The Student Side of Eight Oaks

My name is Clare Warrington, and I am a senior at Trinity Academy, one of the best private high schools in the state of Kansas. I am sitting here typing away on a laptop worth over a thousand dollars, snuggled up in my warm basement while watching a Disney movie on a flat-screen TV. I have parents who support me, friends who love me, and a church that equips me to walk with Christ daily. My life is beyond comfortable here in America; nevertheless, my heart is 6,000 miles away in Ghana, Africa, on a dark little corner of Lake Volta where an estimated 7,000 children are trapped in slavery.  

Just over a year ago, I went to a prayer meeting with my friend Madie to talk about saving eight girls out of slavery in Africa. A few weeks later, about ten Trinity students and a few other young adults began to cram into Teddy and Ellie’s shoebox of an apartment every Saturday morning for prayer meetings, and things started to change. Our hearts started to change.

Unexpectedly and beautifully, the unexplainable started to happen; one by one, a handful of American teenage kids fell in love with eight Ghanaian little girls whose names we don’t know and whose faces we have never seen. We began to dream about what would happen if these girls were actually set free. We talked about them, prayed for them, and gave money to try to bring this beautiful idea into reality. Still, as the months progressed, the freedom of these girls often felt like a dream that would never come to be, always so far ahead in the future even while it was so near in our hearts. We learned to live each day burdened with the fact that our sisters are in slavery, and we learned to wait eagerly for the day when their freedom would be proclaimed.

Just over a month ago, I stood in the airport on a Thursday morning with a group of people who have come to be like family to me over the past year, including Teddy and Ellie. With hugs and a few tears, we said goodbye to Teddy and Ellie, and they got on a plane and left for Ghana. We all walked out of the airport in a daze, hardly able to believe that everything that we had been hoping and praying for was actually happening.

Now, we live for our meetings on Saturday mornings and for every scrap of news we receive from Ghana. We have seen God move in amazing ways in Ghana and in our hearts. We have dedicated our lives to living each day in freedom – freedom from materialism, freedom from an apathetic life, and freedom from sin and death, all through the mercy and the blood of Jesus Christ. We seek to serve the Lord, each other, our families and our communities.   

We all wish desperately to be in Ghana alongside Teddy, Ellie, Landon, and Kate, but we know that, for now, it is our job to continue giving to support these girls, praying for them, and telling everyone we know all about the glory of the Lord and his unending goodness.

We have been honored to be a part of what God is doing, and we cannot take even a shred of glory for what has happened and what is yet to come. We are simply waiting for the day of the Lord’s favor for our eight girls. 

If you want to know more about the student side of Eight Oaks, send an email to eightoaks.info@gmail.com.

“Many, O LORD my God, are the wonders you have done. The things you have planned for us, no one can recount to you; were I to speak and tell of them, they would be too numerous to declare."

- Psalm 40:5