Seeing God at work in Nigeria First-hand - Nigeria Report
On the first day Samuel and Jonny visited the headquarters of Every Home for Christ (EHC) in Lagos. They were shown around their facilities including their storage area for Gospel literature. Very little Revival Movement literature remained as most of it had already been sent out to various workers and partners across the country. Brother Lanre and his wife, Ebeme are the regional directors for Every home for Christ in West Africa and the regional office is also located at the headquarters. In Nigeria, Every Home for Christ have divided the country into four areas: North West, North East, South West and South East. We met the four leaders of these areas: Peter, Michael, Abimbola and David.
EHC invited ministry leaders from other organisations with whom they partner to come and share with us. The first was Pastor Augustine Edema (Above) who is the vice-president of Child Evangelism Ministry (CEM). CEM is a children’s ministry that works in all 37 states of Nigeria, as well as in Liberia and Ghana. In Nigeria they have many children’s clubs situated all over the country, led by volunteers who teach in these clubs. They have been receiving Gospel literature from Every Home for Christ, such as the Creation to Christ Bible lessons and also the illustrated doctrinal Bible lessons: Salvation Vol. 1 & 2. He told us the tremendous blessing that it is to have these children’s Bible lessons which they give to their volunteers for teaching children the word of God.
After this we met with ministers and church leaders who have been using our literature in the greater Lagos area. Each of these men took time to thank us for the literature that they have received and told us about the blessing these materials have been to their work.
Later in the day we discussed the enormous literature needs of Every Home for Christ in Nigeria. Brother Lanre explained that they had almost no Revival Movement tracts left in stock. We explained to them that there was a container coming with over 600,000 tracts for the South West area and 460,000 tracts for the South East area. The reaction was one of surprise, and disappointment. His response was that it was nowhere near enough tracts to meet their ministry needs. We assured him that we would be sending more tracts for them in the next container that we ship to Nigeria.
We had interesting discussions concerning literature for the north of the country, where the majority of the people are Muslims. There is a tremendous amount of persecution taking place in the north of Nigeria and many followers of Christ are losing their lives. One of the most dangerous times is when Christians travel on public transport. Sometimes buses and vehicles will be stopped, the Christians removed, and then killed. This causes a huge problem for evangelists who are travelling from village to village, town to town, and city to city reaching out to people with the Gospel literature. The Hausa language is widely spoken in the north of Nigeria and increasingly the Arabic language too, and so we need to be printing larger quantities in these languages.
On our second morning, Every Home for Christ had a supply of gospel tracts which they had printed locally and they wanted to send these tracts to other areas of the country. We took the parcels of tracts to a local market where they negotiated with local transport companies. People travel all over the country and many mini bus drivers are willing to put the parcels of tracts in their mini bus, and when they arrive at their destination, they will phone the person who is to receive the tracts, who will then come and pick them up in their own local town or city. This is an effective way of transporting the literature, and is relatively cheap too. It was interesting to watch a payment being made with big wads of bank notes. However, each bank note was only worth 25p or 50p each.
In the afternoon we went to an area of Lagos where two churches, an Assemblies of God and a Presbyterian church, had joined together to have an evangelistic outreach. We went out with the members of the churches, visiting people either where they worked or in their homes, giving them Gospel tracts and taking some time to explain the Gospel to the people. The last person that we met at a shop was the local chief of the area and he was very welcoming to us.
The following day we travelled to the city of Ibadan which was about a two-hour journey from Lagos. There we visited a local church where a group of pastors had met. In order to conduct evangelism, most of these pastors have already had supplies of our literature and have been using it in their own areas. It was interesting just to watch these evangelists at work distributing the tracts and to see the willingness of people to receive them. It also gave us a good idea as to the conditions that many people are living in. We discovered that in this area they speak the Yoruba language. We have printed Gospels tracts in Yoruba in the past. After distribution we met in the church again and each Pastor had the opportunity to share their appreciation for the tracts that they had received. One Pastor spoke about the problem that he used to have in getting gospel tracts. Although he wanted to do evangelism, no tracts were available. Then he heard of Every Home for Christ. “I was able to get a supply of tracts from them, free of charge,” he explained. He told us that he could never have afforded to get good quality tracts unless they were supplied to him free. He was so excited to have the opportunity to say thank you for the tracts.
On Thursday we left Every home for Christ and met up with brother Chris who oversees the ACTS bookshop and our depot in Lagos. Chris looks after the arrival of our containers into Lagos, and the distribution of the literature that we ship to the many different organisations we partner with in Nigeria. A few years ago, he took over looking after the entire depot and bookshop and has done a tremendous job. Recently they have made a few changes to the depot: the gate entrance has been widened so when our 40-foot container loads of literature arrive, they can reverse into the depot and then close the gates. This allows the team to safely unload the literature without any danger of literature being stolen on the street.
Chris explained to us that often, church denominations will hold conferences for their pastors in different regions of the country. Sometimes these conferences will have 400-500 ministers attending. Denomination leaders will come to Chris and purchase one title in quantity so that every pastor attending the conference will receive a book. In other cases, they will order bundles of ‘Creation to Christ’ children’s Bible lessons and then each Pastor will receive one set of lessons to take back to be used in the Sunday school in their church. He explained that many people are delighted with the 40 lessons in the set as this gives them almost an entire year of teaching for the children in the churches.
Chris also explained that many more churches are becoming interested in teaching their children the Word of God instead of merely entertaining them and keeping them happy while the main church service is going on. As a result, he has many more requests for children’s teaching material than before. There is also a great demand for the doctrinal Bible lessons and these have been going out very quickly.
We also had a visit at the bookshop from the leader of CEF in Lagos, who has been receiving quantities of the CEF flashcard Bible lessons, and giving these to Good News Club teachers throughout the Lagos area. The ministry in Lagos has been hampered as there has only been one full-time worker in the state. But just last year another full-time worker has joined the ministry. Of course, there are many other areas all across the country of Nigeria, and the literature that we shipped to them is transported and used throughout the country
It was a joy to meet with representatives from Brother Gbile Akanni’s ministry ‘Living Seed/Peace House’. These are the friends that have published the booklet ‘Battle for the Young’ which is in huge demand, not only by these friends, but also by many other organisations that we work with.
A number of years ago they gave Revival Movement permission to print this booklet in a variety of languages and since then we have printed hundreds of thousands of these booklets. Many ministries have come back to us to tell us the huge impact that this booklet has had on the lives of young people. Many are coming to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as a result.
Brother Charles, who is in charge of the publishing department of the organisation, told us that they have now developed a collection of booklets which they have made into a pack entitled ‘Battle for the Young’. They are also now starting to conduct multiple conferences for young people. They showed us one advert for the Lagos area where they will hold eight conferences on the same dates in different places. Each venue will hold up to 5000 young people. ‘Battle for the Young’ booklets will be used extensively during this conference so they were asking us to print many more copies of the booklet.
They also have been using our Revival Publishing books and requested larger supplies of these books for the bookshops and also to be used during their conferences. We are delighted to work with these friends who have such an extensive ministry across Nigeria, West Africa and many other countries. Pray that we will be able to help them with more literature.
While in Nigeria, Samuel received news that his mother-in-law had died, with the result that we had to cut our trip short and return home for the funeral. We managed to meet most of the people that we wanted to see, but we were disappointed that we could not meet with Brother Luka Vandi, the general director of ACTS. He was booked to fly to Lagos, but at the last minute his flight was cancelled.