Visiting Hannah!

[CLT::: “The Church” – Elevation Worship]
Last night I could hardly get to bed fast enough, but I was so excited it was difficult to fall asleep. I woke up early, and Winifred helped me carry down the gifts I would give to Hannah’s family, and I was off in the “church van” to Senya Bereku. I met the director of the development center, Bismark, and he showed me around the fishing town.

Parents were coming up to him asking for their child to go to the Development Center. He explained the center is now full with 265 kids; 250 currently have a sponsor, and the other 15 are still available for sponsorship. Bismark took me where the children meet at the school for the development center. There, they had a program organized for my visit, but it was a celebration all around for Compassion’s work there. They told me I was the first sponsor to visit there, so they were excited. Some children from the center performed beautiful traditional dances, and the Reverend of the church that sponsor’s the center spoke.
Then they showed me the classrooms at the school. I met the headmaster and was just taking pictures of the classroom outside, and I was totally unprepared when they said, “Here’s Hannah, your sponsor child.” Here comes this little girl shyly walking up to me and hugging me and people telling us to smile for pictures. She was very shy at first, especially because neither of us knew the other’s language very well, but we definitely became buddies by the end of the day.

From the school, we went to Hannah’s house. It is a family house where much of the extended family lives. It has six rooms in it, and Hannah’s family has one of them where the two parents and five children all sleep. We got to talk a little through Bismark who interpreted for us, so I got to ask them if they went to church and if they did family worship (they do it 2 times a week!). I gave them a 25kg of rice and 5L of cooking oil as a gift; they were very grateful, and presented me with the fabric the mom, Rosemary, had chosen. I gave Hannah her bag with a Veggie-Tales coloring book, candy, pencils, crayons, and bubbles in it. When I showed her how to blow bubbles, everyone even her grandmother got excited!
I took her family and some of the development center administrators out for lunch. On the way there, I made up a dancing game with Hannah and her 11 year old sister, Sarah; it was completely random and pointless, but they loved it! The lunch place was on the beach, so while waiting for the food, Hannah, Sarah, and I went to the beach. Even though we couldn’t communicate verbally very well, we had a blast! We played at the water’s edge, drew pictures in the sand, played Ampe (a Ghanaian children’s game), and did other goofy things.
Hannah LOVES to dance, so we did the Hokey-Pokey and had some random break-out dance sessions. Hannah has tons of energy like any other nine year old, and she also has a good imagination. It was funny, when she concentrated on anything or was having a really good time, she would stick her tongue out; skipping at the water’s edge, her little pink tongue was sticking out between her gorgeous smile.

After a wonderful lunch, we took the family back home. Bismark told me I could volunteer at the development center on the weekends to help the kids with their work and other things. Then I would get to help more kids in the community and still get to visit Hannah a couple more times before I leave. Once again, God blew me away on this trip, sovereignly using every mix-up and misunderstanding to make a great day. 100% glory goes to God for allowing and enabling me to sponsor Hannah and visit with her; I pray God works through this to draw not only Hannah to Himself, but also to transform this community into a city shining brilliantly to a dark world.