last 2 months living in a different village said that I definitely need to experience this part of the culture.  Lizards, mice, and bugs (apparently) often find their way into the living quarters.  Although I am blessed to easily avoid this issue, I want to at least get a taste for what my neighbors in the village deal with each night.



The last picture is actually the irrigation control panel.  I know that the majority of you have never seen an irrigation panel, but if you look closely, you'll notice some of the buttons are specific for something big turning and pumping water.  If it has not rained in three days, then they turn on the system.  It takes about 30hrs of run time for the system to make a complete circle around the crop.  Water is the most essential part of farming here so there is a constant checking and rechecking of oil levels in generators, assessment of wearing on parts, and a watchful eye on the whole system.  

Video "Monday"

So this new video is actually clips from this past Monday and Tuesday.  On Sunday we were joined by three ladies on the farm!  This was a historical moment, I can assure you.  There aren't too many women that have visited the farm besides John's family.  Michelle, the woman in the first scene, is a doctor from the United States that has spent the last year training women to be midwives in Afghanistan.  She did a small survey of the women who work on the farm to get some sort of grasp on the health issues in the village, how the sick are treated, and how many survive common illnesses.  The next clip with the white board was one of her methods of asking the questions.  Each woman had five stones and were asked to rate which issue they felt has the most effect on people's well-being.  I will definitely post about the results of that conversation later.

On Monday, a team from MEDEEM came to the farm as well. I traveled across the lake to pick them up since I had met them earlier in my time here during a business meeting. Straight from their homepage they say, "MEDEEM provides an innovative and affordable, private-sector driven solution to formalizing land rights for the world’s poor. MEDEEM’s mission is to bridge the legal empowerment gap between informal land holding and formal land registration." They are a great group of guys who also gave us some excellent insight into how to better address the communication gaps with the locals. We took all the girls and MEDEEM to the village to show them around. Once in the village, a smiling Robert and Prosper showed me the machine they use to process and grind down casava and corn. This is the main source of calories for the village.

About the same time MEDEEM and Michelle left, the children got out of school and immediately surrounded Taylor and Abby. The girls quickly taught them some cool hand shakes and were instantly loved by all the kids. Taylor and Abby have spent the last two and a half months here in Ghana teaching teachers and students how to use computers in rural villages. They brought 30 computers over from the US to donate between the three schools they were teaching at. Its amazing because they fundraised for the entire project- almost $30,000! As followers of Jesus Christ, they give all of the success of their program to God and humbly accepted the praise that I gave.

Then on Tuesday we spent some time planting a new vegetable garden. Kris also took time to teach us the proper way to plant, the timeframe behind growing, and other necessities for a productive crop. By the end of the day we were all tired but still had a little energy left to have a Ghana-inspired dance-off.