Through snakes and scorpions – Rev. Edith Larbi

An interview with Rev. Edith Eyonam Larbi, a single missionary to the Konu people of Ghana.

Rev. Edith: “I can say the call (to missions) came suddenly. While in Maranatha Bible College, one of our colleagues lost her mother. We travelled with our bereaved colleagues to Klonu village in the Volta Region of Ghana. In the night, I heard the audible voice ‘I am going to bring you here to work for me.’ It was so clear, it entered my heart.”

Born in 1943, Rev. Edith, an ordained minister with the Global Evangelical Church of Ghana, began to feel the work of the Holy Spirit in her life after she heard a sermon about Christ’s death on the cross. Considered a special child by her Christian grandmother, as a young woman she was involved in virtually every Christian activity around her. She traveled with the Volta Evangelical Association, involved in open air crusades, dawn broadcasts, and all-night programmes. It was sometimes daunting: “I mingled with every creature on the floor; scorpions, snakes, mosquitoes, you name it. But all these did not deter or discourage me in my quest to serve God.”

After Rev. Edith received the call to missions, she traveled back to Klonu to do evangelism, and once finished with her course at the Maranatha Bible College, she gave nine years of her life in Klonu as a single missionary, sent by neither church nor mission agency.

It was not an easy place to live, where even boiling rain water for drinking didn’t always result in clean water. But she was not deterred: “I walked through the dark alleys by night without fear. I remember walking through the Klo River around midnight and I saw a water snake. I told the snake that I am on my way home, so the snake too should go its way, and that was how we both parted ways without harming each other!”

She did not receive financial support but she remembers that “I led a very simple life. I come from the part of Volta Region where we like soup, so I relied on that with crabs I harvested from the river. I managed my few clothes and small money. But all I can say is that what to eat or drink was the least of my worries then, because the Lord was faithfully providing even without me asking.”

Throughout the years, Rev. Edith saw God working: “There was this veteran idol worshipper and his wife in a nearby village, I often went there to witness to him and his wife, but the wife was just not willing to give in; this was because she was afraid that if the husband should give his life to Christ, the idols will kill him. One day this man heard us sing a song during our night vigil. The lyrics of the song revolve around our satisfaction in Christ: he was puzzled. The Lord used this song to minister to him and he got saved. Afterwards, he brought out 12 baskets full of idols to be burnt. There was this particular smock-like garment that will just not catch fire. I had to call another pastor to join me in prayer until it eventually burnt. When the woman saw that the husband did not die, she readily surrendered to the Lord. Both of them were baptized in water as Abraham and Sarah.”

On a preaching visit to another village, she fell down into thick mud up to her neck. “All of a sudden someone came around, pulled me up and carried me to the dry ground. I never saw the person again. As I walked, I got to the hut of an old woman who was a bit apprehensive at who I was, but thanks to God, her young daughter recognized me as ‘Sista’, the lady that has being coming to preach to them. That was how I was led to the nearest bus station that took me back to Klonu. By the time I got back it was late; the ‘gongo’ beater was about to beat the ‘gongo’ in search of me. I believe I experienced an angelic intervention that day.”

Through many adventures, Rev. Edith sees her strengths as the word of God, the Holy Spirit and her passion for the lost. She advises those who want to go into missions to not let their minds be on what they can get, but rather “Make the Lord your delight and your want will be His care.” She is concerned for the modern church, which has “small Christianity, small worldliness” and some leaders who have become crooked.

She desires that “We should allow the Bible, the word of God to guide us. The way the disciples were with Jesus that is how we should be with the Holy Spirit.”

Taken from an interview by Rhoda Oluwakemi Appiah. She is married with three children. She is a pioneering missionary of Fullstature Missions International together with her husband, Rev. Daniel Hyde Appiah. She is a lover of God and His word, with an overwhelming desire to see God’s kingdom advance in every sphere of society. You can reach her at kemiappiah@gmail.com.