Update 7 Nigeria

Update 7
One month until we reach America soil. Our time is flying by. This week was an interesting week. You know that I was going over the Niger river to a conference. We went to Ika first and then Grandpa and I went with Mr. Dibble to the conference. He attends these conferences every month. The drive was a day’s journey. We left at 10 am and got to the village at 11 pm. Along the way we stopped at Lukoja at one of the few fast food restaurants. Basically only for rich Nigerians. Mr. Biggs was the name of the place. We each got chicken and rice which tasted delicious. The Nigerians greeted us in Idoma (a different tribe and language than Igala. The greeting in that language is “Uma”) and then proceeded to unload our bags and told us to go sit. They did not want us to work but to rest. I think that is the hardest part to do just to sit because I am so used to helping out. Mr. Dibble told us to sit down or we would offend the Nigerians. So we sat down and watched them unload everything. Then we set up our mosquito netting and went to sleep by 12 am. The next morning we woke up early at 6 am and at 7:30 we had breakfast. The meal was one of guinny corn gruel and fried yam. It tasted pretty good. At 9am the meetings started and let me tell you about the structure of the conference. They have three hour sessions with 2 or 3 speakers. This time they had 3 speakers, each having 1 hr to speak. So they go from 9 am to 12 pm and then there is a 3 hr siesta and then they call come back at 3pm for another round of three hours, ending at 6 pm. So every day there is 6hrs of Bible teaching. :D This conference lasted for three days, so it is a total of 18 hrs of Bible teaching. I loved the hunger for the Word that these people have!!! The conference was outside because there was no building that could hold the amount of people there for the conference. There were around 800 people there (a small crowd according to the Nigerians). They all sat on benches for three hrs straight. As it went on many started falling asleep but there were several people with long sticks there to poke them if they started to fall asleep. I thought that was a good idea. After the first session of teaching many came up to greet us. To my surprise many came up and started talking to me rapidly in their language as if I knew what they were saying and I had no idea what they were saying. Finally when I made them understand that I did not understand. They simply asked if I was Mark (Tom Wheelers Son) Mr. Dibble quickly told them that I was not Mark. Apparently I look much like him. So it made for an interesting weekend. I really enjoyed the people there. They were so hospitable and cooked some of the food without too much pepper. The outhouse was interesting. It was the only private place that whit man had. It was a hole in the ground with a grass mat around it. The grass mat had holes in it, so it wasn’t really that private anyway. One of my favorite meals is pounded yam with Okra soup. Yummy. Anyway, on Friday night I went out onto the soccer field and showed a film show with the projector. Let me tell you I have never preached to that many people ever. There were people from the conference, from the village, people passing through would stop and come over, so much so that, there was people all over the place. There were around 200 people that heard the gospel that night and they loved the pictures. PTL One man came up to me and told me it reminded him of his childhood days when missionaries would come through the village to show film shows. He said it made him very happy that other children would remember this also. We stayed there until Sunday morning and left after breaking of bread for Ika because we wanted to get back before to late. So we travelled back almost the same as we came. The horn on our car stopped. It is a vital part of driving in Nigeria. But we made it back safely without it. We stopped at Mr. Biggs again. I decided to have a Beef Burger and it tastes nothing like an American Burger. It wasn’t bad though. We got to the Ika road and there was a young man there that needed a ride to Ika so we picked him up. We had two of the people that went to the conference with us. So grandpa asked the young man, Fredrick, if he knew Christ. The young man said yes, then he was asked how he knew Him. Fredrick answered that he worshiped him. I, unsatisfied with that answer went on to ask him who Jesus was. Fredrick answered that he did not know. I asked him why he was worshipping someone he did not know. He did not have an answer for that. I proceeded to talk to him about eternity and the other man that was with us, Edo, helped out. We talked about Christ and what He did for us. We found out the young man was a Catholic. He was relying on works and what the priests said. He had no Bible, so we gave him a New Testament to read. The time we had on the Ika road was much to short. I wish that we had had about another 15 minutes. Pray for Fredrick that he would read the Bible and that it would open his eyes to the truth.
We got into Ika with no problems. The next morning we left from Ika to Otutulu and met two police checks along the way. The police asked for pure water (Money) and we literally gave them pure water. We had some bottles and filled them up for them. They let us go right through. The Lord is very good to us. We got on the Ottutulu road and found that there was a big cat with a bucket on it filling in holes and smoothing out the road. When we got to the orphanage we found out that the governor’s wife was coming Tuesday morning. So they were taking out some of the bumps. So on Tuesday morning we met the governor’s wife. She was a nice lady and she was very happy that we were here and that we wanted to come back for another visit. It took all of 30 minutes for her to come and leave and she brought some groceries for the orphanage. Pray that she would have it in her heart to tell her husband that the orphanage needs a paved road, because time is precious when someone needs medical attention here at the orphanage. The orphanage is also in need of Better security because there was a little girl kidnapped in 2006 and her body was later found on the property dumped by the person. She was raped and killed. It is a sad thing. That is one of the things about getting a paved road in here. There would be more criminal activity and more people coming up here. Anyway that is about all that has been happening around here. Pray that I would be able to use my time as wisely as possible. I will be showing films this week during the nights and then this Sunday I will be going out in the field to speak somewhere. Friday and Monday I will also be speaking. Happy Easter Everyone. Praise the Lord that He rose from the grave so that we can have eternal life. :)
Your bro in Christ,
T.J. Kerttula