First Impressions!

This is the scene that we saw over and over on our first day in Togo! I have mentioned in a couple of other posts already that we left Ghana and went into Togo on the weekend of Easter. As a result we were met by large groups of Catholic Togolese people who were remembering Christ's death. I got a photo of this group as we drove past them on the way to Kpalime, Togo.
Before we made it to Kpalime we had to stop in this village to get our temporary visas. While we were waiting for them to be processed and approved we saw this scene. It is another group of Catholic Togolese, they are reenacting Christ's day of crucifixion. This was by far the most elaborate of all the groups that we saw.



As you can see by the above photo, they had a very large group of people who was following them through the village. This group is no different than any of the other that we passed that day, they would just stop and pray or sing praise when and where they felt like it and the vehicles had to just sit and wait until they were finished. We were not exempt from this practice and had to sit through some as well.



The men with the gold helmets were the guards that carried out the crucifixion, they seem to be carrying some kind of weapons that they were using to beat the man carrying the cross. I don't think they were actually hitting the man but they were going to town on the cross if not but they were beating the dickens out of something.



The Togolese and the Ghanaian people are very deeply religious people. Unfortunately they are not necessarily all following a living God. There are many people who follow false and dead god's who need to know about the One True Living God. I hope that the time and the work that we did while in these countries will be beneficial to the missionaries there as they try to share Jesus Christ with them.

Photoman