June 2025: Throwing the Mantle

The Saturday after Ted returned from Ghana we were at church looking at 1 Kings, chapter 19. Here’s the link to the sermon: it was really good–better than I could do justice in a blogified retelling.

Elijah returns from the wilderness and finds Elisha plowing with his twelve yoke of oxen. Elijah approaches him and throws his cloak (or mantle) around him. After a very old-testamenty goodbye (he slaughters the animals and burns the plowing equipment, cooks the meat in the fire and shares it with his neighbors, he kisses his parents) he “set out to follow Elijah and become his servant.”

Walter Brueggemann asks us to consider three questions about this reading:

Who threw the mantle over you?

What did they expect of you?

How are you doing?

A few days earlier, I’d received this picture via text from Ted: all eight girls in front of The Father’s House.

L-R: Richlove, Gloria, Lucky, Regina, Ted, Sarah Jr., God’s Way, Dina, Sarah Sr.

No caption from him, of course, because sometimes words just aren’t enough.

Fourteen years ago this summer, we were very, very young and engaged to be married. I was in between apartment leases and had moved back in with my parents for a few months, working and taking summer classes at WSU. Ted was in Ghana. We would talk on the phone at odd times of day–whenever he could get a signal and our time zones aligned–once in a Barnes & Noble, another in a hospital lobby while I was waiting for my nephew to be born. Standing in a blast of air conditioning and first-world amenities made Ghana feel far away. Ted was telling me about what he was seeing and feeling. I remember one conversation on my parents’ porch: both of us crying, sobs coming across 6,405 miles of international cellphone data.

A few months after he had returned, we met with Jeff Miller, co-founder of The Father’s House, to tell him that all of our prayers and fuzzy feelings had led us to conclude, with no shadow of a doubt, that Jeff and his wife Lori and their partners Matt and Tammy Garrett needed to start another house in Ghana for girls. In his very Jeff Miller way, he just laughed it off and said something like, “well we’re BUSY right now, but you two clearly need to do it.”

He threw the mantle over us, and it was the start of a lifelong calling.

The girls are growing up. We say this every time. It’s a given, but one worth celebrating considering what their trajectory was before we met them. What a blessing to have kids that grow. Miraculous in its own right.

How many years have we taken pictures in front of this window? The perfect measuring stick. L-R:
Lucky, Sarah Jr., Regina, Sarah Sr., Gloria, Dina, Richlove, God’s Way

One of my delights is seeing the way the house changes between visits. Love this picture that they chose to frame and hang.

It’s hard to see here but the girls sang at church and a photo was chosen for the calendar! This is a ~big deal~

Bernard, Celestine, and their granddaughter

The “big thing” for this trip was taking the girls and staff on a trip to Keta. The girls had never seen the ocean!

ROAD TRIP! All eight girls (and Ted) plus Jennifer (throwing the peace sign) and Akpene (taking the selfie)

I’m not going to lie—there were a LOT of selfies to wade through

Dinner the first night. Jollof rice and chicken #IYKYK

God’s Way. If she had ambitions to become a singer, I would insist on this being her album cover.

Dina, Lucky, Gloria, Sarah Sr. walking along the beach

Porch swing back at the guest house. L-R: Akpene, Richlove, Gloria, Jennifer

You might recognize these pink sweatshirts from our last trip :)
L-R: Sarah Sr., Dina, Gloria, God’s Way, Richlove, Ted, Sarah Jr., Richlove, Lucky

It was an absolutely frigid 75 degree afternoon.

Always fun to bring treats from the US and see what’s a hit and what is a flop (we still laugh about the Peeps we brought several years ago which the girls tried and then threw away, saying “the sugar is too much!”). This time around, the Dot’s pretzels were positively coveted.

They got to visit The Father’s House, the place that started it all. Ted got to see David and Celestine Banini, mantle-throwers in their own rights.

Celestine, Bernard (Eight Oaks Directors), Ted, Celestine, David (Father’s House Directors). Both of these couples took us into their homes and fed us and taught us to shop at the market and took us to church during our first few weeks in Ghana when we had NO CLUE what we were doing.

Ted with Jeremiah Banini, our longtime friend. The first time he and Ted crossed paths they were unmarried guys in their early 20’s. Now they both have kids of their own and Jeremiah is a doctor!

Afterwards, back in Akatsi, the trip ended with a board meeting. One thing Celestine spoke about was the power of exposure. Of showing the girls new places, new people, new possibilities for careers and study.

We are looking at the last few years of Eight Oaks as we know it. We’re gearing up for one big final fundraising push to raise enough money for all eight girls to attend college (or trade school, if they choose). And as we do that, we’re feeling older. Like these cloaks on our backs are looking for some new shoulders.

It’s not just about paying for college. Sure, we want them to go to college or trade school. But more than anything, we want them to live out their calling. A calling that starts with being beloved:

He will bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the Lord
for the display of his splendor.

And ends with throwing that same belovedness, like a mantle, over others:

They will rebuild the ancient ruins
and restore the places long devastated;
they will renew the ruined cities
that have been devastated for generations.
And will be called priests of the Lord,
ministers of our God.

Their descendants will be known among the nations
and their offspring among the peoples.
All who see them will acknowledge
that they are a people the Lord has blessed.

Another place the girls visited on this trip was Fort Prizenstein; a three-hundred year old monument to unbridled human wickedness. The Transatlantic Slave trade stands in stark opposition to proclaiming belovedness. And if you are familiar with teenage girls, it will not surprise you to hear that this visit was not entirely somber. Ted and I were laughing as he recounted the muffled giggling and occasional selfies. A heaviness, undoubtedly, but also: girls are supposed to laugh. I don’t believe their joy was irreverent. I thought about their ancestors, many generations removed, who suffered on the same ground hundreds of years ago. That the laughter and smiles of Ghanaian women rang out on a Saturday in June, within the walls of a literal graveyard, is a level of healing that I deem impossible without divine intervention. I love, love, love that part of Isaiah 61 mentioned above: They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations because I think many of us imagine that language as metaphor, but it is literal. They are literally redeeming the ruins of slave forts, of cities that have been devastated for generations.

You do not stand in the dungeon of a slave fort and read this quote and leave unmoved.

I looked at these pictures and remembered this quote by Linda Hogan that hangs in my daughter’s bedroom:

“Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me.
Be still, they say. Watch and listen.
You are the result of the love of thousands.”

The result of the love of thousands. Not just their ancestors, either, but you, who are reading this, and the hundreds of other people across the world who heard their story and were compelled to give from the generosity of their hearts. Who know their names and have prayed for them for years (some of you knew their names before we met them!).

Our vision for Eight Oaks is to give everything we have, everything we can possibly give, and to stumble over the finish line completely spent. As we do, we’ll hurl the mantle over the shoulders of eight girls who are waiting on the other side…

…ready to take the baton.

So as I end this blog post, let me send you forth with encouragement, the knowledge that you, too, are beloved, and the same questions from the start:

Who threw the mantle over you?

What did they expect of you?

How are you doing?