This past week, I attended the World Mission Conference held in Kasoa, Ghana. The venue was the Pentecostal Conference Center (which is a work in progress, but very nice!) While there, I met a sweet woman who works in the building where I slept. One day, she came to my room to bring me something, and I greeted her and asked her name. (I know very little Twi and she knew very little English.) When I asked her name, she showed me the inner part of her left arm. There, tattooed, was her name and the name of her village. Immediately, my heart broke for her. I have discovered that there are still a few clans that tattoo there arms with name and village as a means of identification, especially if the person is in an accident. Ghana has many languages, people move, they wander...it is a way of knowing where a person belongs.
Then, I looked at the inside of her right arm. She told me that she received that tattoo before she became a Christian. It was a tattoo of a Ghanaian proverb, that when a dog bites, he bares his teeth. Then, as we were talking, I was looking at her beautiful face, her lovely smile...and, the markings by her right eye...initiation into the occult when she was young. What does a person say? "Our God is a loving God, a forgiving God, a God who makes us new..." You could see how she loves the Lord.
In the southern part of Ghana, there is the Sankofa symbol. It reminds people to "remember where you have come from." Regina doesn't need that symbol to remember...she can see every day, several times a day, what the Lord has done for her. And, she rejoices, for, in Him, she has been made new!
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