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.