Making ourselves at home

About two weeks ago we moved into a house in Akropong where we will stay for the foreseeable future. It feels good to get to know our neighbors and start to feel settled. We came with our clothes and some books in suitcases, so this feels like starting fresh to furnish a house and figure out what we need.

A truck loaded with our stove and suitcases,

with some curtain rods tied on top

One of the projects before we moved in was finding a refrigerator and stove. After visiting several places and feeling overwhelmed by the options, we were grateful to have those basic appliances and very grateful for the friends who helped us transport them from Accra. At least we can make and keep food now! Just before we moved in, we bought a few plastic chairs and a small plastic table (which will eventually be used on our porch). Those have functioned as our only furniture thus far while we are waiting for a local carpenter who is making us a table and chairs, sofa, desks, and some other things. We did get a bed before we moved in, which involved multiple trips to the big city of Accra and asking for advice from several people. We also discovered the convenience of Jumia, an online store that will deliver items to our town so that we don't have to go into Accra.

The carpenter in Accra taking apart our bed to load it into the truck

in our living/dining room

While living without running water in the house for our first week or so and then having challenges paying our electricity bill, we have experienced some of the ‘drama’ of the utility companies in Ghana. We are thoroughly grateful for the simple gift of having water and electricity in the house, when they are there.

We are living at the edge of the town of Akropong, which sits along a mountain ridge. When we take walks in the neighborhood, we get some beautiful views of the valleys and forests in the areas around. We were specifically praying for a place to live that would be quiet and where we could see some nature around us. God has answered that prayer abundantly, and we are grateful for God’s provision.

One of the views while on a walk near our house.

Many new houses are being built in the area, so the

view may be different in a few years.

Learning Twi - a good start!

Learning a new language is humbling. We feel like little children again, stumbling over words and not understanding what is being said. It has happened more than once in the last few weeks that we try out a sentence in Twi with someone and they give us a quizzical look and then say in English, “what are you trying to say?” Ooops…so our pronunciation or word choice is off, but most of the time the person is willing to show us our mistake and help us get it right.

 

These are our flashcards. akɔkɔɔserade literally
means "chicken fat", and is the word for "yellow"

There are some interesting challenges in learning Twi. It is a tonal language, so high and low tones can change the meaning of words. For example, the word ‘kakraa’ can mean ‘very few’ or ‘very big/huge’, depending on the pronunciation. There are also some nasal sounds and some consonant combinations that are difficult for us to imitate. And then they have two more vowels than English that have distinct sounds. In English the same vowel can make different sounds in different words, so at least in Twi they identify the different sounds with a different symbol!

 

Us with our language teacher, Mr. Osei Kwebi

We have been meeting with a language teacher three days a week for the month of June. After our language lesson, we review what we learned and then go out to practice. We talk to shopkeepers who are waiting for customers. We talk to children walking home from school. We talk to people we encounter on the road as we wander the streets of Akropong. We say the same thing, ask the same questions, over and over. It is intimidating, speaking our halting words in a new language, particularly when some of the people we are talking to are fluent in English. But it has also been such a gift to get to know some wonderful, patient, gracious people and to learn about history, culture, and life in this region of Ghana.

One man who has been particularly patient and helpful is Kwadwo (pronounced Kwadjo). One day, we encountered him on the road walking with a woman, on their way to a funeral. He introduced the woman as his mother and then explained that she is actually his mother’s sister; in this culture, all of one’s mother’s sisters are considered one’s mothers. It was striking because just that morning we had learned about the matrilineal family systems in this region and learned how to say in Twi, “the sister of my mother is my mother.” This encounter was a perfect confirmation and connection over the important issue of family.

We have made good progress for our first month, and we are very grateful for your prayers in the process. Learning a language is a very long road, so we are asking God for the time, perseverance, and relationships to continue to improve in our ability to hear and speak Twi.

Odwira Festival (Akropong, Ghana)

Odwira is an annual festival held in September or October in Akropong, the town in Ghana where we now live. Odwira means “purification,” and commemorates the four-day battle between the peoples of Akuapem and the Asanti people who came down from the Kumasi area of modern-day Ghana. This year is unique in that 2026 is the 200th anniversary of the battle whereby the Akuapem staved off the attacking Asanti. Because of this grand occasion, local re-enactments of the five different divisions of the Akuapem people who garnered victory after holding off the Asanti are being held in different parts of the Akuapem region from June until September when the two week festival will take place.

Over the last three weeks, Kristi and I have been able to attend two of these events, each sponsored by the royal house of Akuapem in partnership with Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture (ACI, where I work) and the Center for Performing Arts of the University of Ghana in Legon (Accra). Three of my colleagues have been busy each week with the planning and preparations for the events, and they are heartened by our attendance. In fact, one of these colleagues recently told me that the ɔmanhene (Paramount Chief) of Akuapem invited ACI to help facilitate these events for the purpose of documenting and recording the oral histories of the local people.

Some of the interesting and noteworthy occurrences of this history include one division of the Akuapem having the special power to call bees to help them fight off their attackers. Also, as the Asanti came with their sacred artifacts which they believed would grant them victory, these artifacts were taken by the Akuapem people and represent a central part of their annual rituals and remembrance. In the enactments we have seen, men wear “batakari,” war regalia, and the women play a prominent role as they support the men as they go off to fight and then mourn the loss of the men who die and their bodies are brought back from battle. In one re-enactment, a medicine man, influenced by a spirit, dances around wildly and anoints the men for battle as a young woman goes before him, throwing white powder onto his body as part of a sacred ritual.

The late Kwame Bediako, co-founder of ACI, developed a strong relationship with the former ɔmanhene (Paramount Chief) of the Akuapem region and people; this relationship serves as an ongoing legacy of the Institute and part of our witness to the community. While the annual Odwira continues to hold a central place in the hearts of many, its purpose of annual purification for the peoples of Akuapem foreshadows the purification all peoples can now receive; for as Kwame Bediako writes, “The Odwira to end all odwiras has taken place through the death of Jesus Christ.”*

To learn more about Odwira, this website provides additional information. Below are some photos we have taken of our experience of the two re-enactments over the last few weeks. We hope to attend more re-enactments and the two-week festival this year in September.


*Bediako, Kwame. Jesus and the Gospel in Africa: History and Experience (Theology in Africa) (p. 33). Orbis Books. Kindle Edition.

Arrival in Akropong

We have had a full first week in Akropong, Ghana! We are grateful to be here, grateful for the helpful and gracious people who we have met, and very grateful for a good start in adjusting to life here. Here are a few pictures and reflections from our first week.

The entrance to The Akrofi-Christaller Institute (ACI),

where Bob is now on the faculty.  

ACI has just completed the spring semester, so this week was full of meetings for the staff, such as a faculty review of the semester, an all-staff ‘Durbar’ (meeting to share updates and express thoughts and concerns), and a planning meeting for the rest of the year. These meetings were a great introduction for Bob to the staff, the culture, and some of the current issues at ACI.

Above photo is of the Wednesday chapel service at ACI,

which is a bit more structured than the daily devotions.

ACI has devotions every morning for staff and students. Everyone worships, discusses a short passage of scripture, and prays together for specific people or needs in the college community. This semester they have been going through the book of Romans, a few verses each day. We really appreciate that they open space for anyone to share their thoughts on the verses and learn from each other. We were able to attend this week before the college goes on break for a month.

An example of the narrow roads in town -

on the left of this photo is ACI the guest

house where we are currently staying.

We are slowly finding our way around Akropong. Many of the roads are narrow with houses built right up to the road in some places. The town sits on the ridge of a mountain range, so there are a lot of hills. We learned a few phrases in Twi and many people have been helpful and encouraging as we try to practice with them.

 

Grateful for new friends helping us to find a place to live!

We saw the house where we will soon be living, and have enjoyed getting to know the woman who owns the house and lives next door. We plan to move into our new home in July, so we will slowly find furniture and get set up in the next month or so.

Simon, pictured above expertly cutting coconuts with a machete, gifted us with a large coconut to enjoy. The coconut tree in the photo is in the courtyard of the guest house. Simon accompanied us to church on Sunday where we enjoyed worship and fellowship with some new colleagues.

We are so grateful for God's faithfulness and the gift of getting to know new friends as we arrive. We have a lot to learn and a long way to go in feeling at home here, but we give thanks for a good start. Thank you so much for your prayers, encouragement, and support along the way!

Facing our collective pain

One significant place we visited in our travels this month was the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, AL. This museum was started in 2018 through the vision and initiative of lawyer Bryan Stevenson (see the book/movie Just Mercy) and the Equal Justice Initiative. The museum chronicles the experience of people of African descent in the U.S., “from slavery to mass incarceration.” 

The Legacy Museum entrance.

No photos allowed inside, so here is the outside. :)

It was powerful to see in one place the timeline of events through legislation, court decisions, and quotes from specific leaders which maintained slavery and later oppression through Jim crow.  We were really impressed to see the specific details compiled – it was more than you would ever learn in a textbook or in school. We highly recommend a visit – it was hard but also important to see more closely the pain and the injustices in our country’s history.

One aspect that stands out to us is how slavery impacted all of the United States, not just the South, in terms of the economic gain from free labor, which benefitted financial institutions, the government, and also normal citizens. Another point that came to life to us through the museum is seeing the negative social and financial impact for people who were enslaved – imagine the generational trauma when families are repeatedly torn apart for centuries during slavery and even after. 

The audio-visual exhibits, including many personal testimonies, along with the sheer volume of material, is impressive. We had been in the museum about 3 hours when we talked to a staff member and learned that we were only half-way through!

Along with the museum we also visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, an outdoor site that commemorates the people killed by lynching throughout the United States. They have a large memorial stone for every county in the U.S. where racial-terror killings are known to have happened between 1877 and 1950, along with the names of each individual in that county who was killed and the year they were killed It is a powerful visual reminder of the more than 4,000 people who were killed without getting due process in the justice system - including in northern states like Illinois.

One of the stone markers showing

the people killed in Amite county, MS

One person asked us why we would want to go visit these sites in Montgomery, given that it is such a hard thing to face. We said that we wanted to go because we have learned that in order to find healing, we have to be willing to face, accept, and express the pain. That goes for individual pain but also for corporate pain. That is one of the key principles in the ministry of Healing Hearts, Transforming Nations. We have to be willing to lean into the pain and injustice in our nation’s history if we want to understand it, accept it, and hope for healing and justice. As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States this year, we thought this was one significant way embrace the ‘whole’ of our history – to acknowledge the wrongs even as we celebrate the many good accomplishments, great people, and hopes for the future.