The Second Best Day of my Life 5.07.08

And it all happened in 90 minutes.

but first, at least a few words about the last 10 days or so. Two Mondays ago: visited the Mashiah foundation and their AIDS ministry. went to the ladies weekly devotional. 60 HIV+ women (no men) meeting under a huge center-pole tarp, and one white man (Hausa: "ba-too-ray") sitting off in the background, watching and listening to them praise our Lord. They were singing beautiful African songs and hymns in Hausa--dancing joyfully and beating several drums. Musically alone, it was great! Later I moved into their gracious circle and listened to a lesson; they gave their testimonies and shared advice and stories. Truly amazing, humbling stuff. Beyond description, as is so much of what happens here.

Tues/Wed. of last week: The trip to Makurdi (pics--called "snaps" here--at left) was incredible. About 3+ hour drive, partly through some of the most beautiful mountains and most lush countryside I have ever seen. 24 boys at the orphanage and a small staff. this entire ministry costs only about $1,000 per month to run and currently has no sponsors for its operations, staff, etc. They have a well that all the kids draw from each night, putting water in big, heavy buckets and then walking back about 70 yards to a concrete stall where they shower. The used water simply runs out the back of the stall through a big hole in that wall the leads directly to the ground outside. no soap. no privacy. But they are very happy to have it.

The amazing female missionaries who traveled with our team did great crafts and devotionals and book reading, etc. And it was inspiring to see them exercise their gifts. We all made it through the night, but let me just say it was a tad toasty down south, off the plateau of Jos. But it was also the first place I saw TV in almost two months: a big (UEFA?) soccer game between Manchester United and Barcelona. The next morning we walked next door to the boys compound and they were already up and singing worship songs at 5:30am--a normal part of their day. At around 5:55am, we did the third of a three part lesson from James. BTW, when you ask these kids a question, they stand up before they give you an answer--always.

Got some good work done on the septic system, too. The previous night they ate their dinner (rice in bowls--no utensils available) and did a devotional in the dark of their courtyard. we had a lantern and flashlights, which made it kinda fun, and talked about the fact that God never changes. Then we stopped in Lafia on the way home at a new care center there which was to receive their first eight orphans this week. they had just received new mattresses and bedding, and bunk beds frames were on the way, but no electricity there, no transportation for the family and no water in the house, which had just been burglarized a week ago. Pray for the mom of the house, who with three kids of her own was about to take on eight more with no help other than her husband (stop snickering, ladies:).

Thursday last week: Hammered the TH senior boys (and myself) on Thursday with Proverbs Sunday after church. Timothy started us off with amazing singing and guitar playing! Wish you could have experienced it. Their school strike is finally over after two months off, so they are excited about going back. We have been pulling no punches in this Proverbs study, for any of us, and i think it has hit all of us b/t the eyes pretty well--in a good way. I am so impressed with the toughness and also sensitivity of these guys, and they have been very gracious and open toward what i am trying to say and my often very candid language in the process of doing it! Plus i now know who Ronaldo (soccer) is, so that has helped my credibility a bit. :)

Sunday after church was a donation ceremony for severely handicapped people. Beautiful Gate is a ministry which builds and donates wheelchairs to those in need of all faiths. three of the four there on Sunday were Muslim. The chairs are more like very large tricycles with big seats and pedals welded up top as part of the handlebars, since these people cannot use their legs. They pedal and steer with their hands. They were SO EXCITED to get these things--you cannot imagine the looks on their faces.

Here's the part you will have trouble grasping: the magnitude of their crippled-ness and the fact that some of these men have literally been dragging themselves around on the ground for decades. I have never, ever seen men this badly crippled. Amazing to watch them pull and slowly maneuver their deformed legs and feet and selves and climb into these new chairs. they used no crutches--not some other chair--no other aid at all--ever. Some use sandals on their hands, or wooden blocks, to help "walk," some use rubber pads on their knees to keep from tearing themselves up as they move around town on shattered concrete and asphalt and sand and peddles and rocks and debris. no social service help here. No charity or organized aid of any kind. No city or government subsidies. some of these men were in this shape b/c of polio--it's Africa..... These are hundreds if not thousands of these folks who need chairs, which cost about $125 each and literally change lives while also serving as a great testimony.

But today, Wednesday, was the second best day of my life (after Feb 6, 1977). I went to one of the two blind towns served by City Ministries here--just got back a little while ago as i write the draft of this entry. Gotta admit i was pretty apprehensive about being able to deal with what I suspected i would see there at Bauchi Road. Worried about getting overwhelmed emotionally or physically, b/c things get a bit intense here at times, and I'm not as tough as I used to be! These towns are what they are named, along with leprosy and crippling poverty and horrific living conditions. Take the worst thing you have probably ever seen and then multiply it a few times over and then you are starting to get close....Yet tons of joyful Nigerian children pressed up and just wanted to hold my hand, hug my legs, play with my watch, pinch my white skin and pull the hair on my arms.

And all this is going on while I am talking with the blind secretary of this "village" in Jos, via translator. then the same thing a few moments later with the blind chief of the village of perhaps of few hundred people in this neighborhood, in this part of Jos. everything goes through him. these men were kind and gracious and appreciative and welcoming, and they quoted scripture to me. our driver, the head of this ministry, needed to stay with our van for safety reasons, so you can perhaps picture the part of town we are in. They normally don't allow many pictures to be taken, but with the help of Joseph, my guide and translator and a leader of this ministry outreach and others, i was able to take about 26 "snaps," which i will take back to the U.S. and show you in about 6 weeks.

Picture mud brick walls with frayed fabric for doors. Picture broken concrete and sand and rocks and pebbles and trash and filth and animal and human excrement and thousands of flies and interesting odors and not a non-Nigerian anywhere in sight as you head into dark hallways and meet blind, much older, Islamic husbands with six arranged wives and lots of kids. Imagine meeting a beautiful woman who wants you to meet her husband. So she leads you to a dark, dank hallway, a place where you can't believe anyone could even exist, filled with holes in the roofing and spider webs and rotting boards and disintegrating plaster, and out steps a stooped-over, old blind man with virtually no teeth left who is at least 40 years older than she.

Picture an entire home that is one room--much smaller than your bathroom in your own home (not your master bath--just the regular ones). no plumbing. no water from the community faucet (broken). No electricity. Refuse everywhere. (No education, obviously) Narrow little concrete walkways, three feet wide with a dozens curtains blowing out into the passageway, each piece of fabric being an entire home. A grown man sitting on his doorstep, washing his feet with a little orange, plastic tea "kettle", filled with water he got from somewhere else. People living on far, far less than a dollar a day. A grandmother, holding her 4 year old grandson in her arms, a boy deathly sick and who might not be alive in a week or two.

Yet joyful, smiling people--not feeling in any way sorry for themselves, glad for the medical help brought by the ministry team, comprised mainly of several nurses dispensing all sorts of care as people came 'round. imagine yourself surrounded by nothing but concrete (and nothing green or growing within two miles of where you stand) with barely enough room to turn around, and suddenly facing eight sheep and a goat and a bunch of chickens and their chicks, as you try not to squash them underfoot, and a turkey and then a big cow pokes his head around the corner of a building at the end of a passageway that looks like a dead end. Imagine rooms that hang over the end of a bank of a river that runs through this part of town, and then picture a river that has more debris and trash along it in 500 yards than you would see over 500 miles in the U.S. Imagine listening to women speak at length in Hausa and then hearing Joseph explain that these ladies are simply asking for help with part of their back wall--pieces of rusted, torn corrugated roofing that is all that is keeping their young children from falling, or more accurately, being swept, 50 feet below into this "river." Imagine that all these passageways and wooden planks which I weren't even sure would hold my steps, are all sloped downhill from the main street, and they all become violent currents of water, sewage, trash, etc. whenever it rains even a little bit.

You can just feel the disease creeping about as you move through the place and as you shake and hold every hand and spend time with all the kids. (Remember, this is the land of little or no "paper.") Yet imagine the sound of laughter and the beauty of white teeth against dark skin. Imagine woman braiding other women's hair, and sharing their happiness over your visit, and their cooking for the night (outside pot, over firewood), and thankful for the medicine and advice, and imagine little kids squealing with delight as you take their picture. and little girls simply wanting to hold your hand as you move through their little part of the neighborhood. And in the midst of all that, imagine yourself feeling INCREDIBLY fortunate and blessed and thankful that you get to see it, understand it, experience it in a small way and witness and feel firsthand what God is doing in this really wretched environment. He is there--in the work of Benjamin and Jummai and Joseph and Ladi and Vicki and John. Muslims are secretly (so they won't be thrown out of their families and even these living conditions) accepting Christ. Lives are being touched. And in that these people in our team served the very least of mankind, we know from scripture that their aid was as if directly to Christ Himself, and this is probably where He would be hanging out in He was in Jos in physical form. i got to see it all, and I get to benefit from a perspective that I'll never forget.

Please come here or somewhere like it if you ever have even the remotest chance. I promise you that it is not possible to do so and then come back to the U.S. and say, "Well, that was a waste of time." I'm convinced that the best days of our lives are outside of our comfort zone. Appreciate being an american and all the huge benefits and comforts it brings, but don't get trapped by all the crud of the western world, because it is so costly in terms of the stuff you will miss.

and in the utter simplicity of that 90 minutes in blind town, and of the day, and the help of my colleagues as i stood ignorantly by, you could feel God and see His truth--so much light, inexplicably, in the midst of incredible spiritual and physical darkness. you can feel the oppression of Islam. you see the cycles in which days revolve and people are mired but yet you are honored to be spending time with the least and last of this society, knowing these are the folks God has His eye on in a mighty way. the time was raw and real and all boiled down. it was life and death and the daily struggle for survival to see the sun rise again the next hopeful, cool morning. they wasn't a lot of fretting by the inhabitants of blind town. objectives were clear. life is very complicated yet equally simple. and the things that really matter to all of us, especially once we strip away our western baggage, have long been understood with a clear eye by the christian women and men who live in this place and have nothing but each other--and a God they worship perhaps more purely than we ever will.

so it was and always will be a day that i can never forget and shall always cherish. as i have many times heard and now often experienced, when you go to the mission field to work with people, they end up helping you more than you can ever help them.