SCITUATE -- On a hot late June day, a priest, a seminarian, two high schoolers, and an incoming college freshman from Scituate drove to the edge of a pond in a remote part of northern Ghana.

They had heard they were going to visit the famed Paga Crocodile Pond. Shane Ryan, a rising senior at Scituate High School, expected the crocodiles to be in captivity. They were not. At the sound of a whistle, a "beast of a crocodile" emerged from the water. The missionaries were allowed to take pictures and even pet the wild animal.

"It was rough," Shane recalled. "I definitely never touched a crocodile before, especially one that didn't have tape around its mouth."

The crocodiles were fed live chickens, snatching them in their powerful jaws.

"I didn't want anything to do with these things," said John Manning, a seminarian at St. John's Seminary in Brighton.

But, he said, "I registered that this is probably the only time I'll ever do something like this. I was grateful that this was another unique opportunity that I had."

The missionaries were in Ghana to visit St. Veronica Parish in the village of Kandiga, the sister church of St. Mary of the Nativity Parish in Scituate. Father Matthew Conley, pastor of St. Mary's, first visited Kandiga on a three-week mission trip in 2011.

When visiting Ghana for the fourth time from June 21-30, he planned to go alone. Three young men from his parish -- Paul McCullough, a rising senior at Scituate High School; Theodore Hare, a rising freshman at Assumption University; and Shane -- asked to come along. The Catholic Community Fund provided a grant to send them to Ghana with Father Conley, who was skeptical of their desire to come.

"I'm very proud of how they handled it, how they handled the experience, how they dealt with each thing day by day," he said. "They very rarely complained, if ever."

The four missionaries who accompanied Father Conley got to see daily life in Kandiga. They visited St. Veronica, a local school and orphanage, attended village celebrations, and met with priests and laypeople, including the village chief.

"These people really don't have what I have, but they were some of the most happy people I had ever met in my life," Shane said. "They were all very grateful for what they had, and they didn't take anything for granted."

When he first got there, he said, he and his fellow missionaries were outsiders. The next day, they were brothers. Many of the villagers, especially the children, were afraid of them because they had never seen white people before.

"Then they wholeheartedly embraced us, and with great joy and acceptance," Manning said.

Catholics are a minority in Ghana, making up 10 percent of the population. What they lack in numbers, they make up for with strong faith, even though the sacraments are hard to come by in poorer and more remote communities. The Kandiga area is home to Catholics, Protestants, and Muslims. Men in the village work on farms or do manual labor, while women care for the children. Most villagers live in mud huts. Electricity, running water, and air conditioning are luxuries. At the school the missionaries visited, students were packed into small, hot, crowded classrooms.

"We were in the room for maybe like half an hour, and we were starting to sweat," Shane said. "But those kids have to go in there and sit there in that cramped room and learn and study every single day."

When the visitors from Scituate arrived, several students offered their desks to them.

"They were so happy to show us what their school was like and how they learned," Shane said.

Conditions at the orphanage were grim. The children, including infants, were thin, dirty, and covered in fat flies.

"They did their best to uphold good hygiene with the kids," Manning said of the orphanage staff, "but it's really, really challenging."

Nevertheless, the orphans were "no less happy or joyful than any little boy or girl."

When they first entered Kandiga, the missionaries were welcomed with a fete in their honor. They received two live guinea fowls, which would be cooked for the party, and freshly laid eggs. At the celebration, Hare held one of the fowls up by the legs. Everyone was cheering and dancing.

"I was glad to have that moment," he said.

The missionaries got to watch Ghana play in the World Cup while eating homemade food with local priests and seminarians. In Ghana, Catholic priests are highly respected in the community, even by non-Christians. Spots in seminaries are highly competitive. Every town has its own dialect and priests must be fluent in several to communicate. When not celebrating Mass, priests wear the same clothes as laypeople, but are so well-known that they are recognized wherever they go. Father Lazarus, St. Veronica's Parish priest and a friend of Father Conley's, invited the missionaries to his home for lunch.

"It was as authentic as it gets, having lunch with a Ghanaian family, and it was very interesting," Shane said.

Shane was the most adventurous eater of the group. He dined on tilapia, a stew called tuo zaafi, and fufu, a pillowy dish of mashed cassava that is Ghana's national dish. Father Conley described it as having the consistency of Play-Doh. The missionaries stumbled on a hotel where they were served Ghanaian-style pizza.

Every day, Father Conley celebrated Mass in the hostel they were staying in.

"Those intimate settings can be very powerful," he said. "You really truly feel like a missionary when you're celebrating Mass with very limited means."

He received a hand-sewn chasuble as a gift from the village. Another gift appeared when he was celebrating Sunday Mass at St. Veronica -- a live sheep, reluctantly dragged down the aisle on a leash. In villages like Kandiga, a sheep or goat is the most valuable gift one can receive. The sheep was later given back to the village and served at a great feast.

"They were willing to selflessly give us their own food as a thank you for coming," Shane said.

The missionaries witnessed funeral celebrations for a local matriarch. Ghanaian funerals are grand, energetic processions to the church and to the cemetery, with much singing and hundreds of participants.

"They're very charismatic," Manning said.

Even the poorest villagers give money to the family of the deceased. No one cries until after the body is buried.

"It's more of a celebration of life," Paul said. "There's a lot of singing and dancing."

Hare returned to Scituate with a bracelet made of shells, which he purchased from a local artisan. He also brought back a new perspective on life.

"The things we take for granted here, even if it's simple, just like a Mass, a daily Mass," he said. "They don't have access to that."

On the last day of their trip, the missionaries flew into the capital city of Accra during a heavy rainstorm. Looking at the floods, Shane thought of the people back in Kandiga, and how many of their homes don't have roofs or ceilings. Paul thought of the hundreds of children who shared a single deflated soccer ball, and loved to play with it all the same.

"We are truly blessed, especially living in Scituate, Massachusetts," he said.

Father Conley said the young people who came to Ghana with him did something few people in Scituate have done or will ever do. The experience is something that will connect them for the rest of their lives.

"I hope they realize how proud I am as their pastor, but also how our parish is very proud of them having done this as a witness, and representatives of our parish community," he said.