21st - 27th June

21/6 – For this Sundays service, we made the short trip to (the other) Adupi, the home of our regular visitor Reverend Ameh. He often sees us at home to ask us when we are coming to ‘his side’ so we decided to grant him his wish this time around. He requested that one us us do the sermon so I took the opportunity to use more of my resources from the Pastors Training. The sermon was looking at worship, which became particularly poignant since the service opened by prayer and blessing for the purchase of two new fancy offering boxes!

After the service, we had lunch at Ameh’s house before visiting the original birth place of Sam (the expert – he fixes any problem we have in Ogugu) before travelling home. Later on in the day, we were greeted by shouts and screams from a large crowd; a snake had appeared on the side of the house. Nigerians don’t like snakes! In fact they wanted to kill it, furthermore, they believe the snake is the symbolism of Satan! The boys couldn’t understand why I was going so close to it and not killing it.

22/6 – After a mad rush to prepare worksheets, we were very pleased to be on our way to RCM primary school for our first lesson since the teachers had returned from their strike. I will be taking the year 6 class twice a week in R.E and P.E. which should be good fun. The good news is the children are very well behaved in the classroom (although we will see how they are on the sports field)!

In the afternoon, I went off to visit my footballers in their homes. It is nice to see their families and get an idea of how they are doing in school and other things. Our evening’s entertainment came in the form of our driver Zongo! After coming down to bring Susanna and Kirsty, Zongo went on his usual tirade of how Becki (the house help) should have married him instead of some stranger in Lagos! Zongo is a legend and I hope to hook him up with an Igalan princess before I leave Nigeria!

23/6 – My day started early today; 6:45 to be precise… I know by African standards that is almost halfway through the day, but for most of us, 8 am is a reasonable waking time (well for me anyway). Unfortunately for me and Ryan sleeping outside, Reverend Ameh was unaware of the cultural difference. He is clearly also unaware that lying on your bed with your eyes closed usually means you are trying to sleep! Other than that, there is not much worth noting for today except more holiday club preparation and football training in a tropical rainstorm!

24/6 – These next couple of weeks are set to be days full of preparation; getting ready for the holiday club and the orphans party. So since everyone is at school, I took the opportunity to do some paper work (whoopee!) including writing some reports for Saturdays PDY programme.

The plan for the rest of my 2 months is to be seeing my football boys in their homes in the afternoons, today’s visits were Ernest Justin and Thank God (although he wasn’t there, but I was met by his slightly crazy elder sister). As part of my programme I will now be coaching both my junior and senior team every day. The senior team is fast becoming attractive to new players having seen a game they recently played in.

25/6 – Today has been a frustrating day; firstly an old woman threatened to kill me because I wouldn’t give her money, although now I look back on it, I laugh! However, I’m not so impressed by the amount of grief I receive when two of the footballers threaten to beat each other! On a more positive note though, my lessons at RCM are going well and we hope to start in the other schools very soon.


26/6 – Most noteworthy moment of the day: The safe arrival of Chris from Abuja, bringing with him Mel, who is nurse from Derbyshire who is now at bible college in Glasgow. He’ll be working at the centre for 2 months; working with Elder Rueben and leading the medical outreach in July. Another exciting bit of news, I will be coaching my first senior team match in two weeks!

27/6 – Another Saturday meant another Purpose Driven Youth programme. Fortunately the length of our journeys over the weeks has been decreasing, which is important as the rainy season is setting in (making the roads a nightmare). Todays destination was Unyi-Ogugu, which means First Ogugu or House Ogugu (which we discovered receives the brunt of the rain during this time of the year).

The mornings programme was as good as it has ever been! The HIV quiz was well participated in and the gender balance exercise activity was brilliantly understood and participated in. This kind of activity is vital because before my explanations, I often hear boys saying girls are lesser and below men. The afternoon was slightly spoiled by the torrential rain, however, after last week I had a plan B. Since there were fewer young people, the workshops inside were manageable without splitting the group in two. They really seemed to enjoy themselves, even to the point of wanting a group snap!