Ya ya yo?

Ya ya yo church, family and friends?
This is Hausa for 'How are you?'"

Last we went to Evangel Hospital and participated in rounds on the paediatric ward. Most kids here seem to have illness that we give regular immunizations for at home so it was a bit of an eye opener. Plus there were many children with malaria and typhoid. We plan to started our surgical rotation this week and also plan to be involved with Women's ministries every Wednesday by attending the women's clinic and lending our nursing skills to the nurse who overseas it. The clinic predominately sees street women and widows who have very little resources and support. Most of these women are Muslins. Despite the good work the clinic is doing in supporting these women, they are low on resources. We have been encouraged to buy our stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs so that we can do assessments on the women as there are not enough at the clinic. Then once we leave we can leave these supplies behind as a donation to the clinic. We were hoping that you our supporters might be interested in helping us with this financial need.

We also recently returned from a medical/spiritual outreach to a small remote town called Kafarma 3 hours away from Jos with an mission organization called City Missions. As many of the mission organizations here work closely together, we meet a rep from City Missions who offered us to oppertunity to participate in this outreach. We left early Monday morning, camped overnight in the village, ran two days of medical clinic and spiritual counselling and then returned Tuesday night. Although the team we worked with were amazing and the villagers incredible kind and engaging, overall the spiritual needs in this village are still very great. Though many of the villagers attend church most still continue to practice their pagan traditional beliefs. As such there is much confusion about the gospel, limited understanding about Jesus or the Christian life and thus much conflict between the villagers. The resources to reach out to the town are limited and the team that went is only able to go once a year for two days of outreach. As such the town is in spiritual turmoil. Again we would ask our supporters at home to commit to praying for this village.

Other than that, we are in good health....except for being in a permanent state of sweatiness and often covered with a fine layer of dirt due the harmatten winds that blow the soil all over the place (its the dry season). Although we've only been here a short time, we feel we have already grown in our understanding of different cultures, our dependence on the Father and our appreciation for the wonderful heart and generosity of the Nigerian people.

Love Lisa and Rachel

Sannu!

Sannu church, family and friends, (this means 'hello' in Hausa)

Rachel and I have now settled into the CRC compound, been orientated to the city of Jos, met most of the missionaries and CRC staff on our compound, started to adjust to the heat (its about 32'C) and recovered from our jet lag. In our typical fashion we've also already done a once over clean on the house including the bathroom, kitchen cabinets, fridge, our rooms and the hall cupboards. It must be our role as eldest daugthers and training as nurses which comples us to obsessively clean everything! lol

Our compound is called Mountain View and is located a short walk from the Hillcrest campus (which the the center for many ministries here at the CRC compound). Hillcrest is a school (K-12) that was originally set up for missionary kids but now teaches Nigerian children as well. Many of the people living on the two CRC compounds teach at Hillcrest and send their children to the school.

So far we have learned that there are many different organizations working together here in Jos. Although it has been a bit confusing meeting so many people and trying to sort out where they all work, it is a really testament to the idea of cross demonination partnerships. It helps encourage the idea that we are all one in the body of Christ working together for a common goal. A couple examples of this team approach are...
1) both Hillcrest and the two theological seminary schools here are managed by several different demoninations in Jos and the organizations
2) although we are living on a CRC compound our three female house mates are all from Mission Africa but live here as Mission Africa does not have their own compound
3) on Friday night our house mates invited us to the City Mission weekly group meal where we meet a ton of people from around the world working and volunteering in Jos under the City Missions umbrella

Some of the highlights of the things we've seen or expereinced so far....

1) Saw a taxi packed with people and chickens who were all pressed up against the windows

2) Learned how to make home made yoghurt from a couple of ladies on our compound

3) We've had two wonderful lunches with Phil and Stephaine Beck where we got to try local Nigerian food (masi - rice padies and suma ;- grilled beef) and some Lebanese food (lots of Lebanese people here in Jos...not sure why). Oh and by the way, thanks again Melinda and Patricia for the donated nursing textbooks as they are a much needed addition to the 1970s textbooks they currently have.

4) We went to a village church planted by the CRC of Nigeria with the missionary family the Van Der Dyks. The service was almost entirely in Hausa except for the sermon which the Pastor graciously did in English because of us. :) The church building was about the size of an average North Amercian bedroom and there were about 15 people there. But the power of their voices filled the entire space and their natural rhythm and melody made instruments unnecessary. Two men gave their testimonies, one through song and then the pastor offered (with a giant grin on his face) for Rachel and I to give our testimonies through song...lol...which we politely declined as to not subject their ears to our singing.

This coming up week our orientation to Evangel hospital begins. We've also become aware of a couple of medical outreach and teaching oppertunties which are in the process of being sorted out. We will of course update you on these events in our future blogs.

Until that time, thank you again for your support and prayers.

Love,
Lisa and Rachel