It is good to be home. Beth and I have spent the last couple of days putting away our gear, writing notes while we remember details (doesn’t that make us sound old?), and planning for next steps.

For some returning travelers, comfort food includes pizza, spaghetti, fried chicken with mashed potatoes & gravy, or maybe mac and cheese. For Beth and I, the first three meals at home were green. Oh how we miss crunchy fresh salads and green veggies when traveling in Africa. The classic travel food rule: “boil it, cook it, peel it, or forget it” means fresh produce is largely out.

With the encouragement of happy stomachs and hot showers, we have started considering the October trip. Yes, it is 7 months away, but there are many details lurking. Fortunately, organizing and planning are Beth’s superpowers.

If you really trust someone, you can lean back in the passenger seat, close your eyes, and take a nap while they drive through a blizzard at night on I94, just south of Lake Michigan . There is no need to check the tension on your seat belt or ponder aloud if we should pull over at the next rest stop. So it is with our next trip to Ghana. I will spend my time working out some technical details, occasionally looking up to admire the pattern of swirling snow blowing across the road, and then go back to my tinkering. I’m blessed to be a nerdy second-part trumpet player while Beth conducts the orchestra.

The BiblePlus team has grown into a distributed team — when we are not in Ghana, we are working remote, from home. This weekend, C&C will be recording in Kumasi before heading to their respective host villages — Cyrus in the northwest, in Wa, and Clement in the northeast, in Chereponi. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be editing the new Dagbani tracks C&C recorded a couple of months ago. Beth is already working on spreadsheets and cost estimates for the October training.

It was so easy to give nearly 100% of my time and mental attention to the project when I was driving the Mahindra or the debugging cellular data configuration, or working out how we might automate some of the digital processing workflows. But with distractions of house, suburbs, and my part-time professor job, my progress will slow. Thank you for your encouragement and prayers over the next months. We want to continue strongly.

The last few days of our trip in Ghana were diverse. I’ll summarize a few of the highlights as small vignettes after each of the photos below. Then we will go radio silent until October, when we fire up the Blog again.

It was our first trip to Northern Ghana without Ray. We left Ghana in the Mahindra, drove a total of 32 hours (Google Maps does not understand Ghana traffic), and returned safely. C&C did all the technical work — a substantial milestone for the project. Our next step for 2027 will be to help C&C and some new yet-to-be-recruited Africans expand into other West African countries.

One of the newest moto missionaries, Isaac, put on his protective jacket that we brought from the USA. Riders get knee pads, boots, and gloves as well. The roads are dangerous, and every protective advantage is helpful.

Ahmad is Hausa. He now directs a Christian conference center in the middle of Kumasi, a dense, traffic-plagued metropolis in central Ghana. In the photo above, Ahmad is feeding the catfish in his pond while his two granddaughters look on. It was wonderful to meet with Ahmad, sitting in chairs in the shade of a tree in his front yard. Ahmad will be instrumental in getting us connected to the Hausa community in Ghana that has so far been a bit elusive.

Also in Kumasi, we visited the Trinity Baptist church and school. The church was enthusiastic about working with OneWay Africa on BiblePlus. It is still early days, but it feels like the team has started a new partnership with Akan Twi speakers (the most spoken language in Ghana, and a critical “trade language”). Already, as a stretch goal, C&C agreed to try and produce a Twi version of BiblePlus in time to ship units from Hong Kong in June so they are ready for a September trip to remote churches supported by Trinity Baptist.

Tilapia and fufu. Need I say anything more?

Paul Israel, his daughter, and his wife met us at the Trinity Baptist church. In a small classroom, Cyrus recorded Paul telling his story — an amazing and moving story of finding redemption.

When I stepped forward and grasped Paul Israel’s strong and thick hand, he was already smiling. He was not comfortable speaking English, but briefly explained he grew up a “Zongo Boy”. He continued, “I dropped out of school after 1st grade. I’m uneducated. I have nothing to offer others except what God has done in my life”. He switched to Akan Twi and continued. Clement, whisper-translated highlights as Paul talked to the pastors from the church.

I can’t possibly retell Paul’s life experiences in this small space. I hope we can eventually get a transcription of the Hausa recording. However, here is an overview of why Paul was so filled with joy.

Paul (not his birth name) struggled in his youth. His father was an Imam, but Paul only made it through 1st grade before dropping out of school. Caught up in drugs, he started dealing cocaine and eventually shifted to armed robbery. At the age of 21, he was caught, convicted, incarcerated, and was sentenced to death. For 12 years he awaited his execution.

From his prison cell, he tore pages out of a Bible he could not read to roll joints. He sold them to other inmates. That did not last long :-). God intervened. Later, his death sentence was changed to life in prison by the courts. After 6 more years of jail, he was released! Eighteen years after being put on death row, he had a new life in Christ and a new life of freedom — “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” There is so much more to his story… how he met his wife, what he does now…

As tears welled up in my eyes, and I squeezed Paul’s hand firmly once again to thank him for meeting Cyrus and sharing his story with us, I thought about how Paul Israel came to stand in front of us, about 30 years after his death sentence, yet now with a bright smile, a family, and a new life. Could his story, put on a solar-powered audio player, shared via WhatsApp, or put on a mobile phone help transform another Zongo Boy? A simple prayer.

We hope to be back again in October.