THE EVANGELICAL CONVENTION

It all started on new years eve in Accra. I met a mexican girl who’d lived in a mountain village in central Ghana, called AGOGO. Based on the name alone I decided to give it a visit and with her friends’ contact I hopped on the fun bus the very next day.
Driving into the town in a banged-up trotro, we passed banners reading ‘53rd True Faith Evangelical Church Convention’ which happened to be in Agogo that weekend! HALLELUJAH!!
I quickly met a lovely bloke called Nats, a priest, who explained that on the first and second days everybody traditionally dressed in white, he invited me to come at 6am the next morning to be blessed by the Bishop, the third and final day when the congregation would be cladded in red - symbolising the blood that christ spilt, of course.
I rolled up the next morning at sunrise with hens cluckin’ and horn already beeping and was basically taken under Nats’ wing for the morning, paraded around and even ended up giving a speech in the center of the area to the 2000 disciples listening at what this whiteman had to say. I told them that I loved them, and it was true. Since arriving in Ghana, that was what I felt..that I was returning to the motherland and somehow things made sense to me here, the simplicity and honesty you could feel in the people, the sharing, the smiles and especially the music - which filled the air both near and far and flowed through the body of all Africans.
The convention took all of this and multiplied it with faith love and song, so that you couldn’t help but move your feet and adore the community. It felt like a unit, and although I’m not a religious man, what I felt in their presence was joy and happiness. Before long I was challenged to a dance-off and found myself knee-pounding along side the bishop. After this Nats introduced me one-by-one to the 12 most important pastors, bishops, apostles which had made the trip here, and then, I was finally blessed. 
AMEN.