See, I am doing a new thing! Isaiah 43:18
Happy New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas – we were so fortunate to spend Christmas in Inverness with our family, including our grandson of 9 months. We are so thankful that we can celebrate this time of year with our family and friends. Just before Christmas, Ruby Yap our partner in Ghana visited us and was amazed at the amount of food we have and the wealth of the countryside in the UK. She has worked many years in Ghana though she comes from the Philippines. The area of Northern Ghana where she works is semi-arid and the people struggle to get a living out of the land. She was presented with an award for her ‘Impact Beyond Volunteering’ from the VSO, who paid for her trip to England. Ruby runs various projects for us including literacy projects, borehole drilling and repairs, agricultural projects and dry season farming projects.
Ruby is in the centre of this photo, taken when we visited the Shekinah Clinic in Tamale in Ghana and in the picture below, taken with one of the women who had successfully completed the literacy project and soap making training.
Alistair and I are travelling to Northern Ghana next week to visit the seed bank project and also our dry season farming projects and will also meet up with Ruby again. We will also meet with the medical staff at the regional hospital of Wa to see if we can arrange a medical container to this region of Ghana. In the district hospitals there is an acute shortage of medical items but it is difficult to get the aid into these areas due to logistical problems and issues with customs. Even slings have an expiry date on them now and the customs in the South won’t let out of date items through, even though the clinics in the North has no dressings or bandages for their patients. Given that many people have no running water and even clinics often have a plastic water tank they have to fill themselves, this creates great difficulties for everyone concerned.
After visiting Ghana we are travelling to the Gambia (on our way home!) to visit the hospital that received a container of medical aid last year. If this is successful we hope to be able to donate further aid to this country. Please pray for safe travelling for us and good health whilst we are abroad.