Nigeria (06-2010)

In June 2010 Steef made a 3-week missions-teaching trip to Nigeria. He taught a group of students, part of which were Anglican ministers, for 2 weeks in the huge city of Ibadan. The group was very responsive and of a rather high level. It was a pleasure to teach them and all, one way or another, commented at the end that their whole view on world missions had changed drastically and many plans were made to play a more active role in increasing Nigeria's missionary-sending activity. 

This 2-week course was organized by Rev. Shegun Adekoya, together with his Anglican colleague Rev. Sunday Adepoje: both delivered students that are being trained in their respective missionary training institutions.

In the weekend, following the first of these two weeks, we all flew out to the city of Uyo, about an hour by plane from Lagos, where Steef turned out to be the keynote speaker in a missions conference (he spoke 5 times!), attended by about 90 people, and organised by the Redeemed Christian Church of God in Nigeria, one of the larger Pentecostal denominations. 

The third week was spent on the premises of a vast conference centre (able to host 20,000 people) in the village of Ajebo, halfway between Ibadan and Lagos, where the missions school of the Foursquare Gospel Church resides. The week there was very good too, not in the last place because teaching could be done under a tree (a good African habit!) instead of in a much too hot classroom. Students came from at least 6 different tribes, and sometimes had a hard time with understanding or speaking English. Yet, they testified that they had learnt a lot and all agreed that the big organisational failure was that there was not another week of teaching...

At the day of departure, Steef was invited to visit the Foursquare Gospel Seminary in Lagos, by its president, who invited him to come and teach there in 2011. Possibilities will be discussed.

After a first visit to the country in 2003, it was good to be back and now be able to actively participate in the training of prospective missionaries. After all, Nigeria is the leading missionary-sending nation in Africa!