...Jesus is the master of my soul...

Raising rice in Africa is very difficult, at best. The type of rice grown here is a dry farming, light brown long grain rice and is grown in the bush areas of which we live. It is a very time consuming crop for farmers and few grow this type of rice. Yet it is a very lucrative cash crop, second only to Cocoa beans. When you have protected the grains from the birds, harvested, dried the kernels for two months, hand cleaned the husk of the rice, bagged them into 62 Kilo (100 lb.) bags, and transport your product to the Accra market; you are paid on the spot for your hard work. A 62 Kilo bag is worth 200GHc and an acre of ground will yield a bag and a half on good years. Rice is harvested only once per year, usually in August. The real difficulty of raising rice comes in the months of May, June and July just before harvest time. For those three months, the farmer and all of his family live and sleep at the bush farm in a makeshift Bamboo lean to in order to keep the birds from eating all of the rice seeds blossoming. It is a 24 hour war with nature and the family knows they will have no family income if not on the battlefield during those months. Throughout the days and nights the entire family set watches to continually scare the birds when they come in to pluck the rice seeds. Rice farmers have devised Bamboo noise makers that they shake as they run through the rows of rice and the birds are scurried off; primitive but effective. The challenge is to have a large enough plot of land to raise this precious demanded product  throughout Ghana to receive your annual income needed for the farmers family, and being able to defend the full farm when the birds descend  and within an hour will destroy the maturing rice. I have been told that if the farmer and his family are not there to war off the birds, 4 acres of rice is literally a waste land within one hour. Most rice farmers are from generations of rice farmers and have lived this way of life since babes; they tend to marry other rice farmers children to keep their tradition and sub-culture alive.

Over the years we have lived here in the bush, we have only met 7 rice farmers, one being Brother Ofosu and his family. I have followed him to his farm that is a full 4 acre cut out of the jungle by him and three generations before he became the master of the farm. When I visited his farm last year, it was a rich fertile sloped farm with waves of rice heads gentling bending in the breeze. Brother Ofosu is a small man, standing maybe 5’3”, but a well-defined physical specimen of raw muscle grained with years of hard work in his farm. He and his family have been members of the Church for over twenty years. He and Comfort have raised 6 children; one son now serving a mission, one daughter preparing to serve a mission within weeks, 4 have graduated from High School, and the last two will enter secondary school in a couple of years. Together they have served in the Sankubenase Branch faithfully when called upon, but when May, June and July come around, they were on their plot of land full time for those three months and sometimes longer. Brother Ofosu attended school through the 4^th grade and has difficulty with reading English. He has been taught to read by his children; Comfort neither reads or writes English or Twi- she was never allowed to attend school. They are humble childlike in their faith and commitment to the Lord and their Gospel testimonies.

My eyes were filled with tears, today, as now President Ofosu bore fervent testimony of the blessings we will receive when we willingly partner with the Lord. He related how he was called as the Branch President by President Oppong and me on a Saturday afternoon five months ago. He told of how he had wrestled with the Lord over his inadequacies, his rice farm demands, and the honored family tradition of farming rice for his family’s needs. With Comfort by his side, in the early morning hours of the Sunday he was to be sustained, they covenanted with the Lord they will love and serve the saints with all of their hearts and only asked that angels from above would attend their family. He called his brother before church services and turned his entire portion of the family rice farm over to him knowing he would never be asked again by the family to represent the extended family’s interest or heritage as a rice farmer.  When he stood and the membership sustained the Lord’s action to support Brother Ofosu as their Branch President, no one knew that he and Comfort had covenanted all of their earthly income, generations of family tradition of farming rice, knowing he would the next day start preparing a new farm to grow corn and vegetables for his family, nor the great faith he stepped forward with the Lord on his side. He has given his all to the Master of the vineyard in full partnership. Quoting President Ofosu “…Jesus is the Master of my soul, Oh that you may feel his loving arms around you as I do.”