ECWA church
igoli, is located at ogoja off hospital road, behind victory secondary school,
adjacent, RCCG, this church or prayer house as some would like to call it, is
one of the first churches planted in ogoja land. But ever since it inception it has not grown
as expected due to mainly lack of a permanent place of worship. The Church has been
striving a midst so many other denomination despite it years of establishment
many don’t know much about the Church.
Beside ECWA are
mainly Pentecostals, and Roman catholics.because of this evangelical
Christianity is not given much prominence.
This Church has
seen a lot of ups and downs, mostly for a place of worship, it was worshiping
in a dilapidated borrowed car garage, and it was known as the Church where” two or three are gathered” this is
because of the fact that the Church membership was just about a small number.
As we continue to remain faithful consistent and persistent in prayer, the Lord
is doing his work. From a car garage to small batched woods and to the present
picture you see above, that is the work of consistent prayer.
Membership. Today the membership of
this small Church has increased, as of last three to four years the membership
was around 10-15. But today through the work of God himself this same
membership is around 54, with
constant comers to Sunday service of around 45, due to the nature of work of some of the members. It will also
be wise to mention that ECWA igoli is a transitional church, what I mean is
that most of the members are civil servant and police men, and are none
indigenes, so most a time they are being transferred, but to the glory of the
Lord the locals are now coming to join us, and many have indicated interest to join,
and are reluctant due to the nature of Roman Catholicism. But we are still on
aggressive evangelism to win them totally over to salvation.
Achievements’ in this Church we are so reliant on the Holy
spirit we never see all that have been accomplished as the work of man rather
we see and view it as the work of the most high, Jesus. That is the reason why
we always say, it is not by might nor by power but by the spirit of the Lord. And
one of our mostly quoted verse is in the book of exodus 14:14, “be still and you will see the salvation of the Lord”. Through
the help of the Lord we were able to carry out an over whole repairs of the
Church, such repairs as, cementing, and plastering of the whole Church, we were
also able to paint the entire building and boldly write a name on the front
elevation. We were also able to plant a bigger signboard, given direction to
the Church. On both the entrance form the road and the entrance to the church,
we are also able to buy a new aluminum pulpit, bought and are still buying
plastic chairs to replaced the old wooden ones, bought two foreign speakers,
and one 15 channel amplifier, we also bought a set of jazz drums, and 6 microphones,
we are also able to order for a bass guitar. All this is to match the trends of
other churches that see ECWA as a dead church, and this was also done to help
bring the youths attention back to their place of worship in ECWA.
Computer school,
to a large extend, we were able to see a great privileged through the use of
computer, we all started to see and think of ways to be relevant in the society
where we minister, and the Lord gave us the idea of starting a school through
the use of computer, and believe me, we have been able to reach out to so many
people from other denominations through this, some have started coming to the
‘church as members and we believe some will still come to join, we have been
able to graduate 15 students, some of which are our ECWA MISSIONARIES, serving
in cross rivers.coppers Pastors and secondary students all graduated the same
day
Many more to
show as the Lord does more and more for us here in the Church. We also want to
say we have organized many seminars and trainings for our church Pastors,
elders, and agency leaders. This has proven to be beneficial.
Evangelism. The church has embarked on
aggressive evangelism, this happen every last Friday of the month. Method of
outreach, we use mostly the video and personal house to house meetings to talk
and reach out to people, I tell you we have been seeing the result of this
method and we will see more as the Lord directs and lead us.
Help. Being small in size is not being
small in mind and in the word of the Lord, we in our own little way have tried
to see how to impact other people lives, we have been able to
assist the less privileged in our
midst, like the blind, and the sick ones and also the disabled. We have
been able to assist through our mega income from our offering, with transport
money, to the blind, money for soap and also starting up a small business, through
our prayers and assistance the blind member of the Church is now able to start
a wheelbarrow business, this was possible for him as we help in seeking help
from the Government for small scale business money for the less privileged, and
he got the sum of 50 thousand naira
to start with, and is now doing well. We still are praying though supporting
one with a shriveled hand to start a recharge card business to help him we also
need the same amount though not yet gotten but we are still praying towards
that. “The religion that our Lord
requires is taking care of the widows’ orphans and the less privileged”
Our weekly activities, has been good we have seen a great
change in them, now member are committed, to weekly activities, and are trying
to attend, mostly bible studies, and pray meetings. Right now we are treating
the book of acts of the Apostles, and we
are on the 14th chapter.
The agencies
that have been inactive have now been resurrected again, and have also added
new ones like the youth band, and is doing good and great. Offering and tithing
has also improved well we now get enough to help carry out work in the Church
though not satisfactorily but it is helping, to push further the work of
ministry.
Spiritual attacks, we cannot quantify
the level of attacks we have been going through, some of which are ; sickness,
many times we fall sick, both we as parent and our children, we vividly
remember, one terrible attack, on me, to start with I want to say I have no
record of high blood pressure, so I was a lone in the room as my wife have
travelled to Jos to bring our kids home for holidays, as I was sleeping alone
in the room, suddenly I was hit by a big stroke, that paralyzed half of me, I
tried to stand no way, tried to walk no way, I started bringing down tears from
my eyes, and a voice said to me pray, at that instant I started praying alone
in the room, and I refuse also to eat making it into a fast, and from that time
7am to around 6pm I again try to move my feet and eventually I moved and moved
and a stood up from where I was lying down all this while, fully healed, I went
to see my Pastor friend at Ndok Zaria and narrated all the events to him we
then prayed together.
We were also
asked to pack our things and go if we want to live, I will quote,” this is our
place you want to disturb us we will not allow you just go” as you know cross
river state is the seat of Amok fraternity, and anything that will hinder their
work will be fiercely attacked. On and off we fall into sickness, that we can’t
say from where they come but we are always victorious.
One of the
recent things that happened to us was the stealing of my sim card. At around 10pm in the night we were getting set to sleep,
and so I finished receiving a call from my friend, and then plugged my phone in
the sitting room while we go to bed in the bedroom, we locked our room prayed
then we went to bed, in the morning as I woke up, I took my phone from where I
was charging it and then tried to call, but to my surprise, there was no sim
card in the phone. I asked my wife is she took it and no was the answer, till
now I have not found the sim card, and to crown it the entire phone on it own
disappeared, but still this will not deter us from doing the work of ministry.
We have received night visitors, strange spirit movement in our room, in the
night, suppression by spirits while we sleep,
Severally we escape from accidents on our way
to the Church, recently we have been dragged into road dispute this to is power encounter, form our neighbors the
Christ ascension church, threatening that we will not have any road to the
church, I quote one of their elders as saying, “ even if it means shading blood we will not give you this road to
follow and if you insist someone will
die” but through prayers we were able to come to a compromise with them
without any spill of blood.
We have seen
spill of blood on our way severally, we have even seen charms with hairs and
blood and red clothe tied to it on our way we crossed over it and passed to the
church. And several others too numerous to mention. All we say in all this, is “all things work for good to those who
trust in the Lord and are called according to his will”
Areas of need.
Our areas of need are numerous, as the saying goes human need
are numerous, but we also have need that are pressing and need s urgent
attention. Such need includes;
Prayers, there e is no meaningful
progress without prayers, and there will never be achievements without prayers,
so we need your support in prayers. As we pray please pray along with us.
Pastorium,
we need to build our pastorium, close to the place of worship, to help in the
maintenance of the church properties, and keeping an eye on them. As this will
also help to ease the difficulty the Pastor is undergoing, living in a rented
apartment which we pay 90 thousand every year and a lot of rules and
regulations, so much that we can’t even keep livestock or freely do things that
will aid our living, to say in a nutshell the environment is not conducive for
a Pastor to stay.
House rent, we need support in the areas of rent, our rent have
expired and we need to pay so as to renew our rented space for one more years
we need support in this aspect to help us focus more on the ministry and not
the constant call of the Landlord who has been on our neck for lack of payment
please and please this also is one thing we will not want to overlook but
rather we want to make it a priority, but as time goes, I believe the small
prayer house will be able to build a pastors house or pay the rent, that is if
we are stronger . the money for the rent is 90,000
Access road, there is need for this
road to be opened to us so as to enable our members go to the church premises.
As of the last time we walked with the surveyor and the land allocation office
we were told to provide 50,000 for the road which we did, but the Church that
are claiming ownership said they will not allow us use it unless we buy the
land from them we went back to the government, they in turn send us back to the
church, who at first were asking for 200,000, but after all consultations with
them we finally came to a close at the rate of 80 thousand naira. To be candid
there is no other way or road that we can take to the church but this one, as
all other avenues are now blocked, this is the only one left, we need support
for this as the deadline for the payment is July or they will start the building
of their pastors house there. This is an
urgent need, for us. for without road we can no longer pass to the Church
if nothing else will be done this issue is the one most pressing for us, we can
sleep outside but we cannot worship under a tree, and cannot be able to get a
new place now it is pressing to us so hard.
Providence, pray
that the Lord will provide for us financially as things are so expensive here,
so we need more support in this areas, so s we can keep moving without derailing
from the work we are suppose to do, due to lack. We also need support for our
children’s fees, coupled with all the expensive things here our children’s fee
seems to be a problem pray for support in this areas.
Prayer points.
Pray for strength for all of us as we
do ministry
Pray for members some are really sick
and need healing others are childless and they need a breakthrough.
Pray for our agencies for better
fellowship with the Lord and with each other.
Pray for more locals to join us,
Pray for some Police men newly posted
to ogoja who are ECWA member but refuse to come and join pray for them as we visit them that they will be convinced.
Pray for good health as this is the lubricant of
doing ministry
For more on our
ministry details and pictures visit our blog at;
http://godsloveinsudan.blogspot.com or write to, alapastee@yahoo.com
