Debrief Update

We've nearly completed the first week of our debrief time, and I am so excited and thankful for the many ways God has been so wonderfully answering the prayer requests we shared with you last week. He is truly helping us to grow as loving leaders...and providing the energy we need. I, personally, am amazed at how much energy I have in spite of the long days in combination with getting less sleep than I normally function with. (For example, the last two days we were "on" with the team from 7 am until 10 pm; Sunday we had a couple of hours "off" when we visited a different church than our participants did.) We are so thankful for your prayers...and urge you to keep them up!

One of our prayer requests, however, has not been answered in the way we had hoped in that the plans we had to partner with the Navigators fell through, leaving us with four whole days to fill! The three leaders prayed and reminded ourselves that God knew about this from the beginning....so now we needed to find out what He had in mind for this time. After several days, it became clear that our team could be of service to a couple of missionary families who have been so loving and hospitable to our teams over the years; Bob and Nancy Schaefer, as well as their son Paul, his wife Jen and their four children. Paul's family is coming back to Ghana from their furlough year in a couple of weeks, and will be moving into a new duplex with Bob and Nancy on the other side....and the younger Schaefer's family side of the duplex still needed quite a bit of finishing touches. So the team has spent the last two days painting, laying vinyl, sewing curtains, setting up their kitchen and other such tasks. All involved have been blessed by the experience. We do ask for your prayers as we continue to work out new arrangements for the other two days remaining; as of today we would like to depart from Tamale on Tuesday July 28th and spend the night in Techiman, arriving in Accra on Wednesday July 29th so we can visit a waterfall and a couple of translators on the way down south, which would give us one extra day in Accra to fill.

We do have one additional prayer request to add to what you have already been praying for us, and that is in the area of team unity. Our participants of each culture are struggling to keep relating to each other; it's getting near to the end of our trip, and some of them are finding cross cultural relating to be tiring. Please pray for perseverance for each one as we try to encourage them in this area.

Thanks so much for your prayers....will try to update you again either before or soon after our travels.
Shevawn & John