June 7, 2013
Artifact: African Wood Carving
Size: 15 x 32.5 x 1 inches
Date: ca. early to mid-1990s
Significance: This wood carving, along with two others of differing sizes , was gifted to LCMS World Mission by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Ghana. Not much else is known about these three beautiful carvings other than that they presumably depict life in west Africa.
About Mission Work in Ghana: Christian mission work began as early as the 1730s in
the area of West Africa where the country of Ghana is located, but it was over two more centuries before the LCMS became involved in mission work there. The Synodical Conference of North America began work in Ghana in the late 1950s as an outgrowth of its mission work in nearby Nigeria. Early missionaries in Ghana established congregations in Accra and Tema (both along the coast) and then further inland in the Kumasi area.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ghana was incorporated after a few years and became a sister church of the LCMS in 1971. The LCMS eventually took over the Synodical Conference mission work in Ghana and still has two missionary couples serving in Ghana (https://www.lcms.org/ghana).
