First Thought

Steve B:

The great paradox of overwhelming numbers of people yet very empty spaces. Exhausted resources with dry pastureland and declining forests but incredibly motivated people trying to get ahead. The age old conflict between the migrating pastoral peoples and the farmers who are fixed in location. Christ’s spirit is very obvious in so many of the brothers and sisters in Christ that we have met. I sense an overall spirit of humility that we can learn a lot from.

One cute story……I was sitting among a group of the resident children who board on site and talking with several of the older boys….I felt three of the little ones stroking the top of my arm and the back of my leg. When I looked at them they smiled shyly and said through one of the older boys that they just wanted to see if the white would come off.

Pat Lewis:

Great to be here after all the planning and waiting. So many new sights and smells to take in. Our systems are on overload for a few days. I feel so fortunate to be a part of God’s plan here. We have a lot to be thankful for that we take for granted. It is amazing the hard work of the people and their good attitude. They make it easy for us to try and do as much as we can to help them, and show God’s love to them. They are such loving people.

Jon Picard

Very Humbling. When I first visited the Philippines, I had the same impression. We as Americans have so much. We are blessed beyond what any of us deserves, but with the blessing comes the responsibility to give back. Trips like this serve to remind me of that which I should already know, but too easily forget. The people are so very friendly and such hard workers.. Particularly the women. They carry all the heavy loads…I’m serious..

Mike Babst

I am surprise of how much being here reminds me of the mission trips to Chile. Pastor Mike told us to expect sensory overload and that is a true description of what we are experiencing. The temp. Is very hot and we are learning to pace ourselves. It is so good to be here with Phyllis and Devin , Bridget, Jack and Ben. The Nigerian children are full of life, like kids anywhere, but have so little. I feel so blessed to be here!

Pat Raymond

I am so taken with the spirit of humility and servant hood of the people. I have a long way to go to measure up to these people. The children are beautiful and everyone is so friendly. The differences are mind boggling. There is so much to process.

Steve Raymond

My first impression is just the reality that I am in Africa, an opportunity that the Lord has given us. After a long flight, we have arrived in the crowded city where we are staying, then into a van and out to the Hope Academy in a rural area. The school is just re-starting after the holidays and its fun to see the excitement of the children. It’s great to see Phyllis and the Myers family again, and we have two more people from Pennsylvania. I am moving slowly with a bout of gout, but am confident the Lord will use me in spite of it. Am very much looking forward to whatever the rest of our time brings.

The Lord Sustains

I am going to learn not to say “I can’t,” I believe.

I wouldn’t have believed that I could do an all day fast with no food or water at all day after day. I have joined our local church in fasting this week each day until 5, going to a prayer meeting from 5 to 6, and then eating one meal at 6:30 or 7. The first two days I had some water, because I had been many days with diarrhea, (which stopped completely). Since Tuesday I have endured the heat and all without water. I have been joyful, even soft! The prayer meetings have been special times. Tuesday night I was invited to lead, and I really enjoyed it. I know I was difficult to understand for some of the attendants, but pray the Holy Spirit was speaking. The way here is to flow in and out of songs and prayers, and I don’t know that many songs, but the congregation helped me. Although many in the congregation joined in fasting, there have been probably only 10 adults in the prayer meetings, and about 15 children. They meetings were widely varied, from soft and repentant to loud and authoritative. I was thinking about it today, and since we arrived on December 13^th, 29 days ago, we have attended church 16 days. We have been invited to join the church leadership. Devin has been invited to handle the finances, and I have been appointed over the children’s Sunday school. Pray that God will guide us!

Yesterday we went to the market at about 9 a.m. and returned home at 4:30, just in time to wash my face and walk over the 40 feet to the church and join in the prayer meeting/walk in continuance of the fast. We sang and prayed for about 20 minutes together and then broke into two teams. We walked to some nearby church members’ homes and prayed with them. It was wonderful to be welcomed as a friend into their evening chores and resting. One man, a successful police agent, has a home in the village. It is part of a complex, with 6 connected houses on each side of a covered corridor. Parked in the corridor, which was lighted only by the sun at each end, was a motorcycle, and several small children were playing around. He had a cloth over his entry and an actual wooden door. The inside was dark, as he had a thick cloth over the window and evening was approaching, but there was enough light to see. The four of us slipped off our shoes and entered the plastered, cinder block room, which was about 7 x 7. He had two couches and a very nice stereo. A flat plastic, not as thick as linoleum, covered the majority of the smooth cement floor. His sleeping mat was propped against one wall. He is recently married and has a new son. He graciously turned his stand fan toward us and welcomed us in with many “you are welcomes.” We chatted about the fast for a few minutes and our pastor told him he was missed, and then we prayed together. We prayed thanksgiving and blessings over the new year. Then we walked out together. He mentioned that now that he has a child, he is finding that his work is too much (he works every other 12 hours, 7 days a week, as a communications agent for the police force in Lokoja). He is loving being a daddy!

We prayed with a woman and her daughter. She explained that she had been involved in the fasting, but had been farming all day and couldn’t join the meetings. As we left her house, a Muslim woman who was sitting in the courtyard under a big cashew tree, sorting out rice, called US over to ASK for prayer. Wow. She knows Pastor John from the clinic and his role as administrator there. What a blessing! Pastor John prayed for her, and as he did, the Lord gave me a picture of her in my mind joyfully, but with difficulty, stacking big blocks. There was as sense that God was smiling on her work and that she was completing heavy tasks with joy. However, she kept building and the stacks would fall over. She wasn’t much affected, but she would begin again and again. I related this to her and she got a huge smile of recognition. I told her God wanted her to know she needs to start her good works on a solid foundation, and that is on Jesus Christ. Pastor John knelt down and explained the Holy Spirit, and that He had given me a word for her, since I am His child and we receive the Holy Spirit when we accept Jesus. The look of recognition of truth was washing all over her face. She was so thankful to receive our prayers in Jesus’ name.

A few more stops, many more smiles and handshakes along the way, and we walked home by 6:45 to a wonderful meal prepared for us by Pastor Bassey. I tell you, a cup of cold water never tasted so good! Even without it, even before the thought of it, I was refreshed and sustained by the blessed power of Jesus in my life to bring light to others. I’ll admit a love for fasting. Perhaps because I tend to be strong willed and self focused, it is a necessary discipline for me ahead of some others. It makes me so much more aware of my weakness, my inability to accomplish valuable, lasting things on my own strength, and aware of the tip of the iceberg of the gifts available to us who would believe and call on the name of Jesus!

Pictures:

Slideshow

Phyllis Sorter just sent in 25 pictures on a CD to me from Seattle (when she came) and I just could not find any way to put a slide-show on the blog (without having to completely restart it)! So I created this little video for the blog.

~Silas Abbott

We drove in through this:

Click to view larger

Venturing Out

Wow! Today Ben and I joined Devin and Jack and our security officer, Mustafa, for a trip to Etiose. Thanks to our generous supporters, we drove along in the mission’s “fairly used” Toyota Tundra pickup we purchased yesterday. It has AC. And shocks. Ahhhhh. Thank you Lord, and thank you, generous supporters. We owned it 10 minutes before we loaded the back with cement to transport to Etiose.
Anyway… The drive to Etiose is quite interesting! It is an expressway, which means it is a divided highway, but you can choose which side of the divided highway you want to drive on. On either side, you drive on the right as we are used to. Some stretches of road are in far better condition on one side than the other, and it is somewhat easy to predict when you would benefit from the crossover because of the extended red tracks from the red soil entering the roadway. The scenery was beautiful, with ancient gray rock piles as hills and abundant green. The trees were much taller and in many stretches the grass grew right up to the roadway 8 or 10 feet high.
We drove through Okene, where two weeks ago there was a day of rioting, which apparently was just a party got out of hand. Buildings were burned out on both sides of the main road through town. Etiose is two states away, and before we entered Edo state, there was a “government” team of men who waved arms and put several 8 foot long 4x4 boards pierced through with 10 penny nails in the road to stop our truck. They pulled us off the side of the road and then put the nail boards under our front and rear tires and let the traffic resume. Road safety explained we needed to buy a bunch of registrations, and, so we visited with them for a while and tried to explain that we were only carrying money for the school for the Nigerian children. If we gave them our money, the workers at the school would not be able to continue and have the building complete by the time school resumes on the 11th. No matter, we had to part with about $200, which sounds much more dramatic if I report that it was 30,000 Naira. This came down from the 40,000 they originally said we would need to pay. If you don’t have money to pay, you just have to turn around. We received a big pack of stickers and forms we now can present all over Nigeria – which apparently may not actually cover road safety… Clement looked at out packet and let us know we didn’t have 3 of the stickers and authorizations. We stopped and talked with the men on the road back and they assured us they just weren’t out for 2010 yet, but we can come back at the end of January and they will provide them at no charge. Hmmm
At the turnoff for the Etiose school, there was a cassava mill. Easily a hundred people were sitting under shade peeling these long cassava roots, which were stacked in tall white piles all around. We continued up a washed out dirt road to the school site. It amazes me that a camp in the middle of the bush can be so sparkling clean – especially since garbage is literally everywhere here. Using brooms that are maybe 2 feet long and made of a stiff bundle of sticks, they keep the dirt swept sparkling clean! There is a government provided solar well close to the school site, and well packed trails just the right size for one person carrying a bucket on their head stretch off into the bush. The footings for the addition for teacher housing were being dug when we arrived, and the bush was burning right up to the site, with loud crackling all around. We were greeted warmly by some weathered Muslim men and Malaam Sani, the man responsible for the connection with Phyllis and the beginnings of this school which began in fall and has 150 children registered. One man got up of his bench and sat on the ground on a mat so I could have his seat.
I had so much fun with the children! They love to have their picture taken, and then to see the digital image! The little ones smiled, but the big girls gave their best serious poses. My Fulani friends here have helped me learn to count to 10 in Fufulde, so I drew out 1 through 10 in the dirt with them all huddled around and they showed my their learning and laughed and corrected me when I showed them mine! Crouched down in a huddle of their smiling faces, I guess I had a “moment” of revelation, as I realized here I am, trusted by God to represent Jesus to an unreached people group in the middle of the African bush. I am so glad God has made every step of this process so completely clear, proving His faithfulness over and over. How can I begin to show His love? How can I begin to tell them how precious they are in His eyes? Joyfully, I’ll hold those moments perhaps forever. Thanks for your part in getting us here and sustaining us in prayer. We need you, and yet in Christ, we have everything we need! Both/and. Life in Jesus is like that.

Sick on Sunday??

Don’t bother! You don’t get out of church, you don’t get privacy, and you don’t even get to stay sick!

I began the wee hours of Sunday morning with a fierce case of TD – traveler’s diarrhea - and an increasingly bad headache. I’m assuming fever since I was under multiple blankets. I stayed in my darkened room (crossing the hall to the bathroom for many trips in several hours), and church came to me. You see, church here is LOUD, with a loudspeaker outside broadcasting the service. Our Pastor told us he has heard testimonies of people passing by and hearing a message and coming to know the Lord Jesus, so it is for good reason! So, I faded in and out of the “praise the Lord” and “the end is at hand” service from the privacy of my room, in much discomfort from a close-to-migraine feeling.

Now, in case you are considering a trip to Hope Academy, let me confirm to you that it was just a bug – not something I ate, since I ate and drank exactly the same thing as the rest of my family, who enjoyed inside-the-church church. Apparently at the change of the seasons, sickness goes around in Nigeria, too! It is the COOL season now – for just under two months before the three hottest months follow.

At 12:30 or so, minutes after church, I had my first visitors. Pastor Reuben’s wife Helen and children came in to the dark and prayed for me while I lay in bed, aching to raise my head. I had heard the children sing and tried to tough it out and compliment them with hospitality of a Nigerian. They left, then Clement’s wife Blessing came in. Then she left and Mr. Chukuma came in. Devin and the boys sat down to lunch. Then Pastor John’s wife Josephine and her kids came in and prayed for me. Trying to put on a good face, I sat up. I broke out into a major sweat just after she prayed for healing. My headache left. Just like that.

I wanted to get up and shower, but Pastor Reuben came, then Pastor John, each telling me that even now, I had received my healing. Strangely, it was true. God is so good!!

Who needs to sleep away a Sunday?? I should have been more specific about my ailment, since the yucky belly tried to hang around throughout the afternoon with limited success. After all, I’m posting the word “diarrhea” on the blog – why not let all the people in my bedroom know? The headache and fever fled at the mention of HIS name! Next time I’ll not shy away. Ahh, the learning curve…