News From Our Partners

Last week Erika Nossokoff , author of the blog Notes from Nigeria, posted news of the recent bombings that occurred in Jos. Looks like the bombings did have an affect on some family members of a coach of the youth soccer team. Read Erika's story.

Also, Erika has announced the release of her long awaited book depicting true life stories of those at Faith Alive Hospital. Erika is the USA coordinator for Faith Alive Foundation-Nigeria. She also coordinates the Save-A-Life personal sponsorship program for peoplle in Nigeria living with HIV/AIDS. Erika has traveled to Nigeria as a missionary numerous times. The book is scheduled to be released on Dec. 1, 2012 which is World AIDS Day. All profits will go to Faith Alive Foundation - Nigeria. This is very exciting news. I know I will be buying a book! She will be taking pre-orders. I will keep you posted.

There is also news from the Church of the Nativity, one of our partner churches here in Timonium. They had regretfully stated earlier that due to the current violence in Nigeria they would not be sending missionary teams this summer. Now they have announced a special summer event "Shagali." This will be a special evening on Aug. 8 of worship, prayer, and fellowship for the church community to celebrate missions and show solidarity for their strategic partners (The Anawim Home and Faith Alive Hospital) in Nigeria. The evening will culminate a week of fasting and praying for God's guidance in the missions program, for peace in Nigeria, and thankfulness for God's grace and goodness. We hope you will join us in prayer. See the Nativity Nigeria blog post details: NATIVITY:NIGERIA: Shagali: Partners in Prayer

To Live Fully

I was getting ready to post the thankful series again this week. My mind was wandering. I was having a hard time focusing. Then I opened my email and there it was. This email from Benjamin Ochenjele. Ben is the Head of Administration of the Faith Alive Foundation. Ben is also a Pastor at a church that is close to the Faith Alive Hospital and leads prayer gatherings that are held at the hospital for patients and staff. All of us on the missionary team I traveled with respectfully and affectionately referred to him as Pastor Ben. Pastor Ben is one of the people I met at Faith Alive that had a great impact on me.

I was wondering why I had not heard from my friend. Then I read this and my heart broke.



Dear All,
It is indeed amazing for the long period of silence. It was never my intention but due to some stuff I never had control over. I have been away for ZAMBIA, East Africa since April for a peace courses with Africa Peace Institute. My initial thought and plan was to communicate from there but to my disappointment there was internet break down in the Institute. I could not afford the exorbitant cost of getting it done at cafe in the city far off. So I was off communication with ALL till my returning couple weeks ago. As soon as I returned Doris my wife went into labor for our 3rd child which came up successfully but after three days the child took ill and was diagnosed with acute jaundice. We were admitted in University of Jos Teaching Hospital (JUTH). With every effort, up and downs, prayers and spending for us to have the child, but as God would have it the child passed unto glory in the morning of Sunday 18th. We could not found it easy at all for the child was very attractive and won the love of all who saw him both at the hospital and at home. More also, my wife went through much pains during his pregnancy.
The experience was a proof of the Bible as recorded in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
We only had him for just a week. God who gave became more interested in him and called him back home expertly after a week of birth. I named him "GODSWAY" and God indeed did it in his way. His way is not our way and its unquestionable. Glory be to Him who knows and have the best. Pray for my wife to recover.
We have learnt to accept it ALL since God permitted it because His way is always perfect.
Today is my official day in the office after a very long time of trauma.

Benjamin O. OchenjeleHead of Administration
Faith Alive Foundation

The scripture that Pastor Ben references has always been a favorite of mine. The verses were used as lyrics for a song in the 60's. "For everything there is a season,a time for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die...A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance..." 


Yes.

Your will not ours. Somehow bad into good.... Somehow.... 

Acceptance of this. We must accept this....It will be good. It will be..... 

You will make it BEAUTIFUL! You will....We believe.....

There will be a day. There will be a day....There will be a day when everything is beautiful.... 

When we will all be together again. We will....And there will be NO pain....only JOY.... 

Until then Lord let us do your will....your will....your will for us....

To love one another....to LOVE...to BE LOVING to everyone....

The lost, the sick, the lonely....the least of these....the least of these....

Are we not all this?....Have we not been lost, sick, lonely, the least of these....Have we not? 

Help us to stop judging....STOP judging and have mercy....Oh to have mercy and..... 

Break our hearts Lord for what breaks Yours....for what breaks Yours...Oh for what breaks Yours! 

Open our eyes Lord to what You want us to see....and remind us to look up....to look up..... 

You are a loving God just waiting....just waiting....for us to trust You...to trust....

So we can live .... so we can live....

TO LIVE FULLY.... the ABUNDANT life You offer!





(#31)Thank you God for Pastor Ben and all he does for the Faith Alive Community. (#32)Thank you for the inspiration he has provided me and all the other missionaries who have served at Faith Alive. (#33)Thank you for giving him the strength to be a husband and father, to persevere through trials and accept your will while also serving others as a gifted Pastor.






Praise to You Oh Lord, Oh Wonderful Savior!






Please join us in prayer for Pastor Ben, his wife and children at this time.

Photo: Pastor Ben, his wife and child (August 2009).

You Are A Wonderful God

I have been talking to you since I was a little girl.

So many sweet memories of giving you my world.

You are wonderful.

A friend to the weary.

You have been so faithful.

Your goodness it follows me.

You are beautiful.

Your love is never ending.

All these years we've been walking...

My Savior, My friend...

You Are Wonderful by Sara Groves

III

God never fails. We are told you will believe it when you see it. But living by faith is knowing it is the other way around. You see it when you believe it.

Last week I named gifts of ugly to beautiful that God gave me. Some gifts from God that should have been included that I am sure our friends in Nigeria would certainly agree with me on are the gifts of the Anawim Home -The Poorest of the Poor Orphanage, the gift of the Faith Alive Hospital, and the gift of St Pius X School for Boys. These places were built from nothing and in places where some might say it could not be done. But that is not how people of faith saw it. They believed. The ugliness of poverty, disease, hunger, homelessness and hopelessness became the beautiful gift from God of places that provided healing, food, shelter, education, hope and love. The stories of how these places came to be are wonderful and inspirational. They are similar to Mother Teresa's story. You can read about them in detail on our website. (#15) Thank you God for these great gifts. (#16) Thank you for the courageous faithful followers of Jesus who helped these places become a reality. (#17) Thank you God also for the faithful followers of Jesus who prayed for these places and those people.

Thank you wonderful God, my Savior, my Friend.

The gifts to give thanks for this week are gifts of smell:

(#18) Thank you God for the gift of smell. There is such an abundance of good smells to be thankful for that it is hard to chose. I will chose summer smells since I am enjoying some of them right now. Summer is my favorite season. It is when my family and I get to spend the most quality time together. School is over and there is that special freedom of no homework, the pool opens, vacations happen, etc.

(#19) flowers in gardens or hand picked bouquets

(#20) chlorine pool water

(#21) sunscreen lotion

(#21) food cooking on outside grills

(#22) the ocean breeze

(#23) babies necks

(#24) cotton candy

(#25) Christopher's deodorant

(#26) Sophia's scented sprays

The sweet perfume of flowers blooming everywhere is so wonderful! The best flowers to put on the table are hand picked bouquets straight from the garden or bought at the market if you can not grow your own. My favorite summer flowers are the blueish purple hydrangeas, peonies and zinnias.

I love the smell of chlorine water at our community pool. I watch the children splashing around and playing in the pool every summer. This brings me joy. My children are teenagers now. They are too cool for the pool! They spend their time now, if they go to the pool on the chairs suntanning! (#27) Thank you God that we are able to belong to a community pool.

Which brings to mind the smell of sunscreen lotion. This is an ultimate summer smell. This says summer has arrived! Everyone is enjoying the gift of the warm rays of sun from God slathering on the lotion to make sure they do not get sunburned. (#28) Thank you God for allowing us to enjoy relaxing days in the sun with our families that You provide for us.

Enjoying time outside with our families means grilling food outside. This produces a fabulous sensational scent. There is just something about dining alfresco. Food not only smells better - it tastes better. Our family loves to roast marshmallows by the heat of the grill when we are done dinner. When daylight turns to dusk and we turn to candles it is so special. Here it is again - it is in the simple moments - the simple moments are what we relish in life.

Another glorious scent we get to partake of in the summer is that of the ocean breeze. (#29) Thank you God for our many blessed beach family vacations. As soon as our car nears the beach town we enjoy I can smell it...that ocean breeze fragrance. It announces the beginning of our vacation. We have been going to the same beach since our children were babies. I remember the smells of my children at the beach when they were babies. They would nap under the beach umbrella. Then when they would awaken, the smell of their necks was so sweet as I kissed them and held them tight. Then soon they were toddlers and I remember the smell of sticky cotton candy that they loved so much but seemed to have more all over their face and hands somehow than ever got into their mouths! Now....now the smells of them in our house this summer.... My son, Christopher has this male scented deodorant (actually advertised as fresh scent) that is permeating the air. My daughter Sophia, has many scented body sprays that she chooses from daily. Today's choice is some fruity blend. Our house is quite "perfumed." I am sure we will bring home new and interesting memories of smells from our vacation at the beach this summer with our teenage children!

Thank you God for all the smells of summer. Thank you God for all the blessings you continue to pour upon our lives like belonging to a community pool and going on a vacation to the beach. There are those in this world who do not get to do this. We must remember this always.

Thank you wonderful God, my Savior, my friend.

As I write this post, I think of the people in Nigeria who do not have much and those who have much devastation. The people there certainly do not have the material things I write about in this post. I started this thankful journey in honor of the Nigerian people I met. Their strong faith and perspective of seeing what was important in their lives and being thankful to God despite their many hardships was so inspirational to me. I feel that if I never mention any material gifts in my posts at all I would not be authentic. I thought of never mentioning anything that did not refer to nature or people but I decided against it. This is my life. The people in Nigeria know the life we live here in America. They told us they love America. They were so grateful for every little thing that was done for them. They are not bitter. They know that none of us are perfect and that wealth in itself is not success. They just "get it." That is all I will say for now. I remember always crying as I was writing stories about them in my journal! I did not know what I was doing, but they loved me anyway... this strange middle aged woman who cried a lot, kept losing her stuff, got sick and seemed to always be praying. They were very kind. They wanted to know about my life and all of the missionaries lives and asked us to share stories and show them pictures of our families. They would love to hear from you too.

TO YOU MY FRIENDS IN NIGERIA:

My thoughts are with you this summer. Dr. Chris, Mercy, Sr. Oresoa, all the sisters and the children of the Poorest of the Poor, Pastor Ben, Pastor Esther, Blessing, Amos, Daniel, Little Chris, Rhoda, all the hospital staff, counselors, sewing school women at Faith Alive Community, and Fr. Abell ....How are you? Please take care of yourselves. We at HFWAF are praying for you. I am so grateful to God for meeting and getting to know YOU. (#30) Thank you God for this miracle. This is the truth - you are the most loving, accepting group of people I have ever met. I have made another new commitment in my life in honor of all of you. I will share it in my next post.

I am grateful to you wonderful God, my Savior, my friend.

Think of at least three gifts of smell that you are thankful for in the upcoming week. If you would like to, share with us in the comments section below.

Singing songs of praises to you God for the scented gifts of summer...and for all of your endless gifts...

You Are Wonderful!

From Ugly to Beautiful

Joy is the fruit of gratitude.

And gratitude is rooted in perspective.

And when one's rooted in Christ, one has been given the gift of the eyes that really see.

So joy is always possible.

As long as thanks to God is possible, then joy in God is always possible.

Joy is always possible.

Ann Voscamp ~ One Thousand Gifts



I hope everyone has had a good week. I have had a very interesting one after counting my blue blessings. The color blue has kept popping up all over the place. Have you ever had that happen? When you are meditating on something or maybe after hearing a sermon on a certain topic, the main subject seems to keep reoccurring somehow. I will hear about it on the radio, television, a friend will bring it up in conversation that did not hear it, or I will suddenly read about it. During the past week I have become more interested in Pinterest which is a a popular form of visual social media. I found that I kept coming across so many beautiful blue things that I started a whole board dedicated to the color blue. I enjoyed doing this since blue has always been my favorite color. I couldn't believe the absolutely gorgeous blue ocean and sky pictures I was coming across without searching for them. It is like they were exploding across the screen at me. I actually got teary! And how could it be a coincidence that then there it was.....a huge blue eye staring right at me! I will be honest when I got this prompt I thought; Oh this is a lightweight one. I did not know how this would work to come up with three things to be thankful for that are blue. The ocean and the sky thing - we can all think of that one. It just did not feel personal enough to me and yet I was very thankful. One of my true loves is the ocean. My children's blue eyes were more personal. But, I was wrong. God has His ways when you give it up to Him and really thank Him. Just like Ann says in her above statement "gratitude is rooted in perspective." When yours is rooted in Christ, God will give you the eyes to see.

I had gotten uncertain news about my health about three weeks ago. I had to have a test done last week. So, I started this thankful journey while I was waiting for the test results. If the test results were to come back positive, it would be serious. So, I waited and prayed. It helped to be doing this while I was waiting. Our blessings become magnified in times like this. It should not be this way. But it is for us humans. We need things like this to happen in our lives to knock some sense into us. I feel like God was talking to me. He was reminding me of the simple yet magnificent beauty that I had just stated in my blog post. There is so much joy, so much beauty that surrounds us every day.

I had another event to help take my mind off of the test last week. My Nativity Nigeria 2009 teammates organized a get together for dinner Friday night. We have not all been together as a group (just us) since we first got back from our Nigeria trip. I was SO grateful. It could not have come at a better time. We caught up with what is happening in each others lives. As it happened, there was a huge thunderstorm here Friday night. The power went out in our area. I had to call to make sure the restaurant we were going to was still open. The power was still on there so our plan was still set. Why this is all relevant is we traveled to Nigeria in August. The month of August is part of Nigeria's rainy season. So most of the time it is raining. Also, in Nigeria there is very little electricity. We couldn't believe we were having dinner together on this night. It was actually perfect. We called it our "Nigeria weather night!" We laughed, shared our stories, our love for Nigeria, the people, and the friends we made there. We all said how we would love to go back one day. We said we would not only love to go back but how much it would mean to us to go back together as a group again. We share a special bond.

(#4) Thank you God for these wonderful people who went to Nigeria and supported me while I was there. (#5) Thank you for them showing up in my life Friday night when I needed them. (#6) Thank you for these old friends who can share and remember those special memories with me of Nigeria and our dear friends in Nigeria. Three things not even on the list!

(#7) Let me not forget this - The test result came back negative yesterday. I am okay! Lord help to keep me thankful and may I always be rooted in You so that I have "eyes that really see."

Grateful to You Oh Lord for this.

This week's thankful prompt is what gifts have you been given in your life that have gone from ugly to beautiful? Have there been circumstances in your life that God has turned from bad to good? Sometimes we have such hard difficulties in our lives and while we are going through them we certainly find it hard to see any beauty in them. But later, we find a gift in the difficult circumstance in that it has somehow brought us good maybe even joy.


My three gifts from ugly to beauty that have happened in my life are:

1. Difficult Circumstance ~ Blessing

I had a "different" kind of family as I was growing up. I always felt different. Growing up in the 60's and 70's (yes, I am that old :) ) I often felt out of place with divorced parents. Each of my parents are actually divorced twice. I had a difficult childhood and teenage years. Without going into too much detail here, there was a lot of chaos in my life. I did not want anyone to know what was going on in my home so I did not have many friends. There were family broken relationships, friends of our family who did not stick around for the mess, my Mom got sick, my younger brother got sick....by the grace of God I did not. I needed to work to help my Mom out and somehow take care of myself and pay for my college education. I NEVER thought I would see the light at the end of this tunnel.

(#8) Thank you God for this "different family" because it made me who I am today. The circumstances were so hard. But because of this I know there is such a thing as God's grace. I received it. I love my family. My family and I have learned, grown and healed together. (#9) Thank you for the beauty - the gift of good that I became a stronger person by going through those struggles because I believe it has made me a more empathetic person. (#10) Thank you for the bigger heart I grew. It is why I love the broken hearted people of this world. I want to help people. I feel it is why I wanted to go to Nigeria. I was so determined to go there and I was not afraid. This was a huge blessing in my life.

Grateful to You Oh Lord for this.

2. My Will ~ God's Will

I could not have biological children. After being married I could not wait to get started on having children. I had a dream or you could say a plan of starting my own family. After trying to have a biological child for five years and after much tears and frustration I was worn out.

(#11) Thank you God for showing me that your plan is more beautiful than mine could ever be and to remember that relief comes with surrender of even our most precious dreams when they are not meant to be. (#12) Thank you for showing me how You are so faithful. My husband and I realized that we would love to adopt children who were in need of parents who were in an orphanage. We now have two beautiful wonderful children. Our son will be 15 in about 10 days and our daughter is 14 years old. God had a better plan in store for us then our own. His plan was more beautiful than we could have ever imagined. We would never trade our experiences of going to Russia to seeing them for the first time, bonding together with them there in the small apartment in the freezing cold temperatures. We will never forget the wonderful families who hosted us. We did not care that it was 40 degrees below zero! We were together at last! We were with each of our babies! In the end, we were with the babies we had dreamed of! It is true what they say...born of your heart. (#13) Thank you God for our amazing children and our unique unforgettable experiences.

Grateful to You Oh Lord for this.

3. My Sins ~ Fully Forgiven

Thank you God for the best gift of ugly to beautiful - the forgiveness of my sins. You make me new and beautiful from my ugly sinful self.

Grateful to You Oh Lord for this.

This week try to think of three gifts that you can thank God for in your life that has changed from ugly to beautiful. Please share with us in the comments section below.



...counting more of His endless gifts...thanks be to God.

Book Cover by Gin Gin Dionko