Deanery Visit To Ghana 2003
In July 2003 a group from most of the parishes in Fareham deanery visited Ghana to see at first hand how the church was developing there.
On 4th September the Deanery IDWAL Group gave a presentation to the Deanery Synod which included a video of the trip to Ghana plus various PowerPoint presentations from each parish representative.
Impressions left by the trip to Ghana were:
- The disgrace of the Slave Trade and the guilt its memory left behind.
- Different levels of poverty.
- The quality of hospitality hardly matched here.
- The feeling of safety in Ghana, more so at times than in Britain.
- The infectious enthusiasm from which we can learn so much.
- The committedness of Ghanaian Christians who wear their faith on their sleeve.
- The fact that the same kind of church problems and disagreements exist there as here and elsewhere.
- The taste of the very peppery fish soup.
- The churchmanship, more evangelical yet higher than some had ever experienced before.
- The unevenness of the allocation of parish links in the diocese and apparent favouring of parishes close to Sekondi Cathedral.
- The sense of vision seen at Essikadu in particular with its 11 outstations (church plants).
Our representative on this trip was Maurice Shergold who spoke about his experiences, about The Church of the Good Shepherd, and the parish we are linked with at Holy Trinity Church on 28th September 2003.
Idwal page