Dear Praying Friends,
“Ah Lord God! Behold, Thou hast made the heaven and the earth by Thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for Thee.” Jeremiah 32:17
What an awesome God we serve! Chad and I have been reading in Jeremiah in our personal bible reading and have been really blessed with so many of God’s promises to His people if they will only obey Him and worship Him only!
It has been quite some time since we have updated you with our lives! We TRY to write about once a month but it doesn’t always get done! J So I will try and catch you up with the last 2 months!
The beginning of September we went to Jason Kauffman and Charity Ulrich’s wedding in Tamale. Tamale is in the northern region of Ghana and is about 14 hours from Sogakope. Charity is Chad’s cousin and Jason is a brother to my sister-in-law Sarah [married to Paul Dunn]! The wedding was beautiful… the couple radiant! We stayed in Tamale almost a week and took one day to visit Karaga. The village where Chad and I served as singles 6 years ago. It was fun to go back and see many familiar people and places!
We came home from Tamale and dove back into Language learning! The language course book that we have been going through has 30 lessons so our goal was to finish the book by Thankgiving! We have been studying long and hard sometimes doing a whole lesson in one day… and now we only have one more lesson to go! We should finish this week Lord willing! Of course that doesn’t mean that we have mastered the language… but it had given us a good understanding of sentence structure, word usage, and the many contractions and word phrases. So now we are praying that God will give us wisdom as to how to go from here! We feel like we need to get out and USE what we know and try and understand what the people are saying. Hearing the language is very difficult for us right now. Because we may hear a word or two that we know but because most Ewe words change meaning according to context we have to know the whole context of the sentence to understand what meaning that particular word is! But we are getting it slowly, slowly! An encouraging verse that God gave us was in Isaiah 28:10-11, “For precept, must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little: For with stammering tongue will he [we] speak to this people.” We feel like our tongues stammer and our brains can’t think fast enough when it comes to speaking! We are praying about Chad going and working in a friends welding shop a couple of morning a week to get more exposure to the language and force him to speak some to the boys that work there who know very little English. For me I’m not exactly how I can get out more… but I am going to try and visit some of the ladies our small village of Kudzekope. Just a short walk from our house is a where the main village is with a clump of about 15 houses and we have made friends with a number of the ladies because we sell water from our tank when we have extra. Most of these ladies know no or very little English… so I would be forced to hear and speak Ewe. We also want to keep our language teacher coming in the afternoon to teach us more new things and answer any questions we may have encountered in the day! We are confident that God will help us to learn and eventually speak this language! So please continue to pray for us!
In the middle of Oct. we had to make a quick trip to Togo to renew Anna’s visa. We spent a night there and had a nice relaxing time at the ocean… enjoying the waves and sand! God was good and we didn’t have any trouble at the borders and Anna was granted an extension to her visa so she can stay another 3 months! She plans to be here till Feb. My mom is planning to come the middle of Jan. to be here for the birth of the baby and bring LeAnne Petre [Phil Petre’s daughter] with her. LeAnne will take Anna’s place and will be here for 6 months. Then Lord willing my Dad will come the end of Jan. and take my Mom and sister home the beginning of Feb. We are looking forward to their coming!
The Brother’s in the church have been having several meetings in the last 2 months to discuss different issues in the church and write up their own statement of faith. We are also praying about selling some of the church property across the road from the church.
Family life… some of you may be interested to hear how my pregnancy is going and how the children are. I had a prenatal with the Doc. in Accra in Sept. Then another prenatal at the hospital here in Sogakope. Everything seems to be going well so far, God is giving me grace for each day and I am VERY grateful for my sister who has been doing most of the household duties. We recently hired a wash girl to come and wash for us 3 days a week. We were planning to get a girl once the baby came… but decided to go ahead and hire someone now so she can be familiar with everything! It makes it nice for Anna… scrubbing clothes by hand is time consuming! The children are doing well... they love living in Africa and have made lots of friends. Especially since Chad made two small swings for them… the neighbor children love to come and swing too! One of the neighbor boys is especially good with the children and will swing them and entertain them well! Chace has fallen in love with him which is nice because there are very few children that he likes. Chace will be two the end of this month! He is getting to be such a big boy… he is talking a lot more, and repeats most everything, and now that he is potty trained he feels a new confidence and wants to do everything himself! As most of you parents know that with the ‘myself’ stage also comes the daily training of molding his will to ours! So with God’s grace we are trying to be consistent in teaching him. Elayna is a ‘big’ girl that keeps getting bigger every day! She is always saying, “When I get this big….” And raises her hand above her head about 8 inches. “…then I will ride a bike, or be able to read, or start losing teeth!” Some of the things she is looking forward to doing when she gets bigger! J We have started some preschool books with her and she loves them… coloring, cutting, pasting, etc.! It is a challenge for me to find the time to spend one on one with her, with studying language, taking care of a very active 2 yr. old, plus the other dailies. But we manage to fit it in here and there. Chad is doing well and is kept busy with learning the language… trying his hand at making peanut butter from the peanuts we harvested… doing a little gardening… visiting the church Brothers and other friends… and keeping up with our paperwork! Plus be a Daddy and husband!!! It’s a lot of responsibility and he needs your prayers! Just yesterday He and Bro. Samuel went to Ho [2 hrs from here] to visit Bro. Nelson. Nelson is going to school there and yesterday was a holiday so school was out. They had a nice visit with him and safe travels… of course traveling in Ghana isn’t exactly enjoyable especially if you are of the height and structure as my dear hubby! He came home a bit stiff and sore!
Today is exactly one year since we landed on Ghanaian soil! It is hard to imagine that time could pass so quickly! We are very grateful for our Father’s care and protection over us in the past year! And we look forward to what all He has in store for us in the coming years here in Ghana! We plan to celebrate today by inviting Bro. Samuel’s family and Bro. Seth to join us for a special meal of grilled tilapia, rice and stew, and cabbage salad!
Please continue to pray:
For us to master the Ewe language
For our health and the safety of our unborn little one
For the church to remain faithful to God and be a shining testimony of His grace
Pressing toward the MARK of the high calling of God! Chad & Elizabeth Martin
