Come This Christmas

Here we are, as Christians, anticipating within days the coming of the birth of our Lord, Jesus Christ. On Sunday, December 25th, we will be celebrating Christmas, which is supposed to be all about Jesus.

A lot of people say the giving that we do this season represents the joy we have in our faith. As we strive to give to others this season, let us contemplate on what true giving really is. Can we try to take the focus off of our own gratification and materialism and share with those who really have less. Jesus was full of compassion. He entered into the human condition. He experienced it. Over and over again in scripture we see how Jesus was able to "see" people. The more we can become like Jesus, the more we can see the world through our Savior's eyes. Other people's problems become our concerns. Jesus gives us new eyes. Jesus gives us new hearts. Jesus makes us new.

Come Jesus! Come this Christmas! Make us new! Break our hearts for what breaks Yours. Compel us to truly give to those in need, not only at Christmas but all year round.

Here are pictures of the Sisters and the children enjoying a wonderful Christmas celebration at the Anawim Home. Sr. Oresoa sent these pictures to the HFWA Board with a thank you for the food, supplies and Christmas clothing that we sent. The children are so grateful and happy. We want to thank our most generous benefactors who make such a joyful celebration possible.

Merry Christmas to our partners at the Anawim Home and the Faith Alive Hospital. We pray for God to bless them in the New Year.

Planting Seeds

My memories are still so strong of that hot sunny August day two years ago. There we were, the six of us standing at a temporary school at a farm at Hwol Yarje, Nigeria. We were a missionary team sent by the Church of the Nativity to visit the Faith Alive Hospital. On that day we were visiting the school named the Faith Alive Community School. The school was built on land donated to Faith Alive Hospital by a former grateful patient. The funds for the school were donated by a church that cared. All these children now had a school. It was a nice school even though it was a temporary one. It did have desks, books and bright pictures. The children all came out to greet us.

Now here we were. We asked where the water supply for the farm came from. We were told from a nearby stream. Well the stream was not very nearby and it was very dirty. I remember how we all just looked at one another and we just knew we were all thinking the same thing. Our Church had been considering a clean water project for its Advent giving program. We did not know if this could be a site we could help or not. But we all felt the same way in our hearts. Our return to the site later in the week with Dr. Chris is a beautiful story. Read more here.

The site did become part of our Church's Advent fundraising project and the necessary funds were raised to fund clean water projects at the Anawim Home and Faith Alive. The Church of the Nativity then partnered with the HFWAF to get the funds safely to the partners in Nigeria and then to monitor the successful completion of the water projects.

Now two years later, while in Jos, the Nativity Nigeria team was privileged to attend the commencement ceremonies of the first graduating class of the Faith Alive Community School and the dedication of the water borehole and toilet system. Read more here.

Over 300 people attended the dedication and graduation ceremonies of 15 students. There were activities of dancing, presentations and theater. It is reported that 90,000 people are benefiting from the water supply!

So you see a tiny number of seeds are planted that produce a much larger harvest. It all starts with giving selflessly. In a recent message series at our church we focused on how one reaps what he sows-even if many times we don't get to see it immediately. But sometimes God let's us see it quickly and it can be very powerful. Dr. Chris and the staff go above and beyond to give their time and talents to the sick and suffering people. A grateful patient donates his land to the hospital when he dies. A visiting church that cared, wanted a school to be built on that land for the farm community's many children. The school is built and now educates 250 children. Another visiting church team, that had a feeling on their hearts, took a story back to their congregation. The church had a borehole for clean water and a latrine built, that enriches the lives of 90,000 people!

The negative voice in your head will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world. That what you do does not matter. That is not God's voice. This story shows how God can work through us and one person at a time all for His good.

Thank you so much to our partner, the Church of the Nativity. To God be the glory, honor and adoration for all that He continues to do.

I Will Give You The Words

Hello friends. It has been awhile since I have posted. I hope all of you have had a good summer. My family and I enjoyed a great vacation at the beach. The other board members have enjoyed great vacation time with their families too. There have been two weddings in our board families this summer! The son of Diane Blattner, our president, got married in August. Also, Karen Kennedy's daughter got married in June. Even though we have been celebrating and enjoying family time this summer, we still have been hard at work for our partners in Nigeria. We have a lot that we will be reporting to you. One thing I want to mention now is that the Nativity Nigeria team from The Church of Nativity arrived home safely. They had a very successful mission trip. Read about the details here. I will be posting about one of the projects that we partnered with them in the next blog.

For now I want to share with you how grateful I am to be having this relationship with you, my readers. It is an honor to be able to help in any way I can for the Hope for West Africa Foundation and those of you I met while I was a missionary in Nigeria. I do feel called and yet I have struggled with this. I came across some notes today that I took after reading a really good article a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to share it with you. The article was on introverted leaders in church by a Pastor who by his own admission is an introvert. The question was posed can an introvert be a good leader? This Pastor had long doubted his abilities as a leader. It just seemed SO hard and SO much work for him to do the part of his job that was relational.

But he makes a great point. Just because part of his work was or did not come "naturally" to him did not mean that he was not a good fit for it. He is convinced that calling, not personality type, is the determinative factor in the formation and longevity of a leader. He had always felt the calling to be a Pastor. There was the stirring in his heart and a passion to do this for God. He says God may call some people into work for which THEY ARE NOT PERFECTLY SUITED, for HIS GREATER GLORY. WOW! This really made me pause today. How true is this? Because this is such powerful testimony to God. A person's life becomes a living testimony to God not by being righteous but by being changed because you have to lean into God. Just like when you know a Pastor is shy but he gets up in front of thousands of people every weekend and gives a powerful message and he does not seem shy for a second. This is when it is obvious that people are laboring in the power of God. Sometimes we question God even though we feel called just because it seems hard. I have questioned whether I should be blogging or not because the words do not always come easily. I have always enjoyed writing but I have no experience at professional writing.

The Pastor reminds us when he calls us he is not saying to do it alone. He refers to Moses and the burning bush. Moses did not want to say yes. Moses thought he was a clumsy speaker. The Lord did not disagree telling Moses he was a wonderful speaker who inspired him. He said, "I will be your mouth and teach you what you are to speak. I will be with you. I will give you the words."

It is God's power not self power that helps us minister to others.

Summer Missions Underway

Our partner from Maryland, Church of the Nativity, has sent two teams to Nigeria this week. The teams arrived safely in Abuja on Sunday and settled in at the Anawim Home. They were given a most enthusiastic welcome by Sr. Oresoa, the other sisters, staff and children. On Monday, one team travelled on to Jos to meet up with Dr. Chris and the Faith Alive family. This team was treated to a welcome similar to the one in Abuja. After a short period of resting to recover from their long journey and getting acclimated to their surroundings, the teams began a week of activities that is mutually beneficial and rewarding to both the teams and the communities at Anawim Homes and Faith Alive.
Also visiting Faith Alive at this time is Erika Nossokoff from our partner in Colorado, First Presbyterian Church. Erika has been very close friend of Dr. Chris and the Faith Alive family for a few years now and she helps the Nativity team in their orientation. Her service during her visits to Faith Alive has been such a blessing to Dr. Chris and the community.

Reading the daily postings from each of these partners makes me reflect on my visits to our friends in Nigeria. How unforgettable those memories are! Our friends at both Anawim and Faith Alive are so expressive in their appreciation for what the teams do for them. But it was my experience, and I am sure it is shared by those there now, that I was blessed more by knowing them. Let us pray for both our African and American partners and that the mission trips bear much fruit for the glory of God.

The Summer Storm

In north Baltimore County on Monday evening there was a powerful thunderstorm. There was an enormous sound light show courtesy of Mother Nature. It was an awesome display of the power and beauty of God’s creation. Just as the show was about to end (@8:30) the electric power in our house went out. We assumed that this would be a short outage and disruption to the family’s lazy summer night routine. But as the minutes and then hours passed the realization set in that this was going to possibly go well into the next day and we were in for a tough night. I must admit that for a long time (longer than I care to admit) we were downright miserable because all of our comforts and conveniences were gone. We were feeling so sorry for ourselves. Then all of a sudden I got a flashback to my trips to Jos in 2008 and 2009. On each trip I spent approximately 17 days in Nigeria. In Nigeria the lack of electricity is the norm rather than the exception. Many Nigerians are impoverished to the point where they cannot even pay for electricity. And even the few who do have the ability to pay, do without because the electricity service delivery system (owned and run by the national government) is extremely dysfunctional. Electricity is available on an irregular and unpredictable basis. Remembering this made the wait for the return of our electricity, even if it was for more than 24 hours, so much more bearable.

I will never forget what it was like not having electricity in Nigeria. Both times my trips were in August. Most of my time was spent at Faith Alive Hospital which is located in Jos which is on a plateau so it gets slightly cooler weather-high 80's,low 90's. I also visited The Anawim Home in Abuja which is hotter-high 90's. At both places our team spent much of our time sweating. Of course no air conditioning or fans. Windows are kept open and often there are no screens or the screens are broken. There is a mosquito problem and many people suffer from Malaria. Two Faith Alive staff people had Malaria while we were there in 2009. It is common there so even though they were sick they kept working. Having your windows open all the time can lead to another problem we never thought of for people living in the city or village. There was lots of loud sound coming in those windows! And the sound did not stop at night! There was a restaurant across the street from Faith Alive Hospital that played loud music. I guess they had a generator! Anyway, with no electricity darkness comes when it comes. We would sit around our sitting room quarters at night with our flashlight and take flashlights with us when we needed to go from room to room. Faith Alive does have generators for the hospital and the guest house so they can help the visitors and serve us meals. But as you travel around Jos you will see many of the people cooking their meals by fire. There is a lot of air pollution due to all the fires.

Nigerians deal with misfortune or adversity so much better than we do. It is what they are used to. We are used to being pampered. One thing I learned there is how to have better quality time with people. While my team member's and I sat around in the dark with our flashlights we had some great times--great stories and laughs shared. Monday night when the power outage happened my kids went for their games. Games and flashlights! What's this I thought? Wasn't this nice? We need to stop all this technology stuff and go back to quality family time and play games like we used to. I have 13 yr. old girl and a 14 yr. old boy. I suggested to them that we have a family game night 3 times a week. They said in unison,"3 times a week! MOM REALLY!" We settled on one. It is still progress.

Thank you to the Nigerian people for the time spent with you and for all that you taught me and for your never ending courage.

U.S. HIV/AIDS Funding Cuts

The following is a message on the status of the HIV/AIDS program at Faith Alive Hospital, from Dr. Chris Isichei, founder. As government funding decreases for HIV/AIDS, it becomes increasingly more important for private contributions to increase to fill this funding gap. Please pray with us for the Faith Alive patients.

I returned from a trip [for training at the Haggai Institute] and met with our team yesterday over a decision to halt fresh enrollment of newly diagnosed HIV cases into our program whether ARVs [Anti-Retrovirals] or Care [due to U.S. funding cuts]. We were however advised to refer to certain sites that still have vacancies.

On my first day back to work, we had about 15 new cases most insisting they will not go anywhere but rather die in Faith Alive. We had no choice but to accompany them to the various places we referred them to and assured them that they will continue to be part of Faith Alive family. We will follow them up to the end wherever they may be. This helped to some extent. I have insisted that pregnant women and children be excluded while I work out something for them….

It has dawned on me with bleeding heart that with this God given vision, I will have to watch and see some persons turned back from specifically ART [Anti-Retroviral Treatment] services but I pray that the follow up program instituted by the U.S. government will still allow us impact them for Christ. God bless."

Partners Prepare for Nigeria

Last summer, Faith Alive determined that the civil unrest in Jos presented risks that were too great for them to host their missionary partners. Since the election of Nigerian President Jonathan Goodluck, our partners in Nigeria are accepting visitors. A wonderful church that we partner with here in Timonium, The Church of Nativity is glad to be getting ready again for another missionary trip in August. This is the church that I am a member of and the missionary team that I traveled to Nigeria with in both 2008 and 2009. This post is from Brian Crook, the Director of Missions at Nativity:

The 2011 Nativity:Nigeria teams are about a month away from their departure date for a two-week mission trip to Nigeria. Church of the Nativity sends mission teams each summer to support and share life with their Nigerian partners, the Faith Alive Hospital and the Sisters of the Poorest of the Poor.
To ensure each missionary has a full experience, the mission teams engage in months of preparation that includes everything from shots and vaccinations to team building, prayer, and a half-day retreat. The focus of the short-term mission trips is on building relationships. By sending teams that are bonded and well connected, they have a tremendous opportunity to connect with the people in the communities of Jos and Abuja, to listen to and learn from them, and to share their experiences when they return home. By sending groups each year, Church of the Nativity stays closely connected with their partner communities and hopes to be ever-strengthening their long-term partnerships.
In addition to building relationships, in the weeks leading up to their departure, Nativity:Nigeria also hosts a Vitamin Drive. The teams will haul hundreds of pounds of vitamins with them that the partners will use to serve their local communities. Church of the Nativity is immensely grateful for its partnership with HFWAF and looks forward to working together on many future projects.

Photos:
top-Anawim team
bottom - Faith Alive team