Joy in Goats

Allow me to set the scene...

Friday night six of my dear children are invited to stay overnight in the Mission House with Carlin, Godson and I. We fill the living room with foam mattresses and immediately the children start jumping on them! I call the girls into the kitchen with me and we have fun shutting the boys out. We prepare popcorn and cut a pineapple. Edinam and I go to buy Coke and Fanta and Sprite, one drink per child.

We set all the goodies out and the most encouraging thing happens! Godson tells a story from the Bible and the children are ALL ears! They are intensely focused taking in every happening. Godson is asking questions along the way. He is telling of Gideon and the way God spoke to his people through the skin of sheep.

After the Bible story we spend a couple of hours enjoying the refreshments. And then bed time (yeah right!) Eventually we did all go to sleep but not for long. See, outside on the front porch, there are cement blocks stacked up so although the place is fenced off, it is accessible to pretty much any person or animal. This small place is where Godson parks the motorbike at night. It has an alarm but its still better to be safe.

Just a few hours into the night, I hear goats making all kinds of noises! The living room has seven windows and it often sounds like the rooster/child/goat/anything that makes noise is right there with us, especially because the room is nearly void of everything aside from four plastic chairs and a plastic table. So we hear the goats making noises and I try to write it off as normal goat-ness and go to sleep. The children are sleeping soundly.

Then I hear the motorbike alarm shrilly sound "beep-beep". And I know the goats are on the porch. But it's dark, everyone's asleep and I don't want to get up. My thoughts are that surely they will stop trying to get out and just sleep.

Nope. It continued until finally at five in the morning I got up and moved the twenty or so blocks, only after disastrous attempts at conversing with the neighbor who only speaks Evegbe and a 5 minute effort to get the goats off of the porch. Then I wanted to just lay back down but my dear children were already up and sweeping up the goat poop from not just the porch but from around the entire house! So I swept with them and then we went inside and had tea and bread. With them around, even starting at 5am, it was a great day.

Before I left for Ghana, I attended two goat trainings in hopes that I could use goat milk as one way for children to get protein. These goats around here are not milking goats, they are small. But as I waited for the water to boil that morning, I had to laugh because this was not the experience with goats for which I had planned. Nevertheless, as it turned out, the children had a good time listening to me try to explain in Evegbe to the woman my problem with the goats and I had a good time being with the children.

If I could equate this lesson to anything it would be...
That night was a depiction of my life here. I had hoped to milk goats and feed children but as it turns out, right now I'm just protecting my house from them and shoveling their insane amounts of poop. Life isn't always as we expect. But God knew from the beginning that Friday night would turn out like it did. So I'm not worried or disappointed (at the moment) because this morning, I am aware that all things are in His hands! Goats. Children. and Sandra.

God is good!