The Lyfand Times

Issue 1, vol. 1 • August 8, 2009

Official Reporting of the Life and Times of Nathan Bennett
Contact the publishers at bennett6644@gmail.com
Inaugural Edition
This is the first edition of The Lyfand
Times, a regular reporting of the doings and
happenings of one Nathan Bennett, lately out of
Ghana and soon to be off to a final semester at
Biola University to finish a BA in Intercultural
Studies.

The Fiend in Ghana

I was in Ghana this summer to fulfill an
internship requirement for my major at Biola
University. I went through Discovery, an
internship program run by Wycliffe Bible
Translators. This program started with a week
and a half of orientation, ended with a week
and a half of debriefing, and the core of the
program was a month spent helping in a
language project in a village in Ghana. The
team that I went with had six Americans, one
Canadian, a Czech, a Slovak, and four
Ghanaians. The age range of team members ran
from twenty-one to twenty-six. The team
leaders were John and Shevawn Ramsey from
the USA and Maame Esi from Ghana.
The team (plus another friend picked up later)
Local species of motorcycle--particularly
venomous
While I was running about the country
of Ghana, I was taking notes for a variety of
ethnographic assignments designed to help me
get to know the country and the people better.
This next semester, I will turn my notes into a
portfolio that demonstrates my competency in
what I have been studying while I have been at
Biola.
In the Village
I spent the core of my time in Ghana in
the town of Buipe, the capital of Central Gonja
District of Northern Region in Ghana. This
town is home to the Gonja Literacy Project,
which was established when the missions
agency WEC did a translation of the New
Testament for the Gonja people. The literacy
program is now under the Ghanaian Bible
translation organization GILLBT, and they are
working on a translation of the Old Testament.
I spent most of my time typing words into the
computer for a new Gonja dictionary.
 In their village assignments, my other the fact that there was an end to the trip helped
teammates did work such as interview women me to persevere. Our present life is indeed life,
for women's advocacy programs, help GILLBT but it has an end. There is much hard work to
create a new marketing strategy for raising do, but God has promised an end to the work.
support, type translated Scriptures into the Every team member had a meeting with
computer, and other work that helps the broader the leaders before the end of the trip. One issue
tasks of Bible translation and literacy that came up for me was contentment with
education. where God puts me. I was trying to go
somewhere other than Ghana this summer, and
The Weather I was not happy about being in Africa rather
It was the rainy season in Ghana. In the than Asia. The fact of the matter is that no
tropical south, the skies were cloudy and it was matter where God puts me on this earth, I will
often rainy. In the typically dry and dusty north, have difficulties. Life is hard everywhere, and
rain came whenever the ground dried out. the attitude that I have in hard times will
influence how I respond to what God wants to
The Food do with me.
Ghanaians pound a lot of what they eat.
If it's cassava, plantain, rice, millet, or corn, Coming Events
there is a way that they can eat it pounded. It Short-term mission trips are expensive
generally looks like thick mashed potatoes with to raise support for, involve a lot of awkward
an even consistency. The food is generally adjusting in short amounts of time, and often
spicy. I ate a lot of fish and goat meat. benefit the short-term missionary more than the
people in the country he or she visits. As this is
the case, I intend not to go on another. I thank
God for all he has taught me through such trips,
and I thank God for the people who have
supported and prayed for me as I have gone. I
am done exploring and seeing whether
missions is the thing that I am supposed to do.
God called me into missions in seventh
grade, and last year I vowed to commit myself
to missionary work in the middle of a dark time
that God helped me out of. God brought Psalms
65:1 and 66:13-14 to my mind while I was in
Ghana. In obedience to God's calling and in
A sampling of Ghanaian food: fufu with peanut fulfillment of “that which my lips uttered and
soup (courtesy of Wikipedia) my mouth promised when I was in trouble,” I
am going to go. I am done with talking about
A Bit of Something Else exploration. I am going to go. The next time
One of the best things that I ate on the you hear about me raising support will be when
trip was the pizza that I had the day before I I go long-term.
left. The pizza itself was very good, but Thank you for your prayers and support.
familiar food after weeks of unfamiliar food I hope all is well with you wherever you are.
was a particularly wonderful thing. I felt a
teacup of what we will feel when we arrive in Nathan Bennett
heaven. Although it was hard to be in Ghana,