By God’s grace, this week we experienced two joyful events in our local church: on the one hand, the ordination of the deacon Father Isaac to the eldership, and on the other hand, our visit for the celebration of St. Cosmas the Aetolian to our most remote parish in Ashanti Province, in the northern part of the country; where we baptized a new group of converts into our Church and inaugurated the village’s new aqueduct sponsored by our Church to provide clean water to this deprived area. Early on Sunday morning, August 21, we set out for the central province of Ghana to the village of Abo Dom and specifically to St. John the Theologian’s Church, where we celebrated the ordination of Deacon Isaac as an elder. Father Isaac is married and has two little girls. He himself is a teacher, as is his elder. During the Divine Liturgy and before the ordination began, I addressed the candidate for ordination, stressing to him the magnitude of the responsibility he is assuming today before God and man, and that the life of a clergyman is one of constant sacrifice and offering. “Keep humility in your ministry and God will bless you. Humility for the clergyman is a jewel and ornament that will adorn you and make you beloved by the whole world and especially by your parishioners. Any clergyman who is loved by all his parishioners is loved by God himself. The basic characteristic of a clergyman should be a spirit of sacrifice and not of idleness. This means that the clergyman must sacrifice himself for the Church and not sacrifice the Church for himself. Keep your ears open for every contribution, wherever it comes from, because there is always something to learn from everyone.”
At the end of the Divine Liturgy we congratulated the villagers for their new priest, since for a long time this parish did not have its own permanent priest, but also for an additional reason: because Father Isaac is a child and fruit of this village. We then travelled another two hours to visit the family of the old catechist of our Church, Samuel, who departed to the Lord a few days ago, to console his wife, who accompanied him on all his catechetical departures from village to village, preaching the Orthodox faith throughout Ghana. May his memory and the imitation of his example be eternal. On Wednesday 24 August we set out at three in the morning, to arrive after five hours at the feast church of St. Cosmas the Aetolian, where we baptized a new group of catechumens in the local river. May St. Cosmas, this great missionary of the Church, be the patron of this outlying parish of our Metropolis. Then, in the presence of the local tribal chiefs of Konsimwa district of Ashante province, we inaugurated the third well in this area, which is an offering of our Church to the local community so that people can have access to clean drinking water, which is one of the biggest problems in the country. The appreciation, respect and gratitude shown by all the people there for the Orthodox Church, its spiritual cultivation and its humanitarian contribution in the fields of education is remarkable, as our Church has built a primary school and a library-reading room in this area.
We arrived at night at our base in Accra, exhausted from the journey, but with a redemption in our hearts and souls for the work of the mission. In this work, dear friends of the Orthodox Foreign Missionary Brotherhood, you have always been and continue to be helpers and companions in the journey of this holy mission. From its beginning until this difficult time, you have generously supported us with all that you have and can do, so that this light of the mission may not be extinguished. May our good God bless you and strengthen us to continue this great journey to the ends of the earth, so that on that day, when we return broken and afflicted to our heavenly base, the Lord may grant us the redemption of our souls. Amen.
† The Akras Narcissus
