Booyor’s BLOGgh!

So what has been happening here…
Well to start with the weather, it hasn’t been too hot yet. MB said it should be the hot season but it is still the cold season and the Harmattan (dust that blows down here all the way from the Sahara Desert) is thick especially in the morning and late afternoon. It’s cool enough in the morning and evenings that I’ll wear a sweater. The Nigeria’s always look so surprised when I do because they think that all of America is cold. When I try to explain to them that I come from a HOT part of America they don’t really understand! I’m guessing they just think I’m crazy! But MB said that I will see 3 seasons while I’m here because the cold season has hung on so long. And then the hot season will come and then in April the rains will comes.

What has been going on. Well I worked with the VBS just monday and tuesday last week. J was the director for a retreat this last weekend and we had a LOT of things to prepare for that. The weekend retreat they try to do about 4 or 5 times a year. The whole point of Mashiah Foundation is to help AIDS victums. Every woman in the Women of Hope group that does the quilting is HIV positive and it is a requirement to have HIV to be in the Women of Hope group. In the past 2 years or so they have been seeing a new need. A need for AIDS prevention because if they don’t get to the young people before they get AIDS then in 10 years those youth will be in there Clinic and Women of Hope Program. So this weekend retreat started about a year ago. It’s called Precious Jewels for the girls and Treasure Seekers for the boys. This weekend was the first time they did it with both girls and guys. The theme of the weekend is Sexual Purity in God’s Eye’s. Because even if these students have been going to church their whole lives sexual purity is enver discussed. So what Mashiah foundation is attempting to do is instill purity values in the youth. Right now many young Christians don’t even think that it is wrong to have sex before marriage. What happens is a young girl will need money for school (which is NOT free here and even at the cost is not a good education) and food and just living expenses, and so a man who can make money will ask her to be his girlfriend and will pay for things for her and she feels obligated and pressured to sleep with him. It’s not prostitution they aren’t explicitly selling their bodies but they need the money to live! In this culture a woman has no value until she is married and has children. So it is very hard for a woman to find a job. So anyway the weekend is hopefully to help the youth understand God’s will for sexual purity and all the risks that go with being sexually active. They are free to ask as many and whatever kind of questions they want. Unlike America the Nigerians are not embarassed to ask questions. The weekend went well as far as the Nigerians were concerned. However, for J and I (structured, organized, Americans) it was a mess! But all the students seemed to really like it.

What I will be doing. MB and I sat down and talked about my trip this week. She ask me what I wanted to do here, and I said just help. She said that is good but she wants me to have a goal in mind and a project that I’m working on so that when I leave I feel like I’ve accomplished something and that in 5 years it is still making a difference. So what they have seen so far with the Weekend Retreats is that it is a mountain top high, they all commit themselves to be abstinent until marriage, and then they go home still in their old ways. So what J and I are really going to be working on while I’m here is #1: Creating a Manual for the Retreat weekend so that we can teach Nigerians to run it #2: Creating a 12-week Follow-Up Discipleship program to come after the retreat. The dicipleship group will meet once a week and will be 3 hours long. The first hour will be a planned specific Bible Study lesson, the second hour will be literacy, and the third will be a craft. The Bible Study’s will be 12 specific topics and lessons that J and I will plan out and write to really give the students some core Christian values and teach them how to grow in Christ so that they can continue their walk after the dicipleship is over. For the literacy hour, many Nigerians, whether educated or uneducated, do not know how to read and do simple math. So we will have an evaluation at the beginning and help each student further their skills from wherever they stand. Then the third hour, the craft, we want to teach them how to make items they can sell here so that they do not have to depend on others for money. The craft will be something marketable to the Nigerians and something they can get supplies for on their own. So J and I will be creating that program so that it can been run by Nigerians as well. And hopefully will continue to work for many years.

How I am doing. Well, life isn’t easy over here. I pretty much hit the ground running as soon as I got here and it deffinately showed this weekend. On Friday the first day of the camp I feel asleep in J’s office for a few hours. So instead of sleeping at Bezer home, will all the students, where I would be uncomfortable and up very early I went home with Mary Beth. Then I was okay on Saturday until I was setting up for the banquet and I started to get a Migrane. So saturday night I was pretty miserable and I slept at MB’s again. Then on Sunday morning Bayo, MB’s Husband, was supposed to preach for the sunday morning service at the camp and there was no NEPA (electricy) so at 10am when the service was supposed to begin he was still heating up water on the gas stove for his bucket bath. MB had said that she thought I should stay home because I had been so tired but I slept until 9:30 and then I didn’t really want to just sit at her house so I did end up going to the service, just very late. My neck is still soar today from my migrane on saturday so it was a pretty bad one. Anyway I’m doing okay. Somedays I’m okay here and others I just want to come home. I keep on having dreams about coming home and about being home so that makes it hard when I wake up and am still in Nigeria. But I just keep telling God that he’s going to have to give me a good attitude and make me want to be here, because I really miss home and A and everyone. I don’t know if he told you be we had a phone date on Sunday night. Well, 9pm my time but 1pm your time. It was really nice to get to talk to him but it made me sad hearing all the stuff I’m missing. I love you guys!!! I’ve been showing everybody the pictures I brought!!! They like seeing me and my family.

Some of the strange things about living in Nigeria. Well for starters, I did my laundry for the first time yesterday. 3 buckets of clothes. I hand washed all of them. Washing then rinsing twice, then rung out and hung on the clothes line. It took me about 2 1/2 hours to do it all. I thought that was pretty good for my first time. Last night we didn’t have NEPA. So I was using a lantern to do things. When there’s no NEPA we use lanterns and candles. It came on this morning for a little bit enough to heat up water for showers but it’s been off most the day. We just keep praying that it will come back on because it’s very hard when it gets dark at 7 to work past then. Also just a few word differences
You don’t walk places you trek places.
It’s not soda it’s mineral.
Pants are trousers
Underwear are pants.
So you don’t want to be talking about your pants around the Nigerian’s cause they’ll think you’re a little crazy. So anyway, it’s not so bad here. It still kinda feels like I’m playing house. You know I wash the dishes and we cook and there’s no mom. It’s funny but it’s not so bad. And we’re living the HIGH life here. So anyway I have MUCH to be greatful for at home.

Here is an update from our sister in Nigeria:

Hey Everyone!

Just wanted to let you know what’s kinda going on.
Yesterday, Saturday, was a very full day. J, the other young American m here and is my roommate(literally), and I went to Bezer Home, which is the home where the women and children of Mashiah Foundation stay in the complex, at about 10. J has a Bible study with a few young Nigerian girls on Saturday morning. We just did an art project yesterday. Most of the girls don’t speak very good English, their native language is Hausa. And then J did a reading lesson with a few of them and I went down and played with some of the kids. After we went back to the apartment and ate. Then M B was supposed to pick us up to go shopping for Nigerian clothes for us. But one woman who works at Bezer home had fallen that morning and hurt her ankle so we had to go check on her. She lives in the slums of Jos. It calls Totanwatta (I’m not sure on the spelling) and M B says she usually doesn’t take people there that soon because it is so sad! It was just like the pictures off the adopt a child comercials and the magazines. The childern were so sad looking and they would follow us around because they do not often see white people and white women are even rarer.
After getting to the woman’s house we determined that her ankle was just sprained so after icing it and wrapping it we were off to the market. There were SOOO many people there it’s a lot like Chinatown to me… I liked it. I bought 3 pieces of fabric for dresses and I spent about 2850 naira (which is roughly $25) and J got 2 pieces. J already has 3 dresses but she will be here for MUCH longer than I will. Anyway we dropped them off at the seemstress and she said they should be ready by Thursday. I am very excited about that. Today J and I went to an Assemblies of God Church here. There are a LOT of churches here. And the music was good and the people were lively but they had a special speaker and he YELLED his whole sermon, it was mostly rambling and it was about 2 hours long. But it’s not the normal pastor so I may go back there. I’m not sure yet. Anyway J and I went and check on that woman again today and she is doing better.

Well tomorrow (Feb 26) I start with the vacation Bible school and we will see how that goes.

Amidst all of the hard-hitting news coverage (like the girl who has been hiccuping for 3 weeks), this will also be a place for friends and family members to get updates from my sister-in-law until she gets back in the country. She is going to Nigeria to work with an orphanage. We had a prayer night to send her off at my in-laws’ place. She leaves on Wednesday morning.
She asks that people pray for:

• For her to have courage while she puts her trust in God and people who she has not met before.
• Safety. The place where she is going to stay got robbed at gunpoint recently.
• How to cook, especially in a place she hasn’t been before
• Her health. She’s been sick for a while and has just recently been feeling better.
• That Jesus would be honored in all of her interactions with people that she encounters.