After months of planning, weeks of praying, and 14 hours of travel, myself and three others from Robinhood Road Baptist Church finally touched ground in Accra, Ghana. If you’ve never been through an airport in a less developed country, it’s difficult to describe how nerveracking it can be to go through customs with malitia men holding machine guns glaring at you as if they are waiting for an opportunity to shoot……but after some thorough vetting, we were allowed entrance into the country. One sort of strange thing happened at the airport. When we went to the FOREX booth, we were not allowed to exchange some of our one hundred dollar bills for Ghana Cedi’s because they don’t accept “old timey american money”. After looking to make sure i didn’t hand them confederate bills, i realized that “old timey” means bills with the smaller president faces. Sure did make me feel old there for a moment.
The first friendly faces we saw were those of Tom and Kathy Newell. They run the Agape Guest House in Accra and are an incredible blessing to our group and every other group of missionaries from around the world that wind up in Ghana. Tom spends his days teaching high school physics and math to the oldest of the 90 plus children who live at the Agape Orphanage. Kathy spends her days taking care of groups like us and managing the day to day operations of their beautiful home. What makes Tom and Kathy so special is that they are both in their 70′s. At one time they were the owners of the largest independent pharmacy west of the Mississippi River and then later owned a craft store in Washington State with close to 200 employees. A few years ago they decided to retire and sell their business. With their new freedom they decided to do a short-term mission trip to Ghana and volunteer at an orphanage…..and God spoke. Three years later God’s calling on their life is to care for children whose families have abandoned them and dumped them off in the city streets of Accra.
They shared one story in particular with us about a 2 year old boy who had been dumped out in the streets. When Tom found him, this child had been sexually abused, both legs were broken, his hair was orange from dehydration, and at almost 2 years of age he weighed 15 pounds. The doctors at the hospital told Tom that this little boy literally had less than 1 week left to live when they brought him in. Four years, many surgeries, and lots of love later……this little boy is almost a normal 6 year old who calls Tom “grandpa”. Their ministry is amazing and it blows my mind to realize that they are doing more in their senior years than most people will do in a lifetime to make a difference in this world. Their testimony inspires me and reminds me of that all God really needs are people with willing hearts.
Tom and Kathy also make a mean plate of homeade spaghetti………which was the last good meal we’d see for awhile. After the early dinner we crashed at the late, late hour of 6PM exhausted from the all-night flight the night before and the excitement of what lay ahead. The next morning we’d be heading to the airport at 4:30AM to fly to Tamale and drive to our final destination; WALE WALE.
