It’s been about six months since I have been back home from my two week stay in Ghana. I have recieved one letter from a seminarian I was close to during my stay in Ko parish. He was very heartfelt and sent me music and pictures from his own belongings. As lent begins I find it hard to give something up. Not that giving up his hard but I have been very busy lately and I don’t have any bad habits to break or give up. Last year I went to daily mass every saturday, and I am going to do that again this year, but I can’t help feeling that I should be doing more. The people of Ghana taught me so much about true work and sacrifice even though I already knew about it, it was something else to see them live it.
I am reading a book about Ghana called The Door of No Return by Sarah Mussi. I was in my school library when I saw the big orange letters sticking out at me. “The door of no return?” I thought, “that’s Ghana, that’s Cape Coast Castle!” Although I have been busy and my book is now overdue I am really getting into it now becaue the main boy Zac is finally in Ghana, trying to sort out the mystery of his ancestors. The details in the book (although I don’t think do Ghana justice) are descriptive enough to remind me of road from Accra to the Castle and of all the people I met during my stay. The retelling of Zac’s ancestor’s prison stay and the castle and the Fanta they are served, have made me think about my mission, which I have writing about in essay after essay during my college application process. I have learned what my misssion is after being in Ghana, and it is to share with people the lives and stories of others in anyway that I can, I love telling stories either by writing, by talking, by sketching, or scrapbooking. I tend to forget this.
So for Lent, as I finish Mussi’s book, I am going to work on sharing Ghana in more ways than I have already. I am going to share my mission trip with more people and share the sacrifice that I have witnessed in real life. Sacrifice should truly come from the heart, I am going to make time to do something for those I met all through Ghana and make this Lent reflective of the journey I made half a year ago. For Ghana.