A busy but fantastic summer

I’ve had a busy, but fantastic summer with the teams. A team arrived on the 4th July and spent 2 weeks working at Kagoro Gidan Bege Centre, which is just 1 hours drive from Jos, so I was able to drive back and forward to visit them. Christine Craig was leading that team. They did a lot while they were here. They made a great impact in the lives of the kids at Kagoro, where they did tutoring, bible teaching, puppet ministry and generally came alongside the boys, encouraging them and getting to know them. They spend the 2nd half of their time in Jos, doing a mixture of things, including leading devotions at a Widows ministry quite a few mornings, hanging out with the girls at Gyero Care Centre in Jos and completely revamping the devotions room at Open Doors school, by joining Uncle Jim (the art teacher) and a few of our short-term staff to paint cool pictures on the walls. It looks amazing!! Just to add: I joined in too :)

This team flew home on the 29th July and my team arrived on the 30th July, which was a little crazy but also quite handy at the same time. It meant I could just go to Abuja with them, spend a nice little day in Abuja and collect my team the next morning....so what did my team do?

We went from Abuja to Kaduna, Kaduna to Kagoro, Kagoro to Makurdi, Makurdi to Lafiya, Lafiya to Jos! ....a lot of travelling in the space of 4 weeks!

All of these places are cities, but they are also where City Ministries have Gidan Bege Centres. Gidan Bege, which means “House of Hope”, is a Care Centre. This is where street children are brought to when they are ready to come off the streets and some orphans are brought to these centres by neighbours or relations. Quite a lot of the children will have been brought to these centres after being rescued from dangerous situations. They are a place of safety, a place where they will be fed, have a roof over their head, and ultimately experience God’s love.

Our team spent around 6 days at each centre. Within those 6 days, we ran a full 3 day kids/youth programme. Day 1 - we taught them about Esther, day 2 – David, and day 3 – Jesus, so always ending with the perfect example. Our programme was full of worship and teaching new songs, prayer, memory verses, bible talks, puppets, small groups (to recap on the story and give the kids a chance to ask questions), craft, games, sports coaching and each evening of the programme we either showed the film Madagascar or Africa united, had a talent night (I think we may have found some star talent out here! It also gave our team the chance to make everyone laugh!) Ok, our team attempted River dance and performed a classy drama . On the last night, we always did a film outreach for the whole community, using either “The Jesus film” or “The passion of Christ”.

We met really cool kids along the way, and some really great Uncles (leaders of the centres). God taught us so much throughout the 4 weeks and we were greatly challenged! I’m going to share my memories from each centre in another post as this is getting a little bit long.