A mission to help educate children in need
Surplus materials from shuttered school being repurposed for children in Ghana
SCROLL THE ARROWS to see more photos.
CLICK HERE to read a related story.
School fixtures that would have been set aside will get a new life in classrooms far away, thanks to a unique collaboration between a school board, a nearby business, parishioners and the diocesan Missions Office.
Volunteers recently packed up hundreds of chairs, desks and tables from the recently shuttered Hatton McCredie Elementary School in Kingdom City in the North Callaway R-1 School District and transported them to the Gold Crest Distributing warehouse in Mexico.
The items will be loaded into large shipping containers to be sent to Ghana this fall.
Many will be used in a school being built back home by Father Henry Ussher, a missionary priest from Ghana who’s serving in this diocese.
Some of the items will be given to the bishop of the diocese next to Fr. Ussher’s home diocese, for use in Catholic schools there.
Other items will be used in school cafeterias the people of the Jefferson City diocese paid to build in Ghana.
“This is an incredible opportunity. The kids will benefit so much from this,” said Fr. Ussher, who recently became pastor of St. Bonaventure Parish in Marceline, Immaculate Conception Parish in Brookfield, St. Raphael Parish in Indian Grove, the Mission of St. Joseph at Hurricane Branch.
He and Father Dominic Ackah, a missionary priest from Ghana who’s serving in Columbia, led volunteers from local parishes and the diocesan Chancery Offices in moving the items out of the schools.
The diocesan Missions Office will pay shipping costs, duties and fees for getting the items to their destination.
“We’re being good stewards of God’s creation by finding good uses for these items,” said Jake Seifert, senior diocesan director of development and missions. “They’re completely functional and will get a lot of use in a country that needs them.”
The Missions Office supports mission and humanitarian partnerships with other dioceses in countries with developing economies.
It receives most of its funding from the annual Special Mission Collection, which will be taken up the weekend of July 18-19, 2026, in parishes throughout this diocese.
A special collection envelope is inserted in the July 10, 2026, issue of The Catholic Missourian.
Donations can also be made securely online by visiting: diojeffcity.org/donate-missions.
Opportunity knocks
Students and staff of the former Hatton-McCredie and Williamsburg Elementary schools will be united this fall at a new consolidated elementary school in Kingdom City.
North Callaway R-1 School District Superintendent Kenya Thompson Ed.D. said the district’s school board declared most of the items in the former Hatton-McCredie and Williamsburg schools as surplus property.
Other items were deemed unlikely to sell or to have no monetary value.
At the request of Gold Crest Distributing owner Mel Toellner, who had helped send locally built mechanical scooters to Ghana for people with mobility disabilities, the school board voted to make the unsellable items available to Fr. Ussher.
“These are things that are no longer useful to us as a school district and were ready to be repurposed,” said Dr. Thompson.
“They served their purpose in our district and now will be very helpful in starting an educational enterprise in Ghana,” she stated.
Mr. Seifert said Mr. Toellner and his employees at Gold Crest are helping make the most of this one-time opportunity.
“They’re letting us use their facilities,” he said. “They have all the industrial equipment, the warehouse space, all the wherewithal to be able to palletize the items and load them onto a shipping container.
“We couldn’t be doing any of this without them,” Mr. Seifert stated. “Without everyone’s financial help, prayers, three months of storage in a warehouse, this could never happen.”
One body
This is one of dozens of projects the diocesan Missions Office has assisted with in dioceses with which missionary partnerships have been established.
Among them are the Diocese of Jashpur, India; the Diocese of Puntarenas, Costa Rica; and the Archdiocese of Kampala, Uganda.
The Missions Office has paid to build and enlarge churches, schools, hospitals and other facilities that directly improve people’s lives and draw them closer to God.
The Missions Office also provides money to help seminarians prepare to become priests in their homelands.
“It all goes back to us being the Universal Church,” said Mr. Seifert.
He has led people from Missouri on mission trips to several of these dioceses.
“I’ve seen people’s minds and hearts change on these trips,” said Mr. Seifert. “They always come home and want to know, ‘how can we help?’”
The people in these places want what’s best for their children, but many times, the opportunities aren’t there.
“We really do live in a land of opportunity,” said Mr. Seifert. “Sometimes, I think we don’t appreciate that as much as we should.”
Difficult but good
Fr. Ussher’s bishop, like the bishops of the other missionary priests serving here, is allowing him to serve here for a time.
The priests share their gifts as ministers and evangelizers while gaining valuable experience that they’ll eventually put to use back home.
Ghana is located on Africa’s west coast, about 5 degrees north of the Equator.
About 70 percent of the nation’s nearly 34 million people are Christian. Of those, about one-third are Catholic.
The people are devout and observant. The churches are bulging at the seams for Mass every Sunday and on holydays of obligation.
Christians and Muslims get along well, many having married into each other’s families over the generations.
Fr. Ussher’s diocese is a rural community where about 70 percent of the people are peasant farmers.
It’s a hard life, but a very good life, he said.
“Most people don’t have much, but everybody is happy,” he stated. “You live within your means and you appreciate what you get.”
In addition to the new school, Fr. Ussher has overseen the construction and staffing of a new hospital in his home diocese.
He’s convinced that education is the only clear path to economic stability, especially in a place where opportunities are very limited.
Fr. Ussher said the Catholic schools in Ghana are trying to give the young people the skills they’ll need to become leaders and entrepreneurs, while nurturing the Christian ideals that wealth and power are to be used correctly.
The shipping containers bound for Ghana will also include 50 mobility carts provided by Mobility Worldwide (giftofmobility.org), headquartered in Columbia.
Dr. Thompson is delighted that surplus items from the schools will continue to be used in helping children learn.
“All around, it’s a good collaboration between us and people who are educating children far away,” she said.
