Greetings from Togo!
WOW! These past few months have been so crazy busy that I don’t even know where to begin! I guess there’s no better place to start than to give God the glory for what HE has done. We truly serve an amazing God who not only gave up His life for us and gives us hope, life, strength, joy, peace, forgiveness, grace, and more, but in these past three months He has also provided for our earthly needs, given us safety over thousands of miles traveled, and given us opportunities to share the good news and provide training so that others can do the same. The fact is, we’re just regular folks like everyone else and we fail daily, so anything that has been accomplished here was done by the Lord and for His great name. To Him be the glory forever.
June, July, and August have been absolutely full. We began the month of June doing teacher training in the remote location of Danyi. We met together each Saturday and steadily worked through half of the course before I had to take a break to do VBS training. We plan to finish this course when things return to a regular pace next month.
At the end of June, we began doing some training for Summer VBSs. We put together a VBS kit that includes Bible lessons, memory verses, review activities, games, and some sort of craft/activity for each day. Once the kits were assembled, we organized training sessions in several different locations. All of the teachers from each area came together and we showed them everything in the kits and explained how they can use it. Each ministry received a number of kits depending on their size. This summer we were able to hand out a little more than 150 VBS kits and we’re excited to hear how the Lord uses these in the lives of children across southern Togo.
In July, we continued with the VBS training and we also hosted our first full week of teacher training in the capitol, Lomé. We normally try to limit attendance for these courses but for several reasons we allowed more people to come this time and we had close to 60 teachers for the week. Sixty teachers was a lot to train all at one time but it went really well and I think everyone left challenged and encouraged. I am so thankful for all of these teachers and for the ministries they have. I’m also incredibly grateful for our co-teachers, Cynthia and Christonyo, who are doing the majority of the teaching. That has helped me so much as the language is always a challenge and I want to make sure that people really understand the material. Our co-teachers are so good. They really engage with the people and can give amazing cultural examples, answer questions, and explain things in a way that I will never be able to; so I praise God for them.
On top of all the training we’ve been doing, we also had the opportunity to help with a national youth conference that took place in mid-August. One of our Togolese partners (through ABWE’s Live Global) organized this conference and about 3,500 youth showed up from all over Togo! Our role was to help provide some accommodations and meals for the international guest speakers which kept us busy! As crazy as it is to have 3,500 youth together and all the challenges that brings, it was a good conference and we’re praying that the youth continue to meditate on the things they learned and hold to the commitments they made.
Thank you all so much for your prayers and partnership in the gospel. We are so thankful to be able to work alongside the church here and we couldn’t do it without you praying for us and supporting the ministry. God bless you all.
For the greatness of His kingdom,
Benjamin Ward, Vicki, Isaac, Moriah, and Israel
Children’s Ministry
ABWE Togo
