The Lord blessed me so much thru my wife...I am very happy to be with her. We have a lot of fun times, crack jokes, make fun of each other (in a healthy way), as well as share deep spiritual times in the Word and in prayer. The Lord has been very gracious to us within these 5 months now...with Him, it’s been a fun ride.

CC Abuja – We began the year with a day of fasting & praying – seeking God's face concerning this year. I believe that He desires for us this year as a church to grow in grace and in the knowledge of Him (2 Pt 3:18). The prayer day was a sweet time spent with Him. We had different brothers and sisters lead a prayer session for a specific group. The Lord is raising up many in this fellowship to fill places of leadership. We’re seeing fruits of the work here for the past 4 ½ years and I do believe there will be more by God’s grace.

We began studying Ephesians on the first Sunday of January. It’s been quite a revelation so far, seeing all that the Lord has done for us and who we are “in Him”. We hear many testimonies from our brethren here of how blessed they are after each study. Our prayer is that the Lord would continue to reveal Himself to them thru the teaching and the study of His Word. Please, join us in this prayer: ...that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe...(Eph. 1:17-19).

A wedding – One of our missionaries here, our beloved Agi got married this Saturday to one of our own in the body - Solomon Ishaku from nearby Nasarawa State. So Agi is officially Mrs. Ishaku. We’ve all been sad for the fact that none of Agi’s family made it to her wedding. But we’re also glad because it gave CC Abuja the chance to be Agi’s family to the fullest. She’s now a Nigerian after all.

Nigeria on the news again – If you are into international news you might have heard of Nigeria quite a bit since December. Then it was about the 23-yr-old who attempted to blow up an airliner over Detroit on Christmas day, but now it’s religious crisis. Jos, the capital city of Plateau State (3 hours away from Abuja) has been boiling up, with hundreds of lives lost as well as properties destroyed.

Incidentally, after the rough time we had health wise in December, Flo and I decided to drive to Jos to enjoy the chilly weather there since Abuja is very warm. We took Agi and Faith (my sister) along with us. We had a fun time there, visiting some sites including the wild life park which was a thrill. We were in Jos for a couple of days and are grateful to God for granting us safety to and from there.

But barely 10 days after we got back, the city of Jos, once “home of peace and tourism” in Nigeria, flared up. The fighting began two Sundays ago...“Christians” were heading home after the Sunday morning services when they were attacked by militant Islamic youths. Overall, there were attacks and counterattacks which claimed over 400 lives. Jos is originally a “Christian state” but Islam and muslims are now claiming it. Today on the news, Al-Qaeda in Somalia has offered to train muslims in Nigeria so they’d know how to fight the Christians, ensuring they don’t suffer any more casualties in the future.

However, the major news last month in Nigeria has been the absence of our president to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment. He’s been gone since November without handing over power to his vice as required by the Nigerian constitution. In the last few weeks there have been demonstrations by Nigerians in Abuja, Lagos, London and New York, calling for President Yar’Adua to resign. At the moment, the senate has given him an ultimatum to hand over or be impeached. The citizens are clueless concerning the real state of the president. Some news say he’s dead, others say he’s brain-dead...we have a promise he’ll be back this week via a borrowed air ambulance. So Nigeria as well as its president is an ailing nation that needs your prayers. Things were tough before but now they’re much tougher. There have been very long lines for gas since November...gas prices have gone up and subsequently food prices and the cost of living. It’s a joy though to see the smiles on people’s faces during services in spite of all these hardships. Please, pray, pray, pray!!!

Thank you so much for being there for us!

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Thank God for His protection during the past week. Flo had miscarriage, so we lost the baby we were expecting...it wasn’t easy seeing her lose much blood as well as strength but the Lord was present to strengthen her as well as revive her.

Our CC Leaders’ Retreat last week - the 1^st one in Nigeria - was a huge blessing and success. The all day service was a blessed event too. 12 people from our church and 5 from One-Man-Village were baptized in our new baptismal which was also dedicated that day.

Again, God be praised forever!

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