From Accra

From Accra, Ghana, HCJB Global plans to reach out to all of Sub Saharan Africa. It is a big commitment--so big that we are calling it a "Transformational Goal." If we succeed in blending health care and media initiatives for the region it will change us forever. Our prayer is the Africa won't be the same either.


Glen participated in a planning session in Accra in February, facilitating a group of mission leaders in laying out detailed plans for the next 12 months. At the end of a week, a plan was in place. HCJB Global has always blended media and health care work. In Africa the need for an integrated strategy cries out as loudly as we have ever heard it. The HIV crisis makes it impossible to do medicine without confronting what some call the most critical humanitarian crisis of all time. To speak (media) to the continent without bringing a message of hope for those ravaged by AIDS is unthinkable. Together the strategies have a chance of long-term change.


Visiting the El Mira slave castle on the Ghanaian coast was a chilling reminder of how self-centered and calloused we can be to the suffering of others. This national monument was the focus of world-wide attention a few weeks after I was there, as we remembered the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. The picture is from one of the group holding cells at El Mira. The smell of blood, urine and human excrement was overwhelming, centuries after the last slave was held here.