By Danielle Smith

Leader Staff Writer

It’s a Tuesday evening in the middle of summer. The plane is becoming full as passengers are settling into their seats, preparing to depart from Washington D.C.

When the plane lands some 10 hours later, passengers awake to a new day and a new time zone in a place that Dan Wells is all too familiar with: Ghana, West Africa.

Wells, his wife Anita and youngest daughter, Katie, are a local missionary family affiliated with First Baptist Church of Oxford and sponsored by Open Door Baptist Missions. The family has been making regular trips to Ghana since 2007 with this most recent trip being their sixth.

For 24 days, Wells, who lives in Clarkston, and his family visited different villages throughout Accra, the capital of Ghana, and the Central Region, sharing the Christian religion in the form of Vacation Bible School (VBS).

“It’s the same curriculum as people would understand Vacation Bible School here in America . . . We just adjust it to cultural understandings,” Wells said.

Children and youth ranging in age from 5 to 20 participated in these three-day VBS programs that Wells and his family lead. While there, games were played, crafts were made and a biblical message was shared in a way that would be understood culturally and regionally.

Wells said “(if) you do a ministry involving snow and ice, (Ghanaians) are not going to understand that, so those types of curriculums don’t work well.”

With that in mind, Wells selected the theme “Moose on the Loose.”

Wells said Moose on the Loose “was a camping curriculum focused along the line of camping and Peter in the book of Matthew and Christ calling him. It works well; it will translate across cultures there.”

Not all children that participated in VBS were members of the church hosting the event. Children roaming the area would see the group playing games and want to join in.

“We invite them to join and as they come in and play the games, we tell them exactly what we are there for and what we are doing. Some parents come in and often investigate, asking us what we are doing and we share with them,” Wells said.

Depending on the church, by the end of the third day, anywhere from 150 to 600 children had attended a VBS program.

During their 24-day stay, Wells and his family would end up leading VBS a total of eight times.

“We start on a Monday, so we do Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at one church and then we move to another church for Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Then, we normally minister at one of the local churches we just participated in on Sunday where we preach and teach in their Sunday service,” Wells said.

With a schedule like this, some may question how much can be taught and learned in such a short amount of time.

However, Wells explained that “the spreading of the gospel is the simple act of believing what Jesus Christ has done for you . . . Just because somebody like myself has been a Christian since I was 8 years old, I’m still learning today . . . Now, what God does within the individual and their hearts, man can’t control that. That is of God and that’s exactly what His word says.”

While these VBS programs come at no cost to the local churches that host them, these churches have to make a commitment to continue spreading Christianity.

“We do the fun part; we play the games, we (host) the attraction to bring the kids in. Of course, we share the gospel message, but the real work is in those that have responded and accepted Christ during the ministry we participate in. The real work is the discipleship that we leave behind,” Wells said.

Each day is filled with long hours of travel and running the VBS programs, but Wells believes that sharing the message of Jesus Christ is what God has called his family to do, specifically in Ghana.

“We go to be a blessing to them, but normally those that go to be a blessing are blessed more than what they even have to offer, so we are blessed in many different ways,” he said.

When asked what keeps him going back, Wells replied, “It’s just the children. They are amazing. Just in their response and happiness . . . They are happier than we are, and they don’t have anything (compared to what kids have in the United States). They are happy with pushing a bald, blown-out tire in a circle. Give that to our kids, we look like we are crazy, but their kids make something of it and it’s all they have. But most of all, it’s just to continue to share the gospel message . . . There will definitely be a seventh trip.”