A Visit

We have visitors.  They have now spent 7 days in Jos, and have had a big impact on us and others.  Today Kirsti and I sat across from a Nigerian missionary and SIL colleague named Pelumi.  She is due with her first baby at the end of this week.  A recent graduate of TCNN (Theological College of Northern Nigeria) with her masters in Bible Translation, she shared her powerful testimony with us. She wanted to be a lawyer, but, like so many students, the university she applied to, chose her program for her…linguistics.  She kept the admission while still trying for law.  By the time she got the entrance to the law school, she had come to love linguistics.  After graduating with her first degree, she served her country in the Youth Serice Corp as all graduates are expected to do.  She served with the Christian “Corpers” for one year, learning about how there were many people in Nigeria who didn’t yet have the Bible in their language like she did. (She is Yoruba, her people had the first Bible translation in Nigeria done in the 1800’s by Samuel Crowther, a former slave).  She found out about SIL Nigeria from another Corper, who had roomed with Zach prior to his 1 year service and is also now a colleague with SIL as well. When she told her parents, it took them 6 months to accept that she was going to go and study Bible translation.  She kept telling them, “I’m going to Jos to study Bible translation.” The turning point?   One day before she needed to leave to study at TCNN, friends gave her the amount she needed to go, and she bought a bus ticket for Jos.  Through this provision, her parents’ realized that this was God’s will for her, and they have been supportive ever since.  

My eyes were filled with tears as she finished her story.  She told it with such passion, and it blessed my heart, drawing me to love this dear sister even more.  I thought of when I first met Pelumi, that year of her service (2013), as a new graduate, leading thousands of Christian young women.  I did not know then that some day we would be colleagues, that she would walk through many struggles on her way to becoming a Bible translator, marry, and be awaiting her first child in the next five years.

We are so thankful for Kirstin and Nate who have come to meet our Nigerian missionaries, encourage them, bless them, and hear their stories to take back with them.  Please pray for them as they each are staying now with their second host families.  May God bear beautiful fruit through their time here, leaving our Nigerian colleagues with a sense of surrounding love coming to them from their brothers and sisters across the seas.