July 17, 2003
FSM 333 CM/FM
11/98
Copyright © 1998 by The Family
From Simon and Joan, and Paul and Maria
Nigeria
(From Simon and Joan:) Our wonderful Jesus has been taking care of us and seeing us through every difficulty, as it wasn't an easy road coming to Nigeria. Right from the start, the Enemy fought us to the core, knowing that we were going to invade his territory. He tried to foil all our plans, but the Lord got the victory in the end. Looking back, we can see that "if God be for us, who can be against us?"
Simon and I (Joan) have been in Nigeria for the last year and two months. Paul and Maria and their seven children came eight months ago. Simon and I came from India, where Simon (the only Nigerian disciple in the Family at the time) had been serving the Lord for the last fifteen years of his life. He first met the Family as an engineering student in India, got saved and decided to give his life to the Lord.
When the Charter came out, we were staying in a big combo Home. Everybody in the Home was asked to pray and hear from the Lord about what they were going to do. When we prayed, the Lord showed us to go to Africa, and that our ministry would be winning disciples, giving out the Words of David, and establishing the work there.
We were hit with mixed emotions about this revelation. On one hand we were really excited, but at the same time we were frightened of what lay ahead. We hadn't been on outreach or fundraising in a mighty long time; our ministries had been childcare, office work and kitchen.—And to top it off, we didn't even have home support! How in the world would we raise the funds to go? Our faith was so weak that we tried to hang on to our combo situation until everything started crumbling under our feet. Everyone in the Home was working out their plan and we were sticking our toes in the water to see how cold it was before attempting to jump in.
When our Home could not take our indecision any more, we were asked to let them know what our plan was and how we wanted to carry it out. At this point, we became more desperate and kept taking the matter to the Lord. The Lord kept assuring and encouraging us in prophecy. One verse that we held on to was Pro.3:5-6, "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not to thine own understanding; in all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths."
While this battle was going on, we received an invitation to work with a couple we'd known before. So we decided together to open a small transit Home in the south of India. Our vision for this Home was to raise enough funds and then be on our way to Africa. But things took a different turn: the Lord first had some lessons to teach us on faith. And so we began our journey through the wilderness.
Living by Faith: A Test Run
Our first step of faith came unexpectedly. A Nepali brother who had been in India for about two years was visiting his parents for the first time since joining the Family, and needed a partner to go. Simon and I prayed about it, and the Lord showed us to go with him, since we also had some visa business to do. So instead of Africa, we found ourselves deeper in Asia than ever. Our plan was to stay in Nepal for two weeks. We thought that it would be easy to get Simon's return visa back to India, as he is married to me, an Indian.
But the Indian High Commission in Nepal said that they had to get permission from Nigeria before they could issue Simon a visa. We right away put in an application. Two weeks later, the answer had not yet come from the Nigerian government. We started to get desperate about the situation. In the meantime, our witnessing and fundraising for the opening of the transit Home in India was going quite well. We at times even forgot that we were in the opposite direction of Africa. We just decided to take advantage of the situation.
Also, filtering everything through Romans 8:28 helped us to stay positive. The whole ordeal had now taken more than two months. Even though our vision was still to go to Africa, it seemed the Lord was teaching us how to live by faith in the familiar surroundings of Asia before diving into the deep ocean of unfamiliar Africa. Finally, after three months, we got the visa and were able to return to India with enough funds to open the transit Home.
Proceeding by Faith!
Things started to go well with our transit Home. Pretty soon, feelings of settling down started to creep in; our vision for Africa was slowly growing dim. To make a long story short, one year went by without much progress in the direction of Africa. Rather, in our minds and speeches we started fantasizing about road teams to neighboring countries of Asia—sometimes even to Africa. Ha!
One fateful day, we stumbled upon the prophecy we had received earlier about going to Africa. It was just like the Lord reminding us of the job He had for us there. We prayed desperately, crying out to the Lord that if He really wanted us to go, then He would have to do a miracle and supply the funds that we needed to get there. It had to be a miracle because we didn't even have enough funds to take us to Bombay, much less to Africa!
After desperate prayer, the first thing the Lord showed us was to start getting prepared by faith, to proceed as if we already possessed. So we set a date for our departure. Then we told our Home about our plans, and also told them that it was all by faith, as the amount of money we had to raise was large. We then prepared a newsletter, prayed over it, and sent it to different people in and outside of India, and waited in desperation through prayers. To our amazement, the Lord did some unexpected miracles! His ways are not our ways.
Learning to Stay Close to the Lord—And Starting to See Answers!
Because of our desperate need to raise funds, we started thinking about different strategies and ways to do so. Without really hearing from the Lord about it, we jumped to the conclusion of going on the road. On the day we were supposed to go on the road—we were actually packed and ready to leave—just a couple of minutes before leaving, Simon became very sick, and his condition was so bad that he had to be rushed to the hospital. (Simon had never had any major sicknesses prior to this.)
The trip was canceled. And the very next day, Simon got better! For some reason, the Lord stopped that road trip. Obviously, He didn't want us to do it in the energy of the flesh, nor did He want to share the credit with us. Perfect trust was what we needed. He wanted to take all the glory. We were reminded again of Proverbs 3:5-6. Because we couldn't go on the road, we had to spend more time in prayer and the Word. And the Lord manifested Himself in a special way.
We apologized to Jesus and started to spend more time with Him, just going about our witnessing knowing that He was fully in control of our situation. We kept praying every day for a miracle, and after a few days we got a letter from Paul and Maria in Switzerland, saying that they wanted to team up with us to go to Nigeria—not only that, but they wanted to help us get there also! We couldn't believe our ears! We started praising the Lord as we didn't even know this couple, yet they wanted to help us.
By October 15th, we had the funds for our tickets and a little landing funds. God bless Paul and Maria! The Lord really blessed them over there, TYJ! To top it all, the Summit '96 videos came to our city at the same time that we received the funds, and we were able to spend two weeks watching them. This really helped us and added to our inspiration.
From Paul and Maria—then in Switzerland
Our story starts a few months before the Charter, when we lived in one of those big blobs in Switzerland, and then moved with a few larger families to open a Home in Austria. Little did we know that we and our large family were to be going from one move to another from that time on!
In Austria we only had a temporary place for two months, then another place for another two months, and then finally found a suitable house—what we thought would be our Heavenly Home for 40 people. Three months later, just one day after our 8th child was born, we had a visit from the Romans at our door; the churches were actively working against us in and around our very small village. The Charter had just come out and we decided to close down the Home. We left about three weeks later, with the other families, for Slovakia.
God bless the brethren who took us into their Home—an invasion of people and over 20 children of all ages, something most of them (being young in the Family) had never seen before! Right then the GN "Find Fertile Fields" came out, and we decided to dissolve our old Home. Paul and I (Maria), prayed about it, and we agreed that we wanted to go to an English-speaking field again, as our children speak only English.
Paul right away had the vision to go to Africa, but I wanted to go to India, where we had served the Lord previously for seven years. So we just kept praying and trusting the Lord to show His will to each of us in His good time. All along I kept getting the verse Mark 16:15, "Go ye into all the world," and I knew Africa was one part that still needed to be pioneered by the Family before the End could come. But I had to be fully at peace that the Lord wanted me to go there—especially to a field like Nigeria, about which you can hear wild tales of all the corruption that supposedly goes on!
Our family decided to go back to Switzerland, and as the Home dissolved we "inherited" a station wagon (which was actually too small to transport our whole family around with, ha!), but which was and still is a tremendous blessing. (I say "still is," because it came all the way to Nigeria with us, PTL!) We started setting funds aside, and we thought we would be on our way to a fertile field very soon.
Arriving in French Switzerland, the children got bronchitis and we had to be isolated on our own. This was our first time living alone with our children since being in the Family, and it was quite a task with daily outreach, Word time, schooling, and caring for a small baby. Our kids were ages 13, 11, 9, 7, 4, 3 and 4 months.
We were alone for three months. We saved up our money and almost had enough for our tickets. We also planned to sell our car at that time, and hoped to get from that the remaining funds we needed to go to the field.
We moved again, helped to close down a large Home, moved again (all with a car that was too small for us all, not to mention all our luggage!), and finally teamed up with another family for one year and many, many more moves, as we went from one furnished vacation flat or house to another, depending on how long they were available for rent—in France, Switzerland, Germany and Austria. Even our mailings had a hard time reaching us, as we moved every 6-8 weeks, sometimes every two weeks!
The Picture Comes into Focus!
After a year and not making much progress towards our departure, we had a car accident, which cost us some of our reserve money. We decided to go on a follow-up trip, and the other couple we were teamed up with decided to go mobile. Since the doors for Nigeria didn't seem to be open, we wrote for clearance to India, which we got right away, and four Homes there were interested in taking us in.
Deep in our hearts, though, we still felt that going to Nigeria was God's best. Just then, as we were in the midst of making all these big decisions, Paul went to visit the Lakehouse in Switzerland for a few hours to pick up some tools. While he was glancing at their bulletin board, his eyes fell on a newsletter from a couple in India, asking for help to go to West Africa. BOOM!!! Paul came home and told me. We were so excited—it was a real answer to prayer. God's ways are surely not our ways!
Paul had met Simon only once, briefly, 11 years before. So it was a step of faith and commitment on both of our sides, but the Lord spoke wonderfully, encouraging us all. Paul and I decided to send all the necessary funds for Simon and Joan and their daughter to go to Africa first, to prepare the Home, which of course left us short. Anybody living in Switzerland knows that it isn't cheap, and rents are very high. Paul went on full-time fundraising, and the four older children took turns being his outreach partners daily until the day we left for Africa. I stayed home most of the time with the other children, and started phone provisioning to fill the container the Lord had given for free to be sent to Nigeria.
Our children were a tremendous asset, and without them we wouldn't have made it. We filled them in as much as possible as to what was happening, and prayed with the older ones about our plans. There was no one else to counsel with, but they always got encouraging verses from the Lord. He made us a real team. We gave them the vision that with God's help we were gonna make it, and that we needed everyone's help.
Paul was out most days, and at home it was also very busy. We learned to live with strangers, as our landlords lived many times right next door, or even right under us. It taught us and the children consideration, about learning the local language, and that we always had to have the Home presentable, and return it in very good condition. Thank God for our good Family training, which won their hearts; many times the landlords were reluctant at first to take a large family in, but quite a few of them have now become our supporters.
The Lord used all this to prepare us for the field, as now our house is always open; visitors drop by at any time and the children are called on at a moment's notice to sing and perform for them.
Last-Minute Details
The Lord did a mighty miracle to fill the container. God bless dear Luke Provisioner and his team! They were about ready to leave for India, when they miraculously decided to forsake their container of newly provisioned furniture and household equipment to us, a full set-up! This gave us a tremendous boost forward, and I, Maria, was able to provision the last needed items and equipment and much-needed car repairs. Our car had faithfully driven many, many kilometers, and wasn't worth much in the West anymore, but another company was helping us to ship it for free to Nigeria instead. (A car is a must here.)
We were able to send a limited amount of funds to Simon and Joan, enough to rent and set up a Home (in Nigeria they want two-year advance rent) with a bit extra for living expenses, and we were desperately working on our own funds to leave, some of which came only a few days before departure, PTL! He never fails! Of course, in between there were more moves on our side. We truly became suitcase missionaries. The kids were a vital part of all this. One time they had to do all the packing, cleaning and setting up themselves, as I was sick and Paul was doing the actual moving and driving.
Our visas took longer than expected to come through—one month—and we had to change flights several times because of it. We also wanted to keep the car till the last day, as we needed it daily with so much to do just before our departure. It had to go through an inspection first, just before shipping it, but our visa delay changed everything. The Swiss inspection service lost their contract with the Nigerian government the week before, and the new contract holder for inspections in Germany didn't yet have the authority to carry them out. We took this as from the Lord, that He was the One closing the door to ship the car directly into Nigeria (which we later found out would have been a lot of trouble). So we changed plans at the last minute and shipped it to a neighboring country instead. No inspection needed for that! And how Simon finally got it into Nigeria is another exciting story.
It took us exactly two years and two months from the time the Letter "Find Fertile Fields" came out, till we left for the mission field. There were lots of ups and downs, and it took a large amount of patience during those tests, but looking back now, the Lord couldn't have done it better. Every puzzle piece fit just at the right time and we can truly say, "The Lord has done great things for us."
From Simon and Joan—after the funds came for their trip to Africa
Off we went to Delhi for my visa, which was easy to obtain as I am married to a Nigerian. There were now two weeks till our departure date.
We received a phone call from a friend of ours, inviting us for a birthday party. Without hearing from the Lord, we took some of the children and off we went in an auto rickshaw. Simon had taken his briefcase containing his camera, his Bible and $700. As the party was about to start, we went to get the camera, and lo and behold—the briefcase was nowhere to be found. Our hearts sank, as that $700 was part of the money for our tickets. As we were getting out of the rickshaw and were busy taking care of the children, we had forgotten about it.
We desperately prayed and everybody went in different directions looking for the auto rickshaw. He was nowhere to be found. We prayed and again the Lord showed us to slow down, as the Enemy would do everything to stop us in any way he could. We also realized that the Devil was fighting our plans, and we needed to be all the more vigilant and desperate every moment of the day. Anyway, we phoned Paul and Maria and explained to them about our situation. GBT, they understood and sent us some more funds.
God's Amazing Protection
Since we were not so experienced regarding flight routes and costs, we started asking all our friends. Almost everybody suggested Ethiopian Airlines. They said that this airline was cheap and would also give us a good discount. We went to the manager, but he refused to give a discount, and said he could only help us with our extra luggage. We prayed and pleaded but he completely refused. The Lord just closed the door. We were a bit discouraged because we had very high hopes for this particular flight, but we trusted that the Lord knew what He was doing. And so we continued in prayer. Our Lord Who was able to supply the funds for our journey was able also to supply the discount if need be.
A couple of weeks later we approached another airline, which was more than willing to give us a discount and free excess luggage, TTL! With the extra funds we could buy some of our personal needs. Also, our transit visa for Italy was worked out in a matter of four hours, which was a real miracle.
Much later, one day after we arrived in Lagos, we found out why the Lord didn't want us to take Ethiopian Airlines. While in a taxi, Simon's eyes caught the heading of a newspaper article: "Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed." We quickly bought the paper. To our surprise we found out that the plane we would have connected to in Addis Ababa was the one that crashed! The Lord had foreseen this and prevented us from taking this plane. TTL for His protection!
Going through Immigrations
At Bombay airport, we checked in all our luggage, and were ready to board the plane. After check-in, the immigrations officer looked at my (Joan's) passport and said, "Sorry, you cannot travel."
I said, "Why?"
He said, "Your passport says you need customs clearance before you can travel. So sorry, you cannot travel." When we heard this, our hearts sank.
Then Simon said to the customs officer, "My wife and I are traveling together; if she is not traveling, then we cannot travel either." The matter was going back and forth. Later, they came to us and asked us for $100. We told them that we could not give them this amount because all the money we had was in checks. They kept delaying us and playing on our nerves to see if we'd give in and give them something. This got us more desperate in prayer, and finally they let us go when we gave them all the Rupees we had—which equaled about $7. Later on, we realized that the Lord was trying to teach us desperation because the situation we were going into needed just that!
We were extremely careful and desperate when we arrived in Lagos, because of the many bad stories we'd heard about it. Even though the Immigrations people here are openly corrupt, we found them very warm and sweet. We were prepared for the worst, but things were not as bad as we had expected. We sailed through immigrations without any problem, neither did we give them any tips. We started to learn that people here sometimes look stern and rough on the surface, even sometimes appear to be mean, but underneath they are often very soft, polite and helpful. The physical side of things here is not great, but if you look beyond that, you will see calmness and beauty.
In Lagos, we stayed a week with Simon's aunt. She gave us a two-bedroom apartment to stay in, and a servant in attendance! From there we visited the Family Home in Jos. They were very sweet and received us and gave us many tips and needed information. We also had good rest and Word there.
Launching into Action!
About three weeks later, we arrived in Port Harcourt, in Southern Nigeria. All we knew about this place was the information we had gotten from the Home in Jos. We also had two addresses: one of a hotel where we could stay and the other of a restaurant where we could eat. Through these, we started our ministry in Port Harcourt. The generosity of the people here took us aback. As soon as you mention that you are a missionary, they will do anything for you. Missionaries are well-respected here, and are held in very high esteem. The hotel manager we asked to put us up right away agreed, and let us stay in his hotel for two weeks, while the restaurant fed us two free meals a day. We felt like royalty!
From the hotel, we launched out into house-hunting. The manager of the restaurant where we were eating drove us around sometimes, and sometimes we would hire a taxi on an hourly basis. (Renting a taxi here is extremely cheap, but most of the taxis are run-down.) After two weeks of house-hunting, we were exhausted. Landlords were asking for three to four thousand dollars per year, and usually required two to three years' rent in advance! This was way over our budget.
After two weeks the Lord led us to a Catholic bishop, who was very sweet and understanding of our situation but couldn't help us. But he directed us to some hotels that were within walking distance of his house. In the first hotel we went to, we met a sweet Lebanese man. We explained our mission to him and told him our need. He was touched that we were missionaries, willingly gave us the best room in his hotel for two weeks and let us cook our own food in his kitchen.
After settling in, we continued house-hunting. It got somewhat discouraging, as many landlords are used to big oil companies paying huge amounts. To top it off, everyone we spoke to about the type of house we were looking for and the amount we were ready to pay told us that it was impossible. They advised us as missionaries to go to some remote area and open a home which would be cheap for us. (Even though the people here respect missionaries, their idea of a missionary is someone living in a village trying to convert some tribe.) This got us more desperate and we kept hanging on to our faith. We even wrote down the type of house we wanted—the amount of rooms, the location, and the amount we wanted to pay, as a specific sign to the Lord of what we wanted Him to supply.
After two weeks, we told our hotel friend about our situation and asked him if he could let us stay longer in his hotel. He right away agreed and said that we could stay till we'd find a house. So we ended up staying there for about three months. During this time, we were constantly witnessing to him and he really enjoyed it.
A Prophecy Fulfilled
We communicated about the situation with Paul and Maria. They prayed about it and the Lord showed them in prophecy that we had already found the house. So we went backtracking to all the possible houses we had seen before. One day, while returning to our hotel after witnessing, we hitched a ride with a young architect. We told him we were missionaries and were looking for a house to rent. We gave him our exact specifications. He asked what rent we were expecting to pay, and we told him not much, as we lived by faith, trusting God. He said he would look around and let us know in a couple of days.
After four days he showed up at our hotel, and said he had seen a house that fitted our specifications. Sure enough, it was a house we had seen before but the rent was too high. We went to see the landlady and explained to her about our work and witnessed to her. She was amazed and totally flipped out, as she had never seen an Indian married to a Nigerian man. She was even more flipped out that we were missionaries, and above all that we lived by faith. She was won over after we shared our testimonies. She explained to us how her husband had died two years before, leaving her with six children. She had been praying in her church for two months for the Lord to send "His Messiah" to help her put the finishing touches on the house. She also prayed for Godly and decent people to occupy the house.
She started praising the Lord that He had sent His people to occupy her house. She was so overjoyed that she said, "I am not going to charge you anything. With whatever money you have, you can set up the house and stay there for two years." We couldn't believe our ears! We just had to finish a few things that still needed to be done—put the front door on, do the electrical work and put in some bathroom fittings, which took us about three weeks to finish. The total amount we spent in fixing up the house was about 1/5 of what the value would have been to rent it, TTL! We have now been staying in this beautiful house for the last seven months. Visitors are so surprised, and this testimony of faith and how we implement God's Word literally has actually changed some people's lives. They've never seen anything like this, or met any people like us.
More About Our Ministry Here
Port Harcourt is full of Pentecostal churches, and many pastors have been so amazed by our sample that almost every day we get invited to come and share our testimonies in their church. We have to very sweetly turn some of them down, as the Lord showed us not to get too involved with the churches, which are often turning into business centers. New churches are opening up every day, and many of the pastors are getting very rich and riding around in fancy cars, and some people are waking up to this fact. So we are somewhat careful, except when they invite us to share testimonies of our life of faith and minister to their youth.
The Lord has done another mighty miracle by blessing us with three new disciples—Samson and Janet, and their daughter Mariangela. We had prayed for disciples, since our main vision is to establish a lasting work here. Samson was in the Nigerian Navy and eight years ago went to India for training, and met the Family there. He got really turned on by the Word and the sample of the Family, but due to his Navy obligations, he couldn't drop out. He had to return to Nigeria and for the last eight years has faithfully communicated with us in India, and also kept witnessing. He was faced with many difficulties in his life but he held on to the Word and stayed faithful.
As we opened our Home here in Nigeria, the Lord also miraculously worked out his release from the Navy, so that he and his family could join us full-time, TYJ! Now, we have not just one but four Nigerian disciples in the Family, and many more to win.
From Paul, of Maria
I daily thank the Lord that He brought us here. It's really a "fertile field!" Even though we've had a few eerie experiences (which ultimately always have a happy ending), the overall feeling we have about Nigeria is a wonderful one. People have a vacuum here which totally renews our self-worth as missionaries. Even the foreigners here (so many from Europe, America, India, China, etc.) have the greatest respect for us, as they know, according to their carnal standard of appreciation, that it means sacrifice to labor in such a field, which they are only willing to do for Mammon.
Even though there is always another side to each coin, in general here evolution, abortion, homosexuality, atheism, media influences, generation gaps, political correctness, me-first society, materialism, etc., have no real hold on people, and we don't have to contend with these influences in our children's lives, but rather can train them to be true missionaries, rightly dividing the Word.
There's hardly a day that we don't have a visitor—sometimes we have hardly enough people to witness to all of them! We also have young people coming at great personal sacrifice to have regular Bible studies. The children are learning to teach these hungry souls, and get real fulfillment doing it. It's not uncommon at all for me and my son or daughter to be seated on the garden terrace, socking it to some young people for a couple of hours. In some ways, it could be similar to the Millennium, where most people will have their will on our side but still will desperately need complete retraining. From the poorest to the richest, people have potential. Their minds are trained to believe, and they can easily understand and receive what you are trying to share with them as most of them have a good knowledge of the Word, even though they desperately need to see a sample of love and dedication to bring the Word to life in their personal lives.
Nigeria is a wonderful training ground and stepping stone for children and young people to see the Lord and His power at work, and there is definitely no comparison to the general dryness of the West—even though we met many sheep there who are supporting us today.
The children are just blasting away wherever they go. Even our two-year-old can sing her solo boldly for crowds of up to 3,000 kids, which she never did before. She is shepherding our two-year-old new disciple (Samson and Janet's daughter), sharing testimonies and stories from LWG, and making sure she gets plenty of affection and learns how to sing and dance, especially at praise time.
Support on the Field
We've lived off the field since we first arrived, and haven't missed a single meal. People are much more generous than in the West, where they can afford to give. We don't have to hunt for daily living expenses and have more time to relax, feed the sheep and our three new disciples, and follow up on our contacts. It's not unusual to have people come visit us and leave a donation or some provisions behind. We already have regular local supporters and a lot of provisioning contacts who are helping regularly. We have a list of about 100 people whom we are regularly feeding and following up on.
Just about everybody is a sheep here, so every business trip turns into a witnessing experience—from the top manager to the gate security man or the sweet secretary. While giving out the Word, the only problem is trying to avoid having a riot or a stampede! One man recently pledged the printing of 2,000 pieces of literature a week, so we are always well-stocked now, PTL! One airplane company that the Family met has been completely won over, from the top manager to the local helper, and we can travel to Lagos and back whenever needed without any problem. Their local office here is plastered with our posters, PTL!
Keys to Life in Africa: Positive Outlook
One key point which I found very helpful in a field like this is to always keep a positive outlook on things. If you look at the physical, there could be a lot of things to constantly complain about, like power cuts (the longest so far was two weeks, even though most of time we have electricity more than 12 hours a day) or communication problems. It's easy to look down on things, circumstances and people, like most of the foreigners do here. But all it does really is snatch away our anointing, as the Lord is just not pleased with it.
Let's face it, the local people have it much rougher than we do, and they still wear big smiles and cheery looks on their faces. We don't have it that bad compared to them. If the electricity is off, we turn on the generator when necessary. Maybe it could even be the Lord's timing to shut down the computer and give a class to a visitor or whatever. The mailings aren't coming as regularly as they do in the West, but they still come, and our appetite for them is even greater. Now we have found a solid e-mail contact who is sending all our messages free of charge.
Sometimes we get desperate and things change. For example, the day before we brought the car from Europe, we were worried whether it would make it all the way to the house as the road was so bad, full of very large potholes. We prayed and the exact same day, they redid the whole stretch of road, PTL! If we keep our eyes on the Lord, things become so wonderful, and the Lord often changes the circumstances to make it easier physically as well.
On the other end, of course, there are dark spiritual forces here which are rampant.—Demon possession, curses, charms, casting of spells, etc., are a real thing to contend with, and we can't take it lightly as it permeates the whole society. Interacting with the sheep here helps us learn a lot about the spiritual battles they are facing, and how we need to uphold them in our prayers.
The potential is unlimited here and we believe the Lord will give us a strong national church, but the battle is not an easy one, and we desperately need your prayers, your support and your self if the Lord calls you to come this way. The need is great, time is short and fulfillment and adventure is assured for both young and old!
If you want to contact us, our e-mail address in Port Harcourt is: Danelec@Linkserve.com.ng.
I received a phone call from a guy named David who said that a black brother and I had witnessed to him in Washington, D.C., in 1972; that we lived in a big house and that the shepherdess had red hair. I didn't remember him, but I did remember the other facts. He said that since he got saved he has won many others to Jesus and also to the Family. He is a friend of the Family, and he prayed before coming to Australia that he would meet the Family here. He went to a hostel and met some folks here who know us and they gave him our phone number. He was really turned on that the Lord answered his prayer to get in contact with us, on the first day he arrived here. I was very encouraged that he had remembered me, and also that the Lord had been using him because of our witness over 24 years ago!
From Honey
Australia
When I joined the Family 25 years ago, I prayed a lot for my best friend from the System to get saved. Over the years I forgot about it, especially since I never saw any answer to the prayer. Every communication I got from my old friend was along the lines of asking "if I was still in the religious racketeering business." But now, 25 years later, I suddenly received a Christmas newsletter from this friend and his wife, in which they testified how the Lord had recently changed their lives and they were giving Him the glory for all He'd done for them. I was thrilled, and even though it wasn't me that was able to lead them to the Lord, I still felt like their salvation was an answer to my prayer from 25 years ago! Like Dad says, if we really believe, every prayer is heard and answered!
From John, Ester and Praise
Brazil
While on our way to pick up a package from an Indian company today, we got to talking with a guy from Hyderabad, India. After we explained more about our work, he said, "What are you called? I think I recall when I was in high school people coming around ... " Ha! You can bet that about the time he was in high school we did come around, because at that time we were doing programs in all the schools in every big city in India. He was real interested when we told him we had recently done a big concert in India and we'd filmed it and we had it on video. He asked if he could get one, and he got one right on the spot. He was very happy. So for all you folks doing shows in India 10-15 years ago, here's one of your fruit, PTL!
From John D.
Indonesia
While out on business, Joash and Russian Masha sat beside a young fellow in the metro who was reading his Bible. The boy spoke a little bit of English, enough to explain that he had come to know the Lord though the Family! TYJ! The most amazing thing, though, is when he said that he had been led to the Lord by a girl named "Masha." As he said it, he and Masha both realized that he had prayed with her a couple of years ago. It was a happy reunion of a "spiritual babe" with his mommy in the Lord! Hal!
From Matthew, Sam and Charlene
Russia
When Phillip gave a poster to a shop owner, she said, "Oh, I received this eight years ago! I picked up a missionary who was hitchhiking with his child, and he gave me this same poster, and he prayed a little prayer with me to receive Jesus!" She even remembered the name of the missionary—Gerald, who was here from 1982 to 1990.
This lady, who was formerly Muslim, is now a faithful Christian, and she puts Christian tracts on her desk for all her customers to take. GBH!
This really encouraged us to keep fighting, sowing and praying! Let's do our part and trust the Lord for the results.
From Phillip, Priscilla, Josue and Mary
Ivory Coast
One morning, I was woken at 4 AM by the telephone ringing. When I picked it up, I heard a male voice with an Indian accent, calling himself "Johnson." As I was still half-asleep, I finally realized it was a man I knew from 14 years ago. I had met him at a hotel in Malaysia when my oldest daughter and I had to flee Indonesia due to heavy persecution, and he—then a complete stranger—overhearing my phone conversation describing my need for a place to stay, out of the blue came over and said, "I, too, am a father like you. I know you need help, and I want you to stay with me and my wife, for as long as you would like and as long as you need to arrange your business." Wow, what a complete miracle of intervention from the Lord!
When Johnson drove us to the airport at the end of our stay, I was able to explain more about our work, and he received Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
In the last 14 years I have been sending him Christmas cards and occasionally a birthday card, but he never once responded. Then he responded with this telephone call from Malaysia, and talked for about an hour about what has happened since we last met. He told me, full of fire and excitement, that he left his job two years ago and is now engaged in a Seminary Course, and will be getting his Masters' degree next year. Then he will be traveling around the world as an evangelist of the Gospel!
"How did you come to this?" I asked.
"I guess it must have been your prayers!" he replied.
With the promise of staying in touch more often, we exchanged e-mail addresses, and he wants to know more about the Family.
This situation showed me how the Lord continues to work in people's lives once they are saved and filled with the Holy Spirit, and He cares for His own. When you pray with someone, know that this person is changed and the Lord will be working in his life from then on.
From Amos
Holland
From Philip Handyman (of Angela)
Switzerland
When we arrived in Bosnia, I wasn't surprised to see buildings destroyed, walls pockmarked with bullet holes, or men and young boys hobbling along the streets with legs and arms missing. What did surprise me was how little sense it made to anybody. Normally after a war, the participants try to make some attempt at justifying what they've been doing to each other, but we didn't hear any of that. Even the ones who might have known what was going on, as interested observers—the NATO soldiers and the UN police advisors that we met—all seemed as confused about it as everybody else.
It wasn't until we got home and I had a chance to look through the Letters again that I finally began to understand a little of what had been going on for the past five years.
About the eventual outcome of that war, Dad said in "Stop the World!—I Wanna Get Off!" (ML #2795:59, 5/92): "When it's over and they start making peace, the fact that [the Serbs] occupy it, they have it, or they've killed the former inhabitants and destroyed their cities, will simply, as far as they're concerned, be a victory. The Bosnians didn't get to enjoy their independence. And besides, in these peace talks, the villains who win seldom really get punished and driven out. It's very difficult once they're in and occupying and have the control. The peace-making powers would have to literally go to war to drive them out, and they know that. So the faster the aggressor can gobble up territory and slaughter people, the more control they have and the harder it will be to get them out. So they're trying to do as much damage as possible before they're stopped. —Just like Israel does in the Occupied Territories."—Which is exactly what's happening now.
Whoever was in military control at the time of the "peace" agreement, that's who the territory belongs to now. The peacekeeping forces, the ones who couldn't or wouldn't lift a finger to help the Bosnians while they were being systematically exterminated by the Serbs, have now been given the authority, by God knows who, to decide where these "displaced" individuals should now reside!
The bright spot of the trip for me was meeting Said (Sah-eed), a young Muslim boy. The first time I saw him he was sitting across the street from where we were parked. He was smiling at me for some strange reason—you don't see many people smiling there—so I went over and started talking to him. In the course of our conversation, I learned that he'd hurt his foot somehow, so I asked him to show it to me. He slid his foot out of his shoe, revealing, through the hole in a very dirty pair of socks, a nasty bruise on his right heel. I thought he'd just hurt it, slipped on the ice or something while he was playing. At the time I remembered that I had a pair of warm Swiss Army socks in the van that were too small for me, so I got them out and brought them to him, for which he thanked me with his beautiful smile, and put them in his jacket.
I ran into him again the next day, while I was waiting in the van while the rest of the team was elsewhere doing business, so I had nobody to translate for me. I gave him some Austrian Shillings, and noticed that he had his Swiss Army socks on, PTL. There wasn't time to talk to him anymore because I had to move the van, but we ran into him again the next day. This time Slovenian Sara was with me, so I had a translator.
In neither of the two previous meetings had Said asked me for anything. From the look of him—his baggy jeans and the quality of his socks—I could see that he was a needy fellow, in some way affected by the war, but I guess I was a little misled by his smile and cheerful spirit. It turned out that his story wasn't much different from others we'd heard. The "bruise" on his foot was frostbite—rather severe frostbite, on both feet, which he showed us very matter-of-factly, pulling his socks off and showing us a pair of feet that would've been high priority in any emergency ward in Europe.
He didn't say how he got the frostbite, but I imagine it was from trudging back and forth between Bihac and the little village he lived in with his grandmother, because whatever he was able to scrounge up in town is probably what he and his grandmother had to live on.
He didn't have to walk anymore, he said, because the bus driver knew him and didn't make him pay. God bless the bus driver! God knows the winters in Bosnia are conducive to frostbite, especially when you're wearing the kind of cheap tennies Said was! I saw another kid wearing a pair of rubber boot liners, no socks, in below-freezing weather. I've lived in some cold places, including Switzerland and Alaska and Northern Japan, but the cold in Bosnia is a wicked kind of cold that goes right through you, even as warmly-dressed as we were.
At this point, a lady that we'd been working with—who had to sign the authorization papers for the humanitarian aid we were bringing into the country—came up and realized that Said was a street orphan, and said that he was therefore not to be taken too seriously or pitied over-much. She said there were qualified people in his own district who could attend to his problems, etc. etc.—the typical hard-hearted nurse syndrome. Though we didn't agree with her in this situation, this lady has helped us a lot—she runs the humanitarian aid center that we've been bringing our clothes to—and has suffered plenty herself during the war. Her husband is presumed dead.
We had managed to slip Said a fairly decent pair of shoes before the humanitarian lady got there—against the rules, of course, even though the stuff was ours and we'd brought it. You can't just go and help people, give'm what you've got; you've got to go through all the appropriate agencies, etc., and get the appropriate stamps and pay the appropriate fees and grease all the appropriate palms.
Both Said's father and mother had been killed in the war, as well as his younger sister and the cow that the UN had given them. He was with his father when somebody threw a grenade into the room. His father was killed instantly, he said; he himself went flying through the air, with shrapnel wounds on his back and buttocks, his arm, and across his cheek. His sister was out in the field on another occasion, tending the cow, and was also killed by a grenade; for what justifiable purpose one can only imagine.
That was Said. We prayed with him before we left, for the Lord to keep him and his grandmother, and for them to find somebody to take care of his feet.
Another bright spot on the trip, and a welcome surprise for me since my wife and I had been praying about joining the work there, was seeing what a beautiful country it was, in spite of the wreckage and the human depravity. The Una River—so named by a Roman general because in his eyes it was the "only" river (he must've been a trout fisherman)—was so deep and clear and blue and so full of fish that I had all I could do to keep my mind on the business at hand and off the thought of my fishing pole sitting under my bed back in Switzerland. I know people who would pay good money to fish in a river like that!
Maybe that's why the ACs want it. Kulen Vakuf, which is a town we were taken to out in the boonies south of Bihac, according to our American escort, was famous before the war for its hunting and fishing. (Now it's famous for its mass graves and land mines.) The wealthy sportsmen from Italy, Austria and Slovenia would come and blast away at the deer and the wild pigs and the bears and the wolves, and use their fancy tackle on what is probably now one of the last remaining wild trout rivers in Europe.
In the right hands—or the wrong hands—somebody could make a lot of money selling fishing and hunting rights, hotel and restaurant accommodations, or just buy the land outright—land that the Bosnian Muslims apparently were not smart enough or greedy enough to use to their own advantage.
Our sweet sheep Andrea is making lots of progress. It is always a pleasure to meet her as she is so hungry and "sucking" from everything we share with her from the Word. She has started to memorize from the Memo Book and helps friends find answers for themselves using the Word Basics, etc. She calls us for help on how to counsel others with the different situations she finds herself in, confessing that she doesn't have the wisdom sometimes. As she says: "I feel so much power from all I read but I don't know how to control it, and I need help and prayer!"
She came over with her children last Sunday and was very happy that they felt at ease and accepted (two of them are Asian, and have quite a hard time at the public school, being put down also because their mom is a single parent!). She was told by some religious friends, when she told them she was going to visit us, that she has to be very careful because we are the YKW, to which she answered: "Well, one thing I know is that it does me a lot of good to be with those guys, and reading the Bible with them has changed my life!" Please continue to pray for her. Here is a note she wrote the Home:
"You took the time to listen to me ... full of patience and empathy, and I would like to thank you for this. It felt so good to be able to pour out my heart. Afterwards I felt so much lighter.
"I would like to thank all of you for your refreshing words. Thank you that you showed me what the Bible has to say. I am thankful for all your prayers. You gave me new hope again. You showed me what it means to have a living faith. Thanks be to you and to our Lord.
"Connected in love, Andrea."
From Anna (19)
China
Two months ago I arrived in China from the States, and thought you might be interested in some of my thoughts and first impressions.
For the first 10 days that I was here I was traveling with J., as he invited me to come with him on a trip to visit relatives of our live-in disciple. Here are excerpts of different letters that I wrote to my family and my previous Home in the States, in which I told them what I'd been doing and all about my travels. This first part is after the 12-hour bus ride we took to the small village where our live-in's family lives:
I've arrived safe and happy on the boat after a quiet trip. I was the only foreigner on the ship so am getting used to people always 'doing a double take,' which is normal here. Everywhere we go, people always watch us out of curiosity. I arrived the same morning that J. was leaving to visit the hometown and family of our live-in Chinese disciple in the north of our province. It was going to be a special celebration of his mother's 60th birthday, and all the family and friends would be there.
Two hours after arriving and a quick repacking into a smaller bag for the trip, J. and I were off to the bus station to find a bus. This was the beginning of my first adventure into the unknown of China. We tried one bus station and there was no bus leaving for a few hours, so we went to another bus station across town. There we found one leaving after one hour, so we bought the tickets.
We boarded the bus for the seven-hour trip to the next big city. Along the way I enjoyed my first look at the life and countryside of China.—A tour through real China in a bus packed with Chinese on their way to visit their families for the Chinese New Year (or Spring Festival, as they call it here). The bus stopped for repairs for about a half-hour, then couldn't go on, so they transferred us all to another bus. We arrived at the next city at about 8 o'clock at night. There we transferred to another even smaller bus leaving at 9 PM and arriving the next morning. We bounced along the smaller mountain roads for another six hours and arrived at our destination at about 3 AM.
There our live-in—and surprisingly, also his older sister and four other members of his family—were waiting for us at a cold, dark bus station! They loaded all of us and our big bags onto two bicycles with sidecars that they hire as taxis here, and pedaled off to V.'s sister's house—which turned out to be a beautiful, new, modern apartment, very well furnished and decorated. There they had squeezed themselves in to one bedroom so they could give us each a private bedroom. In every way their hospitality has been very warm. We had a good sleep-in to prepare us for the big event the next day."
Last night we attended the huge feast to celebrate the Spring Festival. There were about 200 guests, including relatives and friends! Wow! We weren't expecting anything this big. We were kind of like the guests of honor, and, of course, we're the only foreigners around so we made quite a spectacle. Everyone kept coming around to look at us, and they all thought we were very interesting.
We also had to eat some very interesting foods, such as turtle, eel, octopus, lobster, crab, and some other strange-looking slimy things. It was one those "eat-what-is-set-before-you" type of situations. PTL! Of course they also had some normal yummy Chinese dishes that were very good.
At the beginning and the end of the celebration they had firecrackers. The ones at the end were actually fireworks and were quite spectacular. The whole thing was a lot of fun and I'm so glad I decided to come along. I probably won't be able to do much traveling once school starts, so I'm grabbing the golden opportunity while I have it. It's great traveling with J. as he knows China very well and speaks enough Mandarin to get around and make himself understood. I haven't really started to try to speak yet but will probably pick some up as I continue on with this trip. We might be traveling further north to visit more of J.'s friends and other teams in China.
I went with J. and his friends to climb a mountain and visit a Chinese temple. Here when you climb a mountain there are steps going all the way up, so it's like climbing a thousand steps or something—quite a workout! It was fun, though, and we visited three different Chinese temples on the way.
Tomorrow we're taking a boat with V. (the Chinese disciple) and then we'll take a train to another city, altogether about a couple days' journey. It's very cold up north, so I'm bracing myself for some pretty chilly weather. Down here in the south the houses don't have heating at all, as it doesn't get that cold according to them. It's actually fairly chilly and I'm wearing 2-3 layers in the house. It's kind of funny the way people dress here. They like to wear quite fancy clothes and then they're walking down this little Chinese street—it doesn't quite fit the picture!
Oh, I have to tell you what happened the other night. We had arrived in a city about 2-1/2 hours by bus from Beijing, and had to pick up someone who had been staying with friends over the holiday period. Things were delayed and it was quite late by the time everything got worked out. Then we took the bus to Beijing and a friend had worked out a nice place for us to stay. It was like an apartment building, and they rent out furnished rooms very cheaply but super nice, clean with hot water and everything. We were all happy and made a note to remember this place for the next time anyone is in Beijing, as it was also a very convenient location.
Anyway, we were settling down for the night and I was in the shower enjoying the hot water relaxing all my muscles, and J. went to find a phone to hook up for e-mail. A minute later I hear a knock on the bathroom door and it's J., telling me that we need to change rooms as there's some problem. So I think, "Fine, I'll just put on my PJs and walk to the other room." But actually what happened was, when J. went out of the room, two policemen who were doing a routine check of the hotel saw him and it turned out that the management weren't allowed to let foreigners stay in this place.
So when they saw J. they looked at him kind of sternly and then proceeded downstairs to talk to the management. A few minutes later our friend who brought us there came and explained that the police wanted us to move to a hotel for foreigners. We waited in suspense for a little while, not knowing what would happen with the police and the manager. All we could hear was yelling back and forth. Eventually the friend who got us the place came back to get J.'s and my passport and went back out to them again. All this time we were praying desperately for everything to work out all right.
Finally, our friend came back and said that the police were very sorry but we'd have to go to another hotel, and they'd be happy to drive us there if we want. (All this is going on in the middle of the night.) Instead, our friend offered to take us to their small apartment, so we decided to stay with the friend and her family, who lived about a 10-minute walk away. So we had to pack everything up and go out in the freezing cold and walk with all our bags and everything to the other apartment, which was a real little place and not very well-kept—a more typical Chinese home.
By this time it was about 1 AM and we were all totally exhausted, having been traveling for 24 hours on the train up, and then another 2-1/2 hours to Beijing, then another hour by taxi to the first apartment.
The little family who took us in were so sweet! The father was just going out to work (he worked a night shift) and they set up their folding couches for us in the living room. GBT! It was really late before any of us got to sleep, but at that point we were just thankful for a roof over our heads and a place to lie down. It was quite an interesting experience, to say the least. TTL for helping it to go smoothly!
Yesterday we went to the Great Wall and spent several hours climbing it and taking photos, etc. Every time we stopped to take a photo, we had this crowd around us watching, and then all these Chinese would ask us to take a photo with them, since we're foreigners. It's like that everywhere we go, heads turning and staring at us and everyone saying 'Allo' (Hello), the only English word they know. It's quite funny and it takes getting used to being a spectacle wherever you go.
We were on our way to the Summer Palace when we noticed a big circus tent pitched in a field next to this little village on the way, so we stopped to check it out. It was, in fact, a small circus with their different little acts, some of which were quite good. They were doing a promotional act so it was free, and practically the whole little village was there, too. We stayed for about an hour and watched along with the villagers, half of whom were watching us instead of the circus.—Ha!
We went to Tiananmen Square in the evening and walked around a bit. Had the same 'photo-syndrome' as at the Great Wall. I even posed by some of the sentries who were on duty at the gates. J. said they were looking at me instead of the camera.—Oh well, such is life! I have a lot of fun getting all the men in uniform to pose with me in photographs, and after their initial shyness and embarrassment, they're very obliging and usually want to take one for themselves too! Tomorrow we take the train back home. It's about a two-day trip.
The Chinese people are in general very sweet and helpful (except when they're trying to sell you something or make you take their taxi or their bus, etc.—then they can be quite pushy). They really try to understand you even when you don't speak their language and they don't speak yours.
Summary
So far I've really enjoyed my studies, even though I must say it's a constant fight to trust the Lord that He's going to help me to learn the language, which can seem like a pretty unattainable goal. I think it's really important to keep a long-term vision when studying here, as if you are expecting to just breeze through it in a couple months (like you might be able to do with other languages), you're going to be sadly disappointed.
I think what the famous missionary to China, Robert Morrison, said about learning Chinese hits the nail right on the head: "To learn Chinese is work for men with bodies of brass, lungs of steel, heads of oak, hands of spring steel, eyes of eagles, hearts of apostles, memories of angels, and lives of Methuselah."—Ha! It really does feel that way sometimes, but it's worth it, as when you finally start to grasp the different concepts that are so foreign to our Western brains, it's very rewarding and a real accomplishment. It also shows that it's definitely only Jesus, as you know that you couldn't possibly have done it without His help.
The things that I like learning the most are the characters. I find them fascinating and beautifully artistic. It's really interesting for me to see the evolvement of the ancient characters to the modern-day ones. They all have a story to tell and were mostly started from pictures or symbols representing different things, and then changed little by little to how they are today.
One of my biggest ongoing lessons in coming here has been to forsake the past. I have the habit of wanting to hold on to old situations, people, ways of doing things, etc., and this makes me not fully put my heart into things, which could eventually lead to disunity and the Lord not being able to fully pour down His blessings because of my unyieldedness in these areas. I'm having to constantly fight against this and pray that the Lord will change me in this area, as I know that it's one of the things that He wants to teach me in being here. I guess it boils down to being willing to sign a blank sheet of paper, and being open-hearted about whatever the Lord may have for me personally.
It is a real battle here and I've been hit with a lot of trials and battles that I never got hit with before.
Everything about being here is so completely different: the living conditions, food, climate, transportation, language, people, the more underground type of witnessing, the very tight security (you have to really "pray before you say" and be constantly asking the Lord for wisdom in answering even the most seemingly innocent and simple questions). The whole spirit of China is very different, and you have to try to blend in as much as possible and not stick out more than you already do just by being foreigners. We really are in days of preparation. It's very easy to see that when you're here! The Lord is obviously preparing us for the days ahead and the things that He has in store for us in this country and mission field. But ... that's what makes it such a challenge and so exciting. If your life has lacked a challenge or you feel like you haven't accomplished much or you just need a total turnaround and a complete change, then China's the place for you. All this and more await you if you're willing to make the few sacrifices that are necessary in order to be here.
For me, it has definitely been worth the fight, and I'm looking forward to all that I know the Lord has in store for us in the future. GBAKY all! ILY lots!