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On January 14th, Pastor Suzi will be leaving for Nigeria and will return on the 26th. She will be among eight lay and clergy leaders from the California-Pacific Conference of the United Methodist Church visiting Eastern Nigeria, especially the areas of Jalingo and Jos. The thirteen day mission trip will involve relationship building and faith sharing, as well as resource sharing. Some of the other partner churches are sponsoring bicycles and will be digging wells for fresh water. Pastor Suzi's group will bring fabric and thread for a women's project, many of whom are prostitutes, to assist building skills and attempting to remove poverty. We asked her about the trip and these are her responses.
What is the purpose of this trip?
The primary purpose is to continue the relationship building we
began as a Conference in 2002. Our
mission is one part of the Bishops’ Initiative on Poverty:
Hope for the Children of Africa.
Each UM Conference in the
US
has been paired
with a conference in Africa
and ours happens
to be in the country of Nigeria.
Our church in El Centro
is the one from
the San Diego District paired with the Taraba West District in the
eastern portion of the country. We
will have one particular church with whom we will relate and I’ll be
able to tell you more about that when I return. What
is the expected outcome?
My hope is that we will have a much better understanding of each
other simply by coming together personally.
I pray that we will one day have members of our partner church
come here to visit us. We
have gifts to give each other: in
this congregation and throughout much of the
Where is the church in Nigeria?
Look at a map of the country and find
What
do they do there?
Beyond basic farming for local consumption, I’m just not sure
right now. I do know that
like the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa, every community has been and
continues to be ravaged by AIDS – especially the children.
With
the items you are taking, we assume there is a level of poverty. To
their standards, how poor are they?
At the moment (Jan. ’04) the monetary exchange rate is 135
Nigerian Naira to $1 US and most people earn less than that per day. What
is the political climate in that area? Sounds like enough to make
Eric nervous.
Relatively stable right now although corruption at all levels of
government is widespread which is why it is so difficult to get mail
back and forth. We have to
rely on personal couriers because the postal system breaks down in
various ways all along the way. There
is long standing tension between Muslim and Christian groups in some
areas of major population such as
For more information on Nigeria: World Factbook 2003 http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/print/ni.html
The map of Nigeria is from the above page on Nigeria found at The World Factbook 2003, a part of the website by the Central Intelligence Agency.
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