You won't believe it, but in 1985 "De Vaste Burcht"was in excess of cash, something not too often happens with relief organizations. I decided to write letters to the large national Christian organizations and explained to them, DVB was able to invest money in missionary and / or evangelization projects, but we were short of ideas. Please share your projects with us and we will make a decision if we can support you.
Out of the eight letters I sent, only one (!) reacted, and we were able to share a project with them. But all the other ones did not react, not even after a reminder! I can tell you, if someone nowadays would write a letter to me like this, I would knock on his door the same day.
It became a matter of prayers, and suddenly I saw the Lord showing me a target for help.
One Sunday morning a Nigerian pastor visited our church, and him was given fifteen minutes to say a few words to the congregation. He told his congregation had no place of worship for the shed in wich they gathered was sold by the owner. The pastor decided to go to The Netherlands, being the only foreign country he had ever been before as a partaker in a Billy Graham World Conference.
In the past week he had visited many church organizations, but no one was seriously interested in his plea, and some even made a fool of him. He was sad, and this was his final testimony before going home.
At the end of the service I invited him to stay some five minutes and drink a cup of coffee together. He gave in, and I bluntly asked him if he really needed the building. He was offended; of course he needed the building! I asked him what it would cost to build it, and I proposed him to join me for a ride the next day, so we could talk about his project. As a result, I promised him to build a church that could seat five hundred people on benches, and without wall-to-wall carpet. He went home with joy in his heart.
However, one big problem arose: the Naira turned out to be a non-convertible currency, and the official rate was double the market rate. I asked him if he could take dollars and change them in Nigeria, but he refused. "If they catch me, the'll put me against the wall!"
One day I had lunch with a friend and I told him the currency problem I had. He unblushingly said: "No problem; I know how to exchange dollars into Nairas legally at the market rate. A friend of mine operates refrigerator ships that travel to Lagos with loads of fish. For bunkering fuel he has a license to legally exchange dollars into Nairas against the market rate." I was amazed. I did not know my friend had any connection in this direction and besides that, how often do you meet someone who has expert knowledge of a currency a "normal" person would never have heard about? But he did, and I used the connection to his friend to exchange the money in Nigeria. One year later the church was built. It is a solid building with a big parsonage on the second floor for the pastor's family with six children, and besides that there are guest rooms as well. I invited my good friend, the late Johan Maasbach to join me for the opening ceremony. He did, and he was the main speaker at a campaign that was organized.
Once I asked Godwin why he came to The Netherlands to find support for his church. He told me that once he had a dream. In that dream he saw himself standing at the foot of a mountain. Someone gave him a parcel and ordered him to climb the mountain. While he was doing that he looked what the parcel was, and discovered it was a portable radio. He switched it on, but only heard noise. However he found out that while he was
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Church in the bush village of Umu Alor
gaining height the noise reduced and the voice in the background became clearer bit by bit. As he reached the top of the mountain the voice was clear, and said: "If you go to Europe, you'll get a church!"
Then he woke up, and told his dream to the church board. They decided together that Godwin should go to Europe, and they raised the money for his trip. The problem was, he did not know where to go, for he did not know anyone outside the borders of Nigeria, except one lady who helped him while he was in our country for the Billy Graham Conference. She was willing to organize the meetings he had and to give him shelter. That's how Godwin and Adri found each other. Nice story, isn't it?
Two years later a group of students from Godwin's Bible school discovered on a distance of hundred kilometres a village, hidden in the bush. That village was Umu Alor, and it was really a VERY remote village. No one in the village had a car (the village nowadays can only be reached by car during three months a year during the dry season), there were no houses, no roads, no infrastructure at all. Umu Alor was (and still is) one of the areas in the world where surface water is polluted by the guinea worm, and they have to drink this water! You really do not want to know what that worm can do to you. Anyway, RTM decided to start a church in that area, for there were no Christians at all, not even one. Godwin and I went to the Chief of that village, and we asked him if a piece of land could be bought to build a church. His answer was "No. But you can have land for free and you are allowed to build a church, under the condition that within one year after completion of the church you build something that is useful for the entire population." That was a very wise decision of this chief, and so we did. One year later the church was completed, and after that we have built a vocational training centre, that is still in use, nowadays as a primary school. There was one volunteer to be the first pastor in that village, Uche John Praise. He stayed there for eight years, and now there is a flourishing church community!
In 1999 Pastor Praise moved to Abuja, the new capital of Nigeria, and evangelized there from door to door as he had no church. DVB has built a nice church for him, but -although approval by the authorities was given - it was dozed down together with 130 other churches in Abuja, without appropriate reason. Where mosques dozed down as well? Yes, two of them.
Now we bought a little piece of land in the poorest area of Abuja, and have provided a roof stucture, for DVB has no financial possibility to build another church again.
In October 2004 Paul Olson and Adri visited Enugu (500 km east of Lagos), an trained 150 pastors during a 3 days Bible school, organized a three nights city campaign. Furthermore we visited Umu Alor, and after that we travelled to Abuja (500 km again) and spend time with the congregation of pastor Praise.
A DVD is available from this trip. Send us an email, or just phone.
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