In everything you do, put God first, and he will direct you and crown your efforts with success. Proverbs 3: 5-6 TLB
As my time at the Retreat center comes to a close (less than 2 months left), I find myself once again at lose ends. That’s the way He has chosen to relate with me. God I mean. On a need-to-know basis. And it seems to be as He determines the need to know. What does the next phase of my life look like? What road am I going to take and where would it lead me? As I pray for direction from on high, I’ll also pray for patience and trust.
Whenever I really need something from God, I have formed this habit of reminding Him of the miracles He did for my dad, my mum and the whole family. And they are countless.
At the Cafe today, we are chatting about the miracles God has performed in our lives.
Where do I start from? Let me give a little background. Both my parents are missionaries in full time ministry. We’ve lived in some incredible places in my life – in mud huts with no form of modernization (how much of that can you get in a mud hut anyway?). We’ve found deadly snakes where we sleep and had so many near death encounters. My younger brother was pronounced dead while still in the womb and only started breathing again after intense prayer. So if anyone says God does not exist, fine. Maybe He does not exist for you but it is impossible for me to claim that He doesn’t. He’s been so real in my life. Despite the many incidences, I’ll focus on one in particular because my parents and I were discussing it a few days ago.
When I was 10 years old (my brothers were 8 and 7), my dad came back home after a trip to the US. He discovered that we, the kids were all ill. But so was our dog, Alheri. The next day, he and my mum took the dog to the vets, they reasoned that since the dog could not talk, we didn’t know the extent of his illness.
We lived (and still live) a long way from town. We measure distance in hours in Africa and in those hours, we lived and hour away from town. On the way back, it was already dark and the lights were not working too fine when all of a sudden, a few minutes from home, the car lost control. It flew off the road straight into a mining dam. The dam was so deep no one knew the exact depth. To further exacerbate matters, the walls of the dam were really high (about 15 feet high). There were four people and a dog in that car and 2 could not swim. My mum was one of the two. She said she felt herself being dragged from the car just before it sank. She floated awhile and felt herself being propelled towards the edge of the dam. While there, she doesn’t know what happend, but it was almost as though she was forklifted out of the pit. My dad who was watching said one minute she was in the water, the next she was dragged up. When she got out, there was no one there. She raised an alarm and folks came out of their homes to find out what was going on. It was these folks who helped my dad out.
The next morning, people gathered around the pit waiting for the dead bodies to come floating but there were no corpses! Everyone of them survived. For months afterwards, each time we gathered to have family devotions, mum would just cry and cry. It was really traumatic.
My brothers and I could have been orphans. But God was merciful. I am almost 28 and thank God I have my parents around. I so need them!
I decided to treat myself to my favourite cafe. It’s owned by a Lebanese woman and I love the feel and ambiance. Usually when I go there, I like to try out a new salad – educating my palate. That way, I discover what I love, what I might eventually learn to love and what I absolutely cannot stand.
I was feeling in an Italian mood so I went for the caprese and grissini. This is a salad of tomato slices and cheese with olive oil dribbled on top and garnishing of choice, in this case, fresh rosemary. It was accompanied with grissini sticks (narrow, long, bread-like sticks).
It was not bad at all but I think it will definitely fall into the what-I-might-eventually-learn-to-love category. I love cheese but … hmmm, well, caprese and I, we’ll take some getting used to.
July 7th was my mum’s birthday; she turned 52. Really hard to believe because she has consistently refused to age.
My brothers and I were out all day. We came back much later in the evening and found her in the kitchen trying to prepare dinner. We didn’t think the ‘birthday girl’ should be making her own birthday dinner so we all shooed her out of the kitchen and took over. We prepared ‘jollof spaghetti’ (I think it’s probably a Nigerian thing), peppered chicken and cole slaw. While I took over the bulk of the cooking, my baby brother and my cousin handled the salad. For dessert, the boys had bought a chocolate cake and a fruit cake. It was wonderful because everyone pitched in.
My mum was so happy she said she wished her birthday was every week. Very funny.
It’s nice to have these family times every now and then. Time flies so fast; if we don’t spend some time making memories we’ll end up with bankrupt years…
coleslaw, jollof spaghetti & peppered chicken
I joined these folks on Sunday. I’m supposed to put up at least one blog post daily for the next one month. Don’t ask me how I’m going to manage that with the eppileptic internet access I have and the sometimes faltering power supply. It seems quite unrealistic but I’m going to try. Luckily, it does not have to be anything long (like this one) and thanks to wordpress I can schedule my future posts!
“Be strong. Take courage. Don’t be intimidated. Don’t give them a second thought because God, your God, is striding ahead of you. He’s right there with you. He won’t let you down; he won’t leave you.” (Deutoronomy 31:6 The Message)
This is especially apt because lately I’ve been feeling let down by people. But I need to remember that faith is not really about how I’m feeling and is mostly about what I believe; and I believe this:
He won’t let me down; He won’t leave me!
The weekend has been incredibly busy and before that it was a really frustrating week. During the week there was a storm which messed with our power and we had a 3 day long blackout. If you are in any other part of the world while you are reading this, you will probably feel acute sympathy for me. If you are in Nigeria though, you will roll your eyes and wonder ‘what’s new?’
I live in an area of Nigeria that usually has constant power supply. It’s called Plateau State and for the most part, we do not use power provided by the Federal Government owned power supply company. This one is privately owned. I think. Anyway, we have a reasonably steady power supply and outages are treated with due urgency.
Well, I had to live through a 3 day power outage when I had so many things to do – all online of course. That would not have been so bad because like good Nigerians, we 
have a stand-by generator. But guess what? The internet was also down! Probably in solidarity with the power… But I am here today to tell you that I survived. It has been proved incontrovertibly that I can go three days without the internet – 3 whole days!! (even I can’t believe it!)
Anyway, all that was topped by the crazy weekend I had. We hosted 40 guests at the Retreat Center! 40!! Or we booked down 40 and ended up with 43 adults and 3 children. Some folks were having a retreat. Now, normally I love having people over – and it’s not just because of the money they bring with them (though there’s that too). But we were filled to capacity – beyond - capacity and catering for them was quite stressful. But I had it under control, I’m good like that (quite shameless, I know).
Then on the last night the strangest thing happened. We served 46 plates of food and included 4 extra plates. We cleaned up, heaved a sigh of relief and my assistant was getting ready to go home for the night when lo and behold, a straggling group of men came at us yelling, arms waving ….OK. So that’s not totally accurate. A single representative came to inform us that the food was not enough. Wait. Did I mention that there were 43 adults and 3 children? And did I also say that we served 50 plates of food? So what was the problem?? Oh, the women ate all the food! And left 15 hungry men?? Oh dear! It was hilarious but not exactly funny because that meant we (my assistant and I) had to go into the kitchen because our cook had closed for the day. sigh.
What really amazed me was that it seemed like such a role reversal. One would expect the men to eat all the food and leave the women without, but it was the other way around. Go figure. I guess what a man can do (in this case EAT), a woman can do better indeed. Oh well, at least they left me with an amusing anecdote to relate. And I really did love having them around.
July 4 was America’s Independence Day; so to all my American friends, Happy Independence!
July 4 is also my brother’s birthday. He is a special person and I would like to wish him a very special birthday. I know that things are turning for him in the best possible way. I can feel the Lord restoring to him all the years the locusts have eaten…There is greatness in every drop of his blood and no drop will go to waste.
With all that’s in me little brother, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
I can’t explain it, I feel as though I’m losing touch with my faith. No, I still believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and I’m a born-again Christian. But I’m finding it hard to connect with God. Yeah I pray, and read my Bible. But I have felt loneliness surround me like a shroud, blocking all light and joy from my life. As I tried to explain to my fiance, it is not as though something momentous happened which has fostered this feeling of loneliness. I just don’t seem to be myself. I’m in a situation where I am questioning a lot of my beliefs and re-examining my expectations.
There are milestones in every life. Places you get to and you know a major change has taken place inside of you
. Sometimes it is associated with something huge; a tragic loss or a major catastrophe. Other times though, you do not even know when you are passing that milestone until you suddenly realize that you are a great distance from the person you were the week before and you know that you can’t go back to that person no matter how much you want to. Well, I can point almost to the hour, the exact moment when I passed that milestone.
Recently, I became an ‘adult’. Oh I’m almost 28 and most people reach adulthood in their teens. But I still had the lightheartedness of a child, and the mischief too. I never wanted to become an ‘adult’; to get to that place where things are a little grimmer. That point where one is always slightly dissatisfied with her (or his) life. However, I finally crossed the line. I faught valiantly but I had to surrender. I gave up.
I gave up when I discovered that people are never what they say they are or even what you think they are – no matter how long you’ve known them, they go up and do stuff that’s completely out of character. Or is it? That was where I had the difficulty. Then I discovered that people you respect and even honour, people who have added so much value to your life, well, they are not those people you thought they were. It’s all about how thick the smokescreens were…then I began to question those values.
OK. So now I have to ask myself if all I believe about God is as a result of what I came to discover myself or if it’s what these people I’ve modeled part of my life after have led me to believe. That is why I say I have a crisis of faith. I need to sift through and know what belief is mine and which has been handed over either from my home, my peers or my church group.
Hi,
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Cheers!
