Mission Update: Nov. 2023 visit to Abuja, Nigeria

By Mike Arnold

We returned Nov. 23rd from a productive mission trip to Nigeria. Thanks to our many donors who made this possible, we were able to achieve numerous key milestones.

This was my second trip there this year, having visited in January along with team member Jeff Gibbs. This time, Jeff and I were joined by Dr. Brian Smith, my wife Amy and youngest son Stephen, 17, who is a high school senior. For Brian, Amy and Stephen, this was their first trip to Africa. 

Our trip coincided with celebration of the 4th Anniversary of the founding of our ministry, Africa Arise, and we enjoyed lively worship and fellowship with our growing team there.

Among other accomplishments, on this trip we:

• Visited our up-and-running schools in Durumi and New Kunchingoro IDP camps. Between these two, we presently serve about 450 students through the work of 15 full-time teachers with free, high-quality education, and have quite a bit of room to grow. We were blessed to see the standards of excellence they are able to achieve in the midst of such terrible hardship, and the bright hope this gives our students.

•  Hired a professional video crew to capture our visits. We realize our purpose for these in-person visits, in large part, is to serve as a voice for the IDPs, and the eyes and ears of the outside world. We left with a hard drive full of professional quality content that we will use for social media, presentations and promotions.

• Commissioned this video crew to continue work while we’re gone. Finding a high-quality, reliable crew has been a challenge and has taken us several trips to nail it down. We are quite pleased with the results. They will be working to capture critical content for our documentary film project, which is finally gaining traction.

• Broke ground on a new school building in Wassa IDP camp, the largest camp in the Abuja area. For this we were able to gain high-level media exposure with reports of our groundbreaking in Punch newspaper and Arise TV, a prominent nationwide news network. See the article here and TV report here.

• Secured about two acres near the school site in Wassa to develop for school sports and farming programs.

• Met again with Cardinal John Onaiyekan and secured his personal support for our schools. He has been personal friends with the past three Popes and is a remarkable man, internationally recognized for his courageous humanitarian work.

• Spoke at 5 different Rotary Club meetings in Abuja to raise awareness and support.

•  Stephen and Jeff focused on producing a series of social media “reels” to raise awareness of our work. 

• Kicked off a project we’re calling My Voice Matters, to record first-person video testimonials from IDPs. We recorded the first few of these, and trained our staff members there to continue the work.

• Brought Arise Academy bookkeeping up to international best practices. Our folks there have always been diligent and above reproach in accounting for every dollar and naira, yet the formatting has needed help. Amy, who has professionally kept books for businesses and nonprofits for many years, worked with the team there to migrate all the records into an online platform. 

Through all this, we deepened our relationships with our dear friends there who faithfully run our ministry.

We identified numerous needs and opportunities for our ministry. These include:  

• Continuing to grow the school in Durumi. Our facility there is a large, long goat shed divided into stalls. As our school has grown, we’ve finished out some of these stalls into classrooms. The approx. 150 students we serve there presently are just the tip of the iceberg, and we have plenty of room to grow.

• The school building we began in Wassa will hold 250 students, with room to expand to accommodate 500 students. The field we acquired there is well situated for a sports program as well as agricultural education. We need to finish construction and then staff the school.

• At all three camps, there is dire need to feed the students. Many come hungry. We are able to partner from time to time with other organizations for this purpose, yet this is not yet consistent.

• Also at all three camps, medical care is lacking. Many children suffer from sickness and injury without access to healthcare. We would like to establish clinics in our schools to help serve this need.

I am continuing to seek opportunities to share with churches, schools and civic groups. Last Wednesday I spoke to the New Braunfels Rotary Club, about 150 in attendance, with a good response.

Our work is making a tangible difference. When we discovered the New Kuchingoro IDP camp four years ago, it was full of children who had nothing to do and nowhere to go. Today, these same children display great discipline and diligence. I asked one classroom if they know what they want to be when they grow up, and every child instantly raised their hand – and I was blessed to see I was in the presence of a room full of bright, hopeful future doctors, engineers, teachers, and such. With what these children have endured and risen above, I know that each one of them is on track to be a true difference-maker in the world. This is the difference an education makes.

At the same time, in the big picture, we realize our work today is a necessary treatment, but not the ultimate cure for this community. The residents of these camps are not there because of their own bad decisions or character flaws. Rather, they are victims of violent displacement by radical Muslim insurgents, and presently unable to go back to their homes, churches, schools, businesses, farms, and such. Due to the darkest international politics, the Nigerian and US governments, along with the United Nations – shockingly – flat out deny the existence of these camps. Most Nigerians don’t know the truth, much less the rest of the world.

We will continue to serve these IDPs to the best of our ability, for as long as the need exists. But the real solution, ultimately, is to shine the light on the situation, to raise Nigerian and international resolve to establish justice and return these people to their rightful homes. This is why we feel the PR, social media and documentary production projects are so important.  

We are laying the groundwork for a large scale outreach campaign next Fall in the Niger Delta. Tentative plans call for in-depth conferences followed by stadium-sized evangelistic events in Calabar, Port Harcourt and Owerri. Key hosts/sponsors are already lining up to help facilitate this. To lay the groundwork, we are planning a trip late Spring.

Seeing the impact this trip had on the first timers – Brian, Amy and Stephen – was a blessing. It’s impossible to go there and not come back changed. Many people have already expressed interest in joining us next time we go. If you might want come with us to Nigeria, contact me to discuss.

I’d like to extend special thanks to the Blanco Methodist Church, Rotary Club of Blanco County, the owners of The 419 in Blanco, and numerous other faithful donors who make this work possible. It is making a real difference. 

We are blessed with an exceptional team in Nigeria, headed by Pastors Jed and Uzoamaka D’Grace, who serve as executive director and school superintendent. Our staff members are high quality and highly motivated, and our staffing model is scalable to grow to fully serve our current three camps and, ultimately, the numerous other such camps across the nation.

We have extremely low overhead (next to nothing) so virtually 100% of funds we receive go directly to the field there, for maximum impact. Please consider a year-end contribution, and/or a sustaining pledge to help us continue this work.