About

Akwaaba!

We use this website to blog about our current trip to Ghana.   Beth works at OWM where she leads the BiblePlus+ work and helps support Ray Mensah, a wonderful local pastor from Ghana, and the Directory of OneWay Africa.

The Mensah Family: Ray and Cynthia, and their children Joseph and Esi

There are SO MANY cool things happening in Ghana — from the distribution of water filters to provide clean water to training young men to ride their motorcycles into the north to preach and show the Jesus Video.  If you want to learn more, look through the OneWay Africa Website.

We have been traveling to Ghana since 2011.  Our primary focus has been BiblePlus+.  Beth plans the trips and manages the difficult parts, like trip logistics, coordinating the choirs and speakers, visas, and getting us from the US to small villages in northern Ghana near the board of Burkina Faso and Togo. Pete handles audio and computing technology, dance choreography, bumpy truck driving, photography, and sometimes hosts a botfly or two.

We have taken a lot of photos and video over the last few years, and in 2017 we borrowed a drone from a friend and took aerial videos as well.  OneWay Studios  edited all the video and photos together into a most wonderful video.  I recommend playing it at full-screen resolution.  The scenery and people of Ghana are beautiful.

At this point, some readers may be scratching their heads wondering what a BiblePlus+ could be.   There are dozens of native languages in northern Ghana, and probably hundreds across Africa.  Through the efforts of groups such as the Bible Society of Ghana, Wycliffe, and the Lutheran Bible Translators, the New Testament has been translated into many languages.  However, for the small villages across Ghana, audio is the best way to share the Good News.  So we go to Ghana and record local Africans in their native languages, such as Komba, Mampruli, and Dagbani.  We gather the glorious sounds of church choirs (listen to a choir, listen to another),  the bold stories of believers, the encouraging words of local pastors, the careful retelling of Bible stories, and important community health information about malaria, typhoid, and HIV.  We edit all the audio together into a small library:  the Bible, stories of lives changes, choirs, Bible stories, and community health.  We put the audio library on handheld solar-powered audio players that even the most remote villages can use to listen, learn, and praise God.  We also produce a version that fits on a microSD memory card that can be inserted into mobile phones.

The photos and videos below help explain:

A boy listens to a BiblePlus+, a choir in his native language
We distribute inexpensive ceramic filters to provide clean water and prevent disease.
Beth is solar charging hundreds of BiblePlus+ units
A local choir (and their babies)
A village Chief shares his testimony

Nurse Patricia passionately explains how to avoid HIV infection

A choir of combined churches sings in Mampruli

If you would like to learn about our previous trips to Ghana, read the blogs from the Previous Trips.  You can also just look through some of our favorite photos from our trips to Ghana.