By Susan Akyeampong
A five-year-old girl wakes up before the rest of her household and begins moving through the rooms, rousing her brothers and sisters.
“It’s time to pray” she tells them and if they forget, she’ll be there to remind them. Elsewhere in the village, another young girl, who first learned to sing worship songs at her school now leads her church choir.
These are the fruits of Smart Brain Academy, a Christian mission school in Navrongo, in Ghana’s Upper East Region, founded by Ben Amonung and his wife in 2017. It began with four children in a converted garage and has grown into a school of 275 students, ranging from nursery age through to eleven years old. The transformation pastor and mission worker Ben is witnessing in his pupils is by any measure, remarkable.
Parents have come to Ben with stories of children who are now leading worship at their churches, of children who remind their families to pray before meals, before bed, and in the morning.
“These are things that we really love to see,” Ben says, “that children are aware that there’s something that is holding them, and so we need to seek him in prayer.” The school’s vision has always been bigger than academic results.
“You can see a leap of transformation, from not even being able to walk to school by themselves to now being able to lead worship, sing Christian songs, and encouraging their parents to pray.”
Smart Brain Academy exists to share the gospel with children and their families, and to see a generation in Navrongo shaped by faith in Jesus. Even during break time, Ben says, what you overhear between the children when they are left to themselves is lovely. “You can see a leap of transformation, from not even being able to walk to school by themselves to now being able to lead worship, sing Christian songs, and encouraging their parents to pray.”
“This is not just academic, it’s a ministry.”
Navrongo sits just ten minutes from the Burkina Faso border, in a region where Christianity and Islam sit side by side. A significant number of Smart Brain Academy’s families are Muslim.
But Ben doesn’t believe this has been a barrier. Families who know he is a pastor and that the school is a mission school continue to enrol their children regardless, and one of the most active members of the parent-teacher association is a Muslim father who journeys fully alongside everything the school does. Some children from Muslim homes have, through their time at the school, come to confess Christ as their Lord and Saviour.
Please pray
- That the gospel planted in Smart Brain Academy’s students would grow into lasting faith, and that children from both Christian and Muslim backgrounds would come to know Christ and reflect him in their communities.
- That God would provide funding for the new school building, support for families who struggle with fees, and that Ben and his wife would keep seeing his faithfulness in practical needs.
- For wisdom and strength as they lead, that the teachers’ faith would be genuine and growing, and that Ben would find the mentorship and peer connections he is seeking with other Christian school leaders.
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