Sannu family friends and church family,

Well our time here in Nigeria is slowly starting to draw to a close. As such this will likely be our last blog. From here we will travel on to East Africa and then down to South Africa where we will meet our medical student friend Jessica. There we will have the opportunity to visit some of the refugee camps run by Doctors without Borders. But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s recap the activities of the past two weeks.

In typical Rachel and Lisa fashion we have managed to keep ourselves busy…

-we did HIV testing in ante-natal clinic at Evangel
-went one home visits with Stephanie for Spring of Life patients
-visited Open Doors with Phil (a school for special needs students)
-took Lucky to the hospital to get his stitches removed and have his post surgery two-week follow up appointment
-had a couple invitations for dinner with our various Nigerian friends and fellow missionaries
-helped out as usual at Gidan Bege women’s clinic and Blind Town outreach
-spent time with the orphan boys at Gidan Bege playing games and drawing pictures
-immunized almost 100 orphaned children in one afternoon
-donated two stethoscopes and one blood pressure cuff to the pediatric and adult ICUs at Evangel Hospital as it is often impossible to find these devices there when you need them in a hurry
-helped to run kids club at Spring of Life by teaching the children a new Sunday school song about Peter and John healing the lame man, reading and discussing the corresponding bible story together and then playing several games
-and celebrated our birthdays

Rachel’s birthday was on May 31stand mine was on June 11th. We’d like to thank everyone again for their many birthday wishes and thank our families for calling us. Hearing your voices was a blessing and we felt very much encouraged. The night before Rachel’s birthday we made waffles with our roommates and played Clue while enjoying good conversation and drinking lots of tea. Then on the actual day, as it was Sunday, we went to church and then spent a lovely day reading in our sun-soaked backyard before we cooked up a storm of homemade samosas and cinnamon buns to share with Phil and Steph. For Rachel’s birthday I learned that if you stick wax birthday candles into hot muffins you’ve just pulled out of the oven…because you’re late for church and thus don’t have time to cool the muffins down….the candles will melt into the muffins. Fortunately Rachel didn’t mind and joyously eat every last crumb. For my birthday we played some games, got Rachel a bad hair cut which we later had to fix ourselves, and I was treated to a delicious dinner Rachel made of cheesy potatoes and teriyaki vegetables (thanks again Aunty Cathy for sending us those sauces). Then for desert we shared homemade chocolate pie with our roommates over more tea and good conversation. Somewhere in between our birthdays we went out for dinner with Phil and Steph and got to try the Nigerian version of Chinese food. Not bad over all…no Ginger beef…but still delicious.

Of the above list of activities I of course would like to expand on two of them.

Gyero (pronounced gar-oh) Immunizations
Rachel, Nikki, Salome and I went to an orphanage just outside Jos called Gyero. There are just over 90 children there, girls and boys, who are divided into family groups each headed by a Nigerian couple who the children refer to as Aunty and Uncle. The orphanage is run by City Ministries and every July the boys who have been living at Gidan Bege Jos for the past year graduate from their one year transition program and are moved out to the larger Gyero campus. The children at Gyero required immunizations for tetanus and polio and so we headed out there one stormy afternoon. The experience was…well…frustrating. The children were incredibly squirmy and hyper that day. They seemed to go out of their way to scare each other about the immunizations and wind each other up. The entire affair took about 3 hours and was total chaos due to children running everywhere and pouring rain that beat against the tin roofs with such severity that it was almost impossible to hear each other speak. We were exhausted afterwards but happy that we had somehow in the chaos managed to vaccinate all but one young man who was missing in action…probably hiding from us. Lol

Blind Town
We went to a different Blind Town this past week for outreach. In our previous blogs we had described Blind Town as stepping back into biblical history with its tiny mud brick houses and narrow passages ways. But this new blind town was on the other side of Jos and was something entirely different. This was the slums. Broken down houses, treacherous crumbling stairways, the distinct smell of untreated sewage and a dirty shallow river full of garbage snaking through it all in which several children were swimming and bathing. It was shocking. You see stuff like that on TV, in pictures and movies but to see such deplorable living conditions with our own eyes….to stand there while dozens of children grab at your hands with huge smiles and hope-filled eyes…to watch women scrub laundry in vain in the foul smelling water…well how does one even begin to describe what that feels like? We stayed for about two hours visiting various houses, assessing everything from mysterious skin conditions to cataracts and handing out medications where we could. Then with great reluctance we had to leave as the storm clouds crowded overhead and it begun to rain.

To end this blog, we would like to share with you an article that was written by a lovely Irish missionary named Jean Garland who has lived in Nigeria for many years. I wrote early about Jean and the eloquent, inspiring way in which she spoke of women in Africa during the ECWA conference at which we volunteered. The article she wrote has been posted on the right hand side of our blog site and we would encourage you to take the time to read it…its well worth it.

We’d also like to share an important prayer request with you. The prostitute outreach we were involved in suffered a tragedy this past week. Mama Love, the women on whom the entire ministry was built, suddenly past away due to heart complications. We have had the opportunity speak with Meredith, the young American women who worked with Mama Love and first introduced us to the ministry and have been able to discuss the repercussions of this event. As the brothel outreach was run almost singled handedly by Mama Love, the ministry’s future is uncertain. So we ask that our church family at home would pray for the friends, family and colleges of Mama Love, for the future of the ministry and for the prostitutes with whom she build some many relationships and who came to trust her only after so many hundreds of hours spent showing them love and compassion.

Until we see you again,

Love Lisa and Rachel