My husband’s sleep-sounds blend with those of an African dawn.  

A medley of chirping, thrumming, cooing and crowing means the sun can’t be far below the horizon now.  There’s no going back to sleep, so I slip out of bed and find the thermos of boiled water and ‘tea things’ laid out on the table in the main room.  God is already up and greets me first.  I say hello and thank Him for making the black tea that grows in Ceylon, mango that grows outside the window, and sunflowers that cover the fields of Cezanne’s Provence in the south of France.  Some kind soul at The Republic of Tea in Novato, CA has blended them into an intoxicating morning elixir that releases a heavenly fragrance when doused with boiling water.  It’s one of the three luxuries I have carried with me from home over half the face of the earth.

Another small, but oh so comforting, luxury is the $8.00 bar of Honeysuckle soap from Anthropologie.  Gary didn’t think it was so special when he discovered it was the only soap I brought which meant he too would smell ‘floral’ for the next 6 weeks.  The MacBook Pro I’m using is luxury #3, but it’s a big luxury.  It’s the big ‘little thing’ that means a lot to me because I can email my Mom and our kids at home or even post to this blog. It holds the Bible studies I’ll teach and the photographs I’ll take during these 6 weeks. A tie that binds me to my California roots, adorned with that little white symbol and designed for me by Apple in Cupertino, California.
The cutlass, a medieval invention, may be the most common tool used in the jungle environment surrounding me, even an 8 or 9 year old child uses one. But a cutlass won’t work for me. In the faint rays of early light my tool of choice is a recent Silicon Valley creation, perfect for sharing this morning’s musings with friends and family back home. 

I remember to say thank you for the soap and the Mac.

Church is soon and the thought from Galatians 5:13 is on my heart.

Serve one another in love.
And not just on Sunday.

The reason comes to me in the melody of the old chorus we sang 40 years ago during the Jesus people movement.

Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love,

By our love,

Yes, they’ll know that we are Christians by our love.

Love is the first and still best tool for every Christian.  
Useful at home, at work, and at church.
You can’t overuse it.
It works in every situation and with all kinds of people.
There’s no tool as excellent as love.
Like a spiritual version of Harry Potter’s Cloak of Invisibility, the Bible says ‘love covers a multitude of sins’.

We could all use a tool like that!

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. . .So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Where in the world we are:
Ghana, West Africa
Kwahu Summit Eastern Region
Near the village of Pepease
We are near the ER of the word Eastern on the map in this link.

http://www.mapsofworld.com/ghana/ghana-political-map.html

We arrived at The Bible Training Centre yesterday at sunset to find the village chickens feasting on bugs in the lawn.  If chickens were allowed in the Summer Olympic Track events, these would be medal contenders.  Pepease’s avant-garde fowl have embraced the Free Range movement and they cover ground like sprinters springing out of the blocks at the sound of the start pistol. I managed to get a shot of this one who must have learned to run by watching Cheetahs on National Geographic.