The Love of God in Action

On Sunday 28th February, 2010, we reached out with the love of God to 12 needy families. This is in line with the central focus of all our Home Churches’ outreach activities here in Nigeria as I wrote in Helping The Helpless.  In that post, I promised a follow up with updates including pictures and other details the charity outreach.

I want to thank everyone that gave time, money, and other resources to make this mission a success, may God bless you all, in Jesus name.  My very special thanks go to the Pastors, Leaders, and members of the Citizens Family Church here in Nigeria who sacrificed so much of their personal resources, time, and energy to ensure that we brought a message of hope to some of the most neglected families in our community.  I love you guys with all my heart, and pray for God to continue to increase your capacity to be a blessing to our world, in Jesus name.

Research and Planning

This mini-outreach has been months in planning. Our target was to make a difference in the lives of at least 10 extremely poor families. Specifically, we wanted to feed each of these families for at least a month.

So we did a lot of work to determine how much food will be needed to feed a family of 7 for a month.

Our Charity crew then took a tour of our target community and met one on one with families there in order to determine their levels of needs. We did not want to depend on third party information – including the community associations – as these are prone to the usual greed and corruption that prevents aid from reaching the very people that need it the most.  Based on our research and findings, we raised the funds from within the pastors, leaders, and members of our Church.

I was overjoyed when the Director of the Charity Outreach informed me that we had raised enough money to feed 12 families for two months!

We had exceeded our goal!

Praise God!

Meeting the families

We met the families at an Assemblies of God church hall. We drove there as a church with our loads of food aid items, while the 12 families trekked from their shacks to meet us at the hall.

I was there with Pastors and leaders from our church, as well as some of our members. My children accompanied us too as I wanted them to share in the experience.

The substance of the message that we shared with those families was, "We are not here to preach to you or tell you that we are any better than you. We are here to tell you that you are not alone, that God loves you, and that you do have a future."

I read to them from Jeremiah 29:11 and Psalm 139:17,18, quoted below in Ibo language – my native dialect, and the language I used during my message to them.

“N’ihi na Mu onwem mara echiche nile nke Mu onwem neche bayere unu, (o bu ihe si n’onu Jehova puta), echiche nke udo, o bugh nke ihe ojo, inye unu odi-n’iru na ntukwasi-obi.”  ~ Jeremaia 29:11

"Le ka echiche Gi nile si di oke onu-ahia n’anyam, Chineke!
Le ka onu-ogugu nile ha si di uku ri nne! O buru na aguam ha onu, ha bara uba kari aja: Mgbe m’tetaworo, mu na Gi nanogide." ~ Abu Oma 139:17,18

We sang together with the families and even danced. The atmosphere was very friendly and cordial.

Our time with the families was a learning experience, as well as a very touching one. I became more aware of the level of poverty that can exist side by side with wasteful wealth, and how negligent of the poor our government and society is.

I was particularly affected by the sight of the little children. It’s hard to put what I felt into words as I looked into their eyes, trying to read it and discern what those eyes were saying. All I can say is that I felt them. I heard them, and I resolved that I was going to do all that’s within my power to make powerfully positive difference in their lives.

Distributing food items

Watching their excitement turn to amazement and then to tears moved me deeply.

They couldn’t believe their eyes at the volume and quality of the package we came with for each family. We tagged it ‘Family Pack’ and each contained enough food to last a family for not just a month, but two!

Glory be to God.

Most of the women wept as they received their packs, while the others tried to calm them down, as they were overcome with emotion at what they received.

I fought back my own tears. It was so touching.

Our members were so overjoyed to be a part of making a difference in these people’s lives.

Ministry

At the end we prayed for them, asking for God’s blessings upon their lives.

One of the recipients – a widow – prayed a very powerful and bible based prayer for us! She quoted whole chapters from Psalms. Sharon and I had a group hug with her afterwards.

Watching them going home with their packs is a picture that will forever remain etched in my memory.

What next?

I will write about our next Helping the Helpless mission. So stay tuned, and thanks a million for your encouragement and support to us as we undertake this task of reaching the helpless and neglected peoples of our world.