A Letter from Ruth Brown, serving in Ghana
November 2020
Write to Ruth Brown
Individuals: Give online to E200528 for Ruth Brown’s sending and support
Congregations: Give to D507542 for Ruth Brown’s sending and support
Churches are asked to send donations through your congregation’s normal receiving site (this is usually your presbytery)
Subscribe to my co-worker letters
Dear friends,
Hopefully, this newsletter finds you and your family healthy and safe and planning ways to enjoy this special time of year.
In this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, the PC(USA) has, together with many other organizations, found it necessary to tighten budgets. PC(USA) has offered staff who are 63 years and older a separation package. On September 17th, I accepted this Voluntary Separation Package offered to Presbyterian Mission Agency staff.
I write to thank each of you for your support while I was in D. R. Congo and Ghana. Thank you for your gifts to my sending and support. Thank you for your prayers and all your personal support for me and the partnerships in Congo and Ghana. I will cherish the time I spent in Congo, Ghana, and so many churches throughout the USA. The experiences, friendships, and partnerships with people during these years will enrich my faith and my life forever.
• The first training conference for Presbyterian Women in the Saboba District has been
honored with more than 80 women receiving training in Christian education, family health, making of two different kinds of soap, and producing and marketing shea butter.
• The Saboba Presbyterian Church has received its corn mill and has completed the construction of the mill house. The church plans to use the proceeds from the mill to develop Christian outreach and youth programs. A committee of the church session will monitor the budget and proceeds, to fund future church programs, upkeep the mill, and purchase another mill for another Christian community.
• Fifty family leaders from the Gnani community of accused witches will be receiving leadership training with the hope that four “lending groups” will be organized. These lending groups will enable the Gnani community to obtain small business loans more easily. Banks are more likely to make a loan to individuals if a group of people supports them.
• A coalition of representatives from churches near the Gnani community is being organized. They will meet periodically to listen to the needs of people who have been accused of being witches and to plan for ways of assisting this community.
• The Presbyterian Hunger Program has accepted our 2020 proposal and will be awarding the Evangelical Presbyterian Development and Relief Agency (EPDRA) another grant to extend the current agroforestry program to an additional three towns, and our training for grafting fruit trees to two more schools. EPDRA also expects that matching funds for the agroforestry program will be renewed. Twelve towns and eight middle schools will now benefit from on-site learning. This agroforestry technique is expected to increase the yield of soybeans by 15%, and the yield of corn by 25%. Additionally, EPDRA plans to graft 80 mango trees and plant them near eight middle schools. The fruit harvested annually will benefit these schools.
You have been part of all this work through your gifts to my sending and support and your donations directly to these programs and the One Great Hour of Sharing.
Thank you for helping to eliminate poverty in northern Ghana. Thank you for your partnership in building up the body of Christ.
I will be settling in the Richmond, VA area and seeking other employment. Partnerships in our own communities and work for the building up the Church will continue. In closing our newsletter communication, here is a prayer for unity and partnership. It is a rearrangement of words taken from the Belhar Confession of Faith:
Lord God, we believe that you created us for unity with our neighbors. Help us love one another; Help us practice and pursue community with one another; Teach us how to give ourselves willingly and joyfully to be of benefit and blessing to one another; Guide us in building up the body of Christ, help us to know and bear one another’s burdens, guide us in admonishing and comforting one another; bind us together to serve You in this world; and strengthen us in witnessing against and striving against any form of injustice, so that justice may roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. AMEN.
With love and thanksgiving for each one of you, here is a toast to your health:
Muoyo wenu! (Life to you!)
Ruth
You may freely reuse and distribute this article in its entirety for non-commercial purposes in any medium. Please include author attribution, photography credits, and a link to the original article. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDeratives 4.0 International License.