Peace, not pieces.
Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 11:11AM We have arrived in Nigeria, and as they say in Lagos, ‘We thank God that we arrived here in peace, not in pieces,’ a saying with particular relevance in Lagos, given the generally psychotic state of its traffic. Each day on the road, while we are jammed in one 3 km knot of trucks, taxis and motorbikes or another, our Nigerian leader, Rex, comments: ‘today the traffic is worse than usual than usual’ and gives some excuse or another. But he has said this everyday now for seven days and the traffic never gets better.
The reason we’re constantly on the road here is that we’re visiting the communities in which local leaders have begun caring among the poor. Each one of them was stirred into action by the training done by Rex over the past year. Just to get started, Rex has chosen to focus on five of these people: two of them are well-trained nurses and the other three are pastors and their wives. I can honestly say you would all love each one: their passion and generosity is inspiring and overwhelming at the same time. We have felt ourselves shrinking a bit over the past month under the weight of Hands’ huge goal for 2010, and we have been praying desperately for encouragement. Seeing that God has already stirred such miraculous people as this is a clear reminder for us that He is working far beyond what we can see or do from our little ASM campus office by the pool.
In just the past few months, these leaders have started schools, home-based cares and clinics, all of it done with their local resources. Each one is located in a typical Lagos slum infested with Malaria (whole neighborhoods flood here in the rainy season) and suffering severe lack of education. One particular community, called Orile, runs along an abandoned railroad line and straddles a canal that is plugged solid with garbage and rats and dirt and constantly overflows.
For as far as you can see down the rail line, the community has brothel after brothel after brothel. The commercial sex workers line the doorways and hallways. The whole place is owned by a handful of village “elders” who receive weekly payments from the women for their rent. And the place is full of children. Many are abandoned immediately after birth, being the children of prostitution, and stay alive by bouncing from place to place in the community. Others are literally dumped in gutters to die.
Pastor Chris and his young wife, Faith live in Orile and have passionately and urgently stood up to say they will take responsibility for these children. It will be like a journey through hell for them, and there’s not much we can do to ease their burden. But Hands at Work exists to stand with people like this and to fight beside them. We can’t imagine a battle closer to the Father’s heart.
This morning we leave Lagos to meet Dave in the ancient city of Ibadan where he is establishing a Nigerian Service Centre and mobilizing several new CBOs.
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