{"id":1803,"date":"2022-08-19T02:26:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-19T02:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=1803"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:33:49","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:33:49","slug":"first-shot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=1803","title":{"rendered":"FIRST SHOT"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My flight to Ghana is nailed down* and finalizing that ticket has forced me into a decision I have avoided for at least 18 months:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ghana officially requires foreigners to be vaccinated against Covid 19.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m not an &#8220;anti-vaxxer&#8221;. I&#8217;m a procrastinator.\u00a0One with a measure of distrust for Big Pharma and Government.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">(And a dislike in general for being forced by others to do anything I feel is unnecessary.)<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After all, I am in much better health than at least 90 % of the people my age. And I wasn&#8217;t spending time around older and more vulnerable people during the height of the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I dragged my feet, waiting to see if the anti-vaxxers were right about the vaccines doing more harm than good. But nothing really happened. In time, Covid passed from the daily news and I figured maybe I had procrastinated long enough to avoid the whole issue.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now I have the opportunity to see Mission Resource&#8217;s work firsthand in Ghana and the price tag is the vaccine. I could take a chance that officials at the airport in Accra will not really be enforcing the rules, but I don&#8217;t want to risk being turned away.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I feel called to work with Mission Resource, called to Ghana, and called to this trip.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A number of well-intentioned friends have warned me against getting the vaccine. They say it&#8217;s too risky.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But from my perspective, getting the Covid vaccine is hardly the riskiest thing I have done in obedience to God&#8217;s call on my life.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/20220818_112518_HDR-4-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"4640\" height=\"3480\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">_____________<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">* I leave a week from Monday!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My flight to Ghana is nailed down* and finalizing that ticket has forced me into a decision I have avoided for at least 18 months:\u00a0 Ghana officially requires foreigners to be vaccinated against Covid 19.\u00a0 I&#8217;m not an &#8220;anti-vaxxer&#8221;. I&#8217;m a procrastinator.\u00a0One with a measure of distrust for Big Pharma and Government.\u00a0 (And a dislike [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1804,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1803"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1805,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1803\/revisions\/1805"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}