Recounting God's Faithfulness

Rebecca Adu-Boahene's Journey to the M.A. in Outdoor and Adventure Leadership at HoneyRock

By HoneyRock Center for Leadership Development

November 3^rd, 2021

Wheaton graduate student Rebecca Adu-Boahene is quick to praise God for his faithfulness—even if it comes in surprising ways. She is now completing her second year of the M.A. in Outdoor and Adventure Leadership program in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. Afterwards, she hopes to return to Ghana to help build and run a campsite as part of her work with a ministry called Teens Aloud Foundation.

Rebecca Adu-Boahene was born in Accra, Ghana, the fifth of six children, to Christian parents. But it wasn’t until joining a college ministry with a camp focus called Teens Aloud Foundation at the University of Ghana that she grew exponentially in her faith.

“That is where I got to grow in my walk with God, I got to understand about grace, and I got to understand my gifts and talents,” she said.

After graduating with an accounting major, Adu-Boahene spent the following year in 2014 serving Teens Aloud Foundation to fulfill the national year of service, a compulsory period of service that all Ghanaians complete between graduating college and starting careers.

So successful was Adu-Boahene in her work, the organization did something that isn’t really heard of. They sent her to Swaziland, South Africa to start an outpost of the ministry there.

“A man or a family usually does missions, but not a woman,” she said. “I went to Swaziland not knowing anybody.”

She also had no income—and was tasked instead with raising her own support.

I prayed ‘If this is your will God, make it so...’

Lodgings

But God was faithful to provide accommodations even if they were uncomfortable at times. She lived as a guest of two different families for about seven months, before moving into an orphanage.

That was the low point for Adu-Boahene. After working in ministry all day, she would return to the orphanage at night, taking care of the infant daughter of the orphanage’s resident pastor, and helping with the cooking, cleaning, and laundry sometimes as late as midnight or one in the morning.

“I would say God was building my character,” she said. “But the one thing I did—that the Holy Spirit put on me—was just to serve. I think that God sent me to be a helper to them, and I was just serving.”

Seven months later, Adu-Boahene left the orphanage—and on faith—signed a lease for an apartment.

“As I was raising the funds for the organization, one of my friends from university sent me funds for the first month of rent and it was enough to cover electricity and water as well,” she said.

Income

Just days after, she received a call from a school about a job. An accounting teacher had left, and they needed someone to start immediately. Adu-Boahene agreed and started juggling two jobs—working as an accounting teacher and moonlighting as a missionary for Teens Aloud Foundation.

But instead of crumpling under the weight of both roles, she was energized, crediting her time at the orphanage for strengthening her for this dual role that she believes God called her to.

In 2017, Adu-Boahene felt God’s call as the foundation director asked her to look into a program he’d heard about at a recent conference in Ghana. He’d heard HoneyRock’s Adventure Leadership Coordinator and Professor Dr. Muhia Karianjahi speak about the M.A. in Outdoor and Adventure Leadership at Wheaton College. He thought Adu-Boahene should consider applying.

A Scholarship

But this too necessitated trust in God. If she got into the program, not only would she need to move to America and live in a place and culture completely foreign to her, but she would also have to find some way to pay for the graduate program. Again, on faith and with lots of prayer, she applied for the program and the Billy Graham Scholarship in 2020. She got both.

“I prayed ‘If this is your will God, make it so,’” she said.

Although she completed her first year of graduate school remotely due to COVID, she arrived in-person this past August. After some visa delays, she flew from Ghana to Chicago just in time to attend the Billy Graham Scholarship reception and later drive the six hours up to HoneyRock to start her first year of in-person learning.

I can’t wait to see how God puts everything together.

Just two months into the program at HoneyRock, Adu-Boahene said her time here has already been rich with new opportunities for hands-on and classroom learning.

One of her first activities was to take a multiple-day wilderness trip with her cohort, during which she pitched and slept in a tent and canoed for the first time. “It was challenging but I found that it was a great experience for me, getting to know my cohort and telling our stories and getting to hear what God is doing in each person’s life,” she said. “That was a great encouragement to me.”

Likewise, her intensive class on Foundations in Experiential Education has been illuminating, particularly as she is learning how to design and structure a learning experience with the principles behind doing it a certain way.

“When I look ahead, it’s going to be so exciting to go back to Ghana and apply and contextualize what I’ve learned here and to train other people to apply those principles,” she said. “I can’t wait to see how God puts everything together.”