As we promised to travel to the north for our monthly rural mission to the Witch Camps, we give thanks to the Almighty God for granting us the opportunity and the grace to make the trip a success.
A team of six left Oda in the early hours of Tuesday January 20 by a public transport to Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana where we made a transit and board a bus bound for the north. We arrived at Kokuo in the Nanumba south district in the northern region around 20:30 GMT. We passed the night in a motel and set off to the witch camp at 09 hours on Wednesday.
On arrival we found the camp as a cottage settlement with many small huts and the inmates mostly women and very old. About 87% of the inmates were women many of them living with their children. The living condition at Kokuo camp is serious bad. Farming is the main occupation while the inmates were mostly hired laborers. Poverty is below 10% by the standard in the northern region.
A Witch Camp is a settlement where women suspected of being witches can flee for safety, in order to avoid being lynched by neighbors. Many women in the camp are widows and it is believed that relatives accused them of witchcraft in order to take control of their husband’s properties.
On the arrival at the camp we paid a courtesy visit to the village chief Bagpo, as well as the local chief priest Timdana. We made our intention to these opinion leaders and they welcome us and pledge their support for us. We did personal evangelism from hut to hut meeting the villagers one by one preaching Christ. We had a break at 2: pm.
At 5:00 pm we are ready for evening crusade at the center of the village with our P.A Systems ready for preaching. There is no electricity in the village so we started the program three hour than the usual evening crusade to avoid darkness. The crusade was blessed with twenty converts. Many people with diverse of sickness got healed after they were prayed for.
On Thursday morning we had a general cleaning with the inmates of the camp. The bushes were cleared and the village was swept. Treated mosquito nets were distributed with antibiotics malaria tablets and other medicines were given to some of the inmates. Assorted drinks were given to the participants of the communal labor after the clean-up exercise.
We had our second day crusade at the same time and the congregation were overwhelm. Our cleaning exercise with the inmate spread the nearby communities and people attended the evening crusade from the neighborhood. More that twenty two received Holy Ghost baptism and thirteen converts were added the same day.