Tonight, I was scheduled to preach after one of our film showings at a small village in the Mafi district.  Looking back, there were a couple of things that took place that were unscripted by us before the unusual event happened that directly affected the outcome of the event.  It goes to show that everyone's prayer that God go before us and protect was answered.

The first thing out of the ordinary was that Roy decided to drive James and I out to the villages so that he could bring us right back after we were finished.  Usually, we just have Pastor Sammy take us out to the project.  While we were on the way out to the first village to drop me off we missed our turn.  Sammy said not to worry; we could drop me off after we took James to his village.  Before we could get to the village Pastor Simon called and informed us that at the village that I was scheduled to speak at the elders of the village had come and shut the film down in the middle because they claimed we had not properly informed the chief and the elders.  At this point, the confusion started.  I thought someone had just dropped the ball and not gone through the proper steps to set up the film show and gospel presentation in the village. We were almost to the village where James was preaching so we went ahead and dropped him off.  Then we headed back to find the other village and find out what was going on.  Then Sammy explained to us further that it sounded like a local church in that village was threatened by the fact that GEM would want to plant a church there, and had been responsible for causing the film show being shut down.  This local church by all accounts is a spiritually dead or dying church, and they do not want another church coming in and taking away people from their church.  This made Pastor Sammy livid.  He was ready to go and argue with the head man. To be honest, he was ready to fight.  We found out on the way that most of the other team that was at James' village had gone over to my village because they thought the other team was in trouble. At this point, I'm confused as to what the level of danger could be here because while I've only seen the docile and hospitable side of the Ghanaian people, I have heard that when they get angry they will fight without hesitation.  As we head down the last part of the dirt road to the village we come up to the other Land Rover heading away from the village. In it was the team from James' village. They said that everything was fine in the sense that everyone was safe, and they were heading back to their film project.  They tried to fill in some details for us, but they said it best if we go talk to Pastor Simon.  For me, it's very difficult to gather the same kind of details from Ghanaian English as it is from American English. The Ghanaian English is much choppier and lacks articles that I am use to.  We told them to turn around and follow us to the village because at this point Sammy may still be looking to fight.  We get to the village to see that our team has already completely packed up, but they are waiting for us to get there. We get out and immediately I find myself surrounded by people. Most of them were our Ghanaian team members, but many of them were from the village and wanted to see what was going on. The people from what we could tell were sad that we were not allowed to finish the film.  Roy, Sammy, and Simon talked and decided we would go and just speak with the chief. Roy wisely pointed out that we needed to make sure whatever we did was done carefully in love because Pastor Prosper still had to live in the region after we left, and we did not want to make things hard on him and his ministry long after we were gone.  At that, we started making our way to the chief's house. I did not know whether I was suppose to go or stay at the vehicles because who am I that I should go speak to a chief, but because I am one of only two white people in the village at the time I was suppose to go.  It felt a lot like we were walking to a fight because we were in a small group of people walking with a purpose. One of our team members, brother Daniel who we jokingly refer to as Mike Tyson, was prepared to protect us with a lead pipe he tucked into his pants and covered with his shirt. He's a young man who you can tell is ready to fight for a friend at the drop of a hat. I felt confident that there would be no real fight, but I was glad he was on my side if there was one.  When we reached the chief's hut I thought only the leaders would go in, and they did, but they called me to come in. We all stayed to one side of what would be the equivalent of the chief's front porch, and the chief and his people sat at the other end.  We were all sitting in a sort of oval shape. The rest of our team that came to the hut with us stood outside but leaned in over a half wall at our backs.  The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife.  No one spoke at first. It was mostly dark because the hut did not have electricity that I could tell. We had some light from a street light in the village, but there many shadows and I couldn't really see many people's faces except for the chief's and Pastor Ebenezer's who was sitting beside the chief.  Pastor Ebenezer translated for us, and the chief told us the same story we had already heard: that we had not let them know properly that we were coming to show the film, so the elders came to him and they had a discussion and decided to shut it down.  We appealed to him asking him to reconsider letting us finish the film. We apologized for the miscommunication because as far as we knew we had gone through the proper steps. We found out that he was in between a rock and a hard place because since the elders had already met with him and they decided to shut down the film he could not go back and change his decision without causing tension with them.  We again more clearly apologized and explained that we understood the difficult situation that he was in. We asked him if we could come back another night and show the film then. He didn't seem to have a problem with that, but we would have to go through the same preliminary steps as before to gain approval.  We asked him if he would forgive us for our mistake, but he said we would know if we were forgiven if they approved us to come back.  At that point Roy asked if we could share with them the message that we had planned to share with the people after the film.  The chief agreed, and Roy proceeded to present the Gospel to the chief and his family.  While he was speaking I looked behind me and realized that about 50 people or more had crowded around the chief's hut to hear what we were saying. When Pastor Ebenezer led those who wanted to be saved in prayer I heard most of those outside the hut praying with him. No one in the hut did, at least not loud enough for me to hear.  At this point I am beginning to realize that though we were hindered from presenting the Gospel to the entire village like we had hoped, the Lord still provided a way for us to share with a large group of the people.  At this point, we asked permission to take our leave.  We shook hands with everyone in the room and headed towards the Land Rover.  We realized quickly that Pastor Sammy was not with us, and I was afraid he had stayed back and decided to add a few words to the chief.  He came eventually, and we found out that as he was shaking hands with everyone someone was finally able to recognize him. Remember, the room was dark and we could not see everyone's faces. The man that recognized him was the chief's son who also happened to be the pastor of the church who we suspected had put an end to the film. Sammy has a history with this man: at one time they were close friends. This pastor was the pastor of a church in another village that collapsed.  When that church failed he went back to his home village, the village we were in, and took over for a young evangelist who was there. That evangelist had been teaching the word and building a strong church there, but when the chief's son came back he left and joined Pastor Prosper's ministry group.  Since he left, that village's church has started to fail as well.  Pastor Sammy will go back to the village tomorrow in the morning when it is light and talk to the chief some more to see if we can find time to go back.  Even though, our adversaries meant to hinder the word of God being preached, whether it was politics or the enemy himself, they were not successful.  The word of God never returns void, so I take comfort in the fact that at least a small faction were able to hear the Gospel.  Earlier I told you two things happened that were not planned. We would not normally have had Roy with us, nor would we have gone to that village second. It was important that Roy was there because he was able to speak more calmly than Pastor Sammy, and he was the one who was able to share the Gospel with the chief and the people around him.  It was also important that we missed our turn at first and went ahead and took James to his village to preach because if we had stopped at mine first we may have got caught up in what was going on there and not got him to the other village in time to preach. The Lord truly goes before us and directs our path. If God is for us, who can stand against us?