Sanu (hello)

Mun kawo maku gaisuwa daga Nigeria
(We bring greetings from Nigeria)

We are learning some of the "hawse" language (pronounced house - aa)

Yester day was a quiet day near ur community and we enjoyed walking around the compound in the morning. People are very freindly and always willing to chat with us. We met a lovely lady at the counselling centre (Ann - we thought of you..... you should come here). The same building is housing a medical clinic with capabilites fr lab work. The construction of the building is completed and they are still waiting for the furnishings. The counsellor's offoce had a sand box for children's play thereapy.
Many of the students here do plan to go to the USA for their PhD and then return home to Nigeria to aid their own communities or to teach here. There are many, many churches and church organizations in and around the city of Jos.
The Canadian embassy is doing an amazing job of keeping track of our whereabouts. We have had numerous email communications and when they initially could not find us they were calling other Canadian missionaries asking if they knew us and where we were. The information had been provided on our embassy registration but they could not reach us by phone or email. We are not sure why the email did not get us connected. Anyway they spent much of Sunday trying to trace us and on Monday we exchanges several emails with Ed Cashman (the ambassador stationed in Abuja). Ed had also called Doreen - head of SIM (mission agancy) thinking we were part of an SIM team. Doreen called the provost, the president of JETS (Jos ECWA Theological Seminary) whom we had met at our seminars on the week-end. This all led to a visit from Andy Hardings yesterday. He is called a "warden" and represents the ambassador in the area of Jos. He had been called by Ed and asked to visit us to ensure our location and our wellness. Andy has lived in Jos for almost 30 years and also spent time in Canada (BC), although he is originally from Amsterdam. He has many roles as a missionary in Jos, one of which is caring for folks such as us. The Nigerians are very impressed at the concern of the Canadian government for our well-being. They have told us that the Nigerian government would never look for their own people in the same way the Canadian government is looking for us. It made us feel very proud to be Canadian.
In the afternoon we we went to a rural community about 30 minutes from the compound. It is on the edge of the city. As we travelled we passed through an area called (by the locals) the "mechanics village". It is miles of broken down vehicles and open air repair shops for cars and trucks. We saw evidence of burned out over turned vehicles. The people in this area are very poor.
We travelled to a church to teach the peacemaker seminars.Originally we were to teach Monday - Wednesday but Monday was cancelled due to "skirmishes". We have condensed our materials into two days of teaching. About 100 people attended yesterday's seminar and their questions indicated to us that they understood the teaching and could make application to their own life situations.